The Great HSC heist of 1985, 6.

 

The hysterical woman

After the event, John Cook was promoted to a newly-created assistant director job, and I took his role, though I was hotly pursued by a back-stabbing creep who hoped to white-ant me. As a Principal Education Officer, I found myself involved in politics, defending the iterative scaling methods used for the Higher School Certificate. These methods were contentious to idiots lacking insight, like the aforementioned creep, but a colleague and I in TAFE, after a two-hour modelling exercise, realised that we had come in through a back door, and reinvented iterative scaling.

By that point, I was writing and delivering short essays about technology and science on the ABC, so I had honed my style, and as the minister knew from my reports, I was what he needed and wanted. It came with my own Apple IIe. I was willing and capable of defending the only appropriate policy, and that meant me doing a lot of drafts on the trusty computer, stuck on a table behind my desk. I have never learned to touch-type, but I always said that as I could type faster than I thought, why bother. The work was exacting but rewarding, but the Minister, Rodney Cavalier, wanted rude replies to rude letters.

Only once did a draft of mine get rejected, and that was for “unwarranted ferocity”. I blew that rejection note up to A3, framed it, and then advised the Minister of the correspondent’s other form, and he conceded that my ferocity was indeed warranted. I kept churning out the responses, even though I was getting a pain in one elbow. I dismissed it as tennis elbow.

In those days, we still had typists, but as the only professional who was management and a teacher, and the only one who understood the methods needed for the typists chosen to become keyboard operators working with Apple computers, I was well placed to advise them. It started when one of the typists, formerly my father’s secretary who recalled me as a three-year-old, started tapping me for advice.

I complied, and rapidly became the go-to for all the typists. This was definitely crossing A&C/professional borders, but I didn’t care, though as I learned later, Ted was after my scalp to revenge himself against the clan Macinnis. I knew that he complained about my “interference”, but I ignored that as jealousy. I was in good odour, he was in bad odour and beginning to stink. My superiors, all professional division, encouraged and approved.

Then, soon after and quite by chance, Ted fomented my slam dunking of him that, brought on his retirement. I had labelled my pain as tennis elbow, and in a senior management team, one of the A&C people mentioned that a lot of cases of pain were arising.

Ted, being the sort of sexist and racist mongrel I have always hated, commented sourly that it seemed to be only hysterical women who had this complaint. Now a moment’s thought will reveal the situation: lots of women, thrown into new work, and only I knew that one solitary male (me) had the same problem. At that moment, I realised what was causing my ‘tennis elbow’. It came from typing in a totally impossible position, but it was his sexist remark that annoyed me enough to bring the light (remember I had kicked off equal pay, two decades earlier.* This wasn’t tennis elbow: it was RSI, repetitive strain injury.

I should have known this, because one of my programmers had introduced me to a friend of his who had a table with a square for the monitor and a keyboard on the underside: the only way this chap could work was by lying flat on his back. I knew that keyboarding brought risks, but even then, I had not made the link.

Ted had been unduly horrid to me and my pirates, but I thought it was just that that he was a dill. Still, he was a suitable case for treatment, and now I had my opportunity to slam him, and with my customary politeness, I interrupted his nastiness.

“Well, Ted, in that case, I must be an hysterical woman”, I announced, pausing just long enough for that to gain everybody’s attention, “because I have exactly the same complaint.” Within an hour all of the women had found an opportunity to thank me, and before the day was out, I think all the A&C staff had thanked me, save for two toadies. That was when I realised that he was detested and feared by all, and I had belled the cat, crippling him. Within a week, we had a consultant, paid from Ted’s budget, training us in ergonomics, causes of RSI and how to do exercises to fix the pain. Each morning at 10 am, the women and I would stand in a circle and do our exercises.

Not long after, Ted retired, and the very next day, he was identified to me as the leech, and I learned the whole story of what had happened to Ted, courtesy of my father. “We didn’t want to tell you before,” I was told, “because we weren’t sure how you would have reacted.”

Come to think of it, I’m not totally sure how I would have reacted either. I loathed bullies and still do, mainly because my father was a bully. My pay-back for each bully was surgical, deft, and left no physical mark, but I had learned in a hard school. My methods remain commercial-in-confidence, but I am happy to advise, also in confidence.

* My version of equal opportunity: the best bloke gets the job, even if the best bloke is a blokess.

There is more to this story:

The Great HSC heist of 1985, 1. Prologue.

The GreatHSC heist of 1985, 2. A disabled number-cruncher.

The GreatHSC heist of 1985, 3. Applied anarchy and surrealism.

The GreatHSC heist of 1985, 4. The robbery.

The GreatHSC heist of 1985, 5. The repair job.