Ah, the mid-1960s. Johannesburg pulsed with a different kind of energy back then. As a fresh-faced 19-year-old, I landed my first real job at Standard Bank's Smal Street branch, right in the heart of the city's bustling CBD, a stone's throw from the main post office.
This was a world before computers, a time when the click-clack of typewriters, the shrill ring of real telephones and the satisfying thump of ledger machines provided the soundtrack to our workday. Forget fancy ATMs and online banking – everything was manual, a symphony of paper, pen, and carbon copies.
My first port of call, actually my first job, was in the Standing Orders department, a three-man team (well, two boys and our boss, Mrs. Coumbis). Though only ten years our senior, we (John and I) were instructed to call her "Auntie Sheila", neither too formal or too familiar. Respect, you see, was a cornerstone of the workplace back then.
Our days were a meticulous waltz of paperwork. Working on standard dark wooden tables (real desks were only for the top brass - the Manager and the Accountant), we painstakingly filled out transfer forms by the thousand, their blue ink bleeding through carbon paper to create duplicates. A manual Olivetti typewriter clacked as we updated index cards and drafted replies to clients letters. Every detail, every cent, was carefully documented by hand.
Strict schedules ruled our world. Each day brought its designated tasks: beginning with a dedicated "stop order run" delivered to the WASTE department (yes, that was actually the acronym standing for Written And Supplemental Tellers Entries), processing stop orders, dealing with client queries, filing – a well-oiled machine of financial housekeeping. We started at 8:30 sharp and finished at 4:30pm, except Wednesdays when we ended our day with those glorious days of “early closing” at 1:00pm! Saturdays were half-days, ending at the civilized hour of 11am - with luck you go one Saturday off of every three.
And the pay? For a young bloke in 1966, my starting salary of the equivalent of US $130 a month wasn't half bad - in those days it took just $5.60 to fill the tank of my second-hand Renault Dauphine, which was enough to get me all of 400 miles to Durban on the Indian ocean.
Sure, the work might seem antiquated by today's standards, but it was a time of camaraderie, a shared purpose of keeping the financial cogs turning. Looking back, those days of carbon copies and ledger machines hold a certain charm – a reminder of a bygone era where banking was a human endeavor, one meticulous record at a time.