By:Curtis Morton
The way I see it, it is not easy to go out into the world of work and as such, persons must be well prepared.
As I think about the many school leavers who will shortly be exploring work options, I reflect on my first few weeks on the job.
When I was in Primary School, I remember writing an essay about what I wanted to become on leaving school and I wrote that I wanted to become a Lawyer.
Somewhere I had been told that Lawyers make a lot of money and having being faced with extreme poverty for my entire life up to then, I saw it as a means of assisting my family.
So when I completed fifth form, my mother and father insisted that I should go on to sixth form. I realized very early that they wanted me to do well but there was also an element of prestige involved.
Apparently, within our local community, people are more highly thought of, once they have completed a sixth form education.
I did not want to go to sixth form. I wanted to work and so I resisted with some energy, their leadings.
And so it was that I had to remain at home for nigh on six months, before I finally got a call as a substitute Clerk at the Treasury.
Now, so that we could be clear, nobody had trained me about anything pertaining to office decorum and etiquette and all that. What I had going for me is that my mother and father had taught us MANNERS.
As a matter of fact, we had a whole family of them living close to us in Hull Ground!
So I showed up at the Treasury and very politely introduced myself and was given a pretty easy task for starters. I was given a tariff to guide me in my assessing the payments due when individuals came to collect their various small parcels.
I was also expected to keep a proper accounting tab of all of the transactions of the day.
I must admit that Mathematics was never my subject of choice, but I can get by……
And so on the very first day, I got into trouble.
At the end of that day, I back checked my recording of the day’s transactions and tabulated the money collected and delivered it to my supervisor and politely said: ‘Good afternoon’ and turned to leave the building.
To my shock, the good lady told me in an abrupt manner that I could not leave until everybody had finished tabulating their collections for the day and pointed out that everything had to be correct and signed off before we could go.
Well I newa!