Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

'Should we leave you to stand in the dole queue or should we take you in out of the cold? That was the question. The answer was to create British Albion as we know it today.

'You had to be given work, but there was no work for you to do. No point in having a sales division now, we had nothing to sell; no buying department, we had nothing to buy; no transport pool, we had nothing to transport; the subsidiary companies we were meant to service had been reduced to heaps of rubble.

'Well, then: if there was no work to do, it had to be invented. Once the problem was faced, it was not a problem at all. Most large offices, even in the commercial sector, devote most of their resources to taking in their own washing, if I may use the phrase. Eighty per cent of the average office workforce exists only to service the other twenty per cent — to type and post their letters, file their documents, buy their stationery and other items, prepare their salary cheques, re-arrange their furniture, cook their lunches, man their lifts, empty their waste-paper baskets and so on and so forth. So it was easy enough to copy the standard office structure. Added to that we decided on frequent reorganization programmes: any department that could be reorganized from time to time was reorganized. That too is common enough in most large offices, so we were able to maintain the illusion of operating a conventional City company.

'As recruiting continued, and British Albion grew, it did become slightly more difficult to invent more tasks. Catering Admin was expanded rather more than it should have been, as were the various Service departments. Touching on the Service departments, by the way, there has been a good deal of speculation about the purpose of all those statistics they're so energetically processing. I don't think there's any great mystery: they're engaged in comparing all the numbers from the 1967 Manhattan telephone directory against those from the 1973 edition. The two sets of numbers aren't in the same order, and of course they lack the subscribers' names that would make checking easier, so it's quite a long task. On the other hand, I'm informed it's a rather exhausting way of occupying one's time, so if anyone can suggest anything more congenial I'd be glad to hear it!'

All this had been listened to attentively. Gryce, in particular, was enthralled, his only regret being that he didn't have a toffee to suck. What a pity that that human cornucopia of toffees Copeland was not sitting next to him instead of Vaart; particularly as Vaart was hunching his shoulders belligerently and looking as if he were on the verge of making an exhibition of himself.

'Woss wrong wivver few bleedin treadmills?'

Yes: he was bound to have made trouble sooner or later. Lucas, however, looked only momentarily put out.

'I'm sorry — would you repeat the question and identify yourself?'

Vaart, somewhat sheepishly it seemed to Gryce, jack-knifed himself to his feet but did not otherwise identify himself and did not repeat the question.

'It's Mr Vaart, isn't it?'

Vaart, perhaps sullen was the word rather than sheepish, didn't reply. Say something even if it's only good night, thought Gryce, embarrassed.

'Aren't I correct in thinking you had a career in the printing industry, Mr Vaart?'

Thass ri. Afore your bleedin mob got their ands on it.' Ah: so friend Vaart did have a tongue after all.

'And would you agree with me, Mr Vaart, that printing, I don't say the particular branch you worked in but certainly Fleet Street, is perhaps the most over-manned industry in Britain?'

'Iss no more over-manned than Bri'ish bleedin Albion, is it?' flashed Vaart. Unable to perform his usual trick of affecting to walk away after this robust sally, he contented himself with glaring with comic fierceness at those who had turned round to have a look at him. The performance was rewarded by a few nervous sniggers.

For the first time Lucas of Personnel showed signs of losing his cool, as Gryce believed the expression was. Really nasty, he looked.

'I'd like to ask this of you, Mr Vaart. I'd like to ask it of all of you. I don't really want to single out printing as the villain of the piece; over-manning is endemic to many industries, indeed it goes through trade and commerce in general. How many of you hand on heart can say that you used to do a full day's work before you came to British Albion?' (Not Gryce, for one.) 'Now will you tell me this. What is the moral difference between being carried as a passenger on a cargo boat and being carried as a passenger on a pleasure cruise? There is no difference! You remain passengers, whether those around you are working or not! If it's morally proper, and seemingly it is, that newspapers and car factories and local government offices should employ large numbers of people who do little or nothing, but who create industrial unrest when their non-existent jobs are threatened, surely the logical development is to get them all together under one roof where they can do little or nothing in comfort and not get in the way of those with real work to do! So don't talk to me about treadmills, Mr Vaart!'

Evidently he had not failed to hear Vaart's original question after all, but had chosen to wait until he could use it as a peg for what Gryce considered a rather fanciful piece of rhetoric.

Vaart, chuntering something about wankers, had long ago sat down, but now someone else was on his feet. It was the angry-looking head of department of Catering (Administration). He looked angrier than ever if that were possible, all Gryce could say was that he wouldn't like to meet him up a dark alley.

Talking of dark alleys: where was Pam?

'Yes? I believe Mr Hatch has a question?'

'I do not have a question, Mr Lucas, I have an invitation. I take the greatest exception to the snide remarks you have been pleased to let drop about the department of which I have the honour to be in charge, and I invite you to withdraw them.'

Lucas looked puzzled, as well he might in Gryce's opinion. It was becoming crystal-clear that the head of Catering (Administration) was a crackpot who should be given a good long rest.

'I don't think I mentioned your department, Mr Hatch, except in passing when I said it had perhaps been over-expanded. If you find anything offensive about that, then of course I apologize.'

'You have bracketed us with other departments, Mr Lucas! You have tarred us with the same brush! "Doing little or no work", "Being carried as a passenger" — those are the phrases you have been using this evening, yes they are! Now let me inform you, sir, that whatever other departments may or may not do, my staff in Catering (Administration) are the most hardworking, most conscientious body of men you could meet in a day's march. They are hard at it from morning till night and if everyone slogged his guts out as I have seen those boys do, this country wouldn't be in the state it is in today!'

Jack Lemmon, sitting next to Hatch, was nodding solemnly. There was a murmur of sympathy from the audience. It was good stirring stuff, perhaps he wasn't a crackpot after all: Gryce went back to his earlier conclusion that a comparison could be made with fighter pilots he'd known in his RAF days.

'But you don't produce anything, Mr Hatch!' said Lucas, with an air of wonderment for some reason.

Hatch, the relief map of veins on his forehead looking as if it were dramatically about to change its contours, held up a podgy hand to show that he was not finished yet, while he bent down for a hurried consultation with Jack Lemmon.

'You say we don't produce anything, Mr Lucas. Putting to one side the upwards of eight hundred hot and cold luncheons prepared five days a week, would it interest you to know how many books of SSTs have been processed by my department since the new meals subsidy scheme came into being?'