December 5th will always be my dad's birthday, although we lost him three years ago at the age of 94. If you asked me for ten or twenty words to describe my dad I'm pretty sure that "creative" would not be one of them. He was a business and financial writer for many years and that doesn't make you think of creativity.
I was recently looking at some old newspapers he gave me and I found an article he wrote that was definitely creative and funny. At the time, he was the Associated Press business news writer in New York City and he was replying to a story in a magazine called, "Today's Secretary" which said that good secretaries are hard to find.
The below picture is of the front page of "The Evening Press", a paper in Binghamton, New York. The date is Wednesday, March 13, 1963. (I was two years old.) The paper cost seven cents. My dad wrote it as if he was a female secretary and sending a reply to her boss. He signed it, "Your Girl Friday."
This was written sixty-one years ago by my dad, the future officer for years at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City. The title is, "Look Boss, No Machine Can Think Up Your Excuses!" I did not edit anything in the article. I think he would get a kick out of me sharing his creative writing which I think is a pretty creative thing for me to do. It's worth reading.
Dear Boss:
If you think you can get a machine to buy your wife's Christmas present, bring you coffee three times a day and make excuses to the head office, just you go ahead and get yourself one!
I don't agree with that story in the magazine, Today's Secretary, that says it is almost impossible to find a good secretary.
They may be talking about the average secretary but they certainly aren't talking about me! Why, I can spell (a lot better than you), I get your dictation within reason, I know how to change the typewriter ribbon and I certainly don't come to work wearing layers of make-up and coats of eye shadow-no matter what the story says.
The magazine's survey found that some girls demand a salary of up to $75 plus fringe benefits. That may be true of the girls they talked to but you surely know I don't make that much. And about the only benefit I get that everyone else doesn't get is Washington's Birthday!
The story says businessmen should resign themselves to being unable to find talented office girls for many years to come. That may be so but after three years you surely know I have the talent for this job. My advice to those businessmen who can't find talented girls is that they would find the search simpler if they gave raises a little easier than pulling teeth, if they didn't watch the clock so closely at lunch time and if they kept their distance from the secretary's desk.
And what's wrong with having some eligible males around the place? The story seems to think they're taboo. Would you like to work in a place with girls only?
"Today's Secretary" says too many secretaries can't take shorthand, erase properly, file, answer the phone correctly or handle carbon paper. OK, many girls can't, but the story doesn't mention all the jobs we do, such as cleaning the mess off your desk once in a while, telling your wife you're not around or getting rid of pesky visitors you don't want to see.
The magazine says some companies just tell secretaries to send out letters by a number keyed to a correspondence manual, they are so desperate. Well, I'll tell you, no correspondence manual will ever show me how to read those scrawled, smudged words you squeeze between the lines of your letter drafts.
When they make a machine that can read those squiggles, I'll be ready to leave and you can have your old machine.
YOUR GIRL FRIDAY
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