My life in the City began on the first Monday in August 1976 and looks as if it ended at 5.00 pm on the first Monday in August this year, 39 years later.
In 1976 I had just completed three idle but enjoyable years at Durham. No initiation ceremonies with pigs’ heads but plenty of drinking to excess, all-night parties and all-day hangovers. A friend currently at Edinburgh tells me that when he wakes up hungover he walks up to Arthur’s Seat, sits down and lets the wind blow away his headache. I used to go to the library and sit in Stack C.
Going to work in an office in the City was a complete change of life-style. I was put to work in the telex room where I could read all the messages and supposedly gain an understanding of Czarnikow’s businesses. The messages were printed on different coloured paper to differentiate incoming from outgoing and to indicate their importance. They were delivered in tubes that were put into a system of pipes that ran round the building, powered by air pressure; imagine a big vacuum cleaner with lots of hoses.
I had twenty days holiday, Luncheon Vouchers, a turkey at Christmas, a Final Salary pension and every floor had a small room for making coffee and tea. (The tea lady who used to come round the office had been dispensed with shortly before my arrival.) Today only the free coffee remains. At lunchtime the markets closed and we all went out to a cheap restaurant or to the pub. The International Petroleum Exchange only dropped their lunchtime closure in the late 1980s.
As I progressed at Czarnikow I was allowed to use the executive dining room for lunch. and was given a company car – a Ford Escort Ghia.
I went on a few business trips in Europe to visit sugar clients. One of the first was to Hamburg and my last business trip a few months ago was also to Hamburg. In 1981 I was sent to New York for two weeks to cover for a colleague who was on holiday. I stayed at the UN Plaza Hotel opposite the UN building. The hotel supplied a free limo at 8.00 every morning to take guests down to the financial district. Czarnikow supplied me with cash to cover any expenses. You signed for this but were not required to give any account as to how the money had been spent.
One colleague would take all his laundry on a business trip to get it cleaned by the hotel; another bought suits or a new suitcase with some of his expense money; the chairman would take a bottle of spirits home with him from the directors’ dining room on Fridays; the office manager had new carpets laid in his house at Czarnikow’s expense. This last act was too much and he was sacked. It was hard to get sacked. Most of the younger staff would simply leave if their pay never went up. I for a few years was almost in that category but couldn’t find a satisfactory alternative job.
Risk Management, Compliance, Human Resources, Client Onboarding and a Middle Office had not been invented and it was far from a paperless office.
In diebus illis magnis plenae (in those days there were plenty of great things) …
Well I’ll be damned Chris Bellew! I was searching for other girls who had gone on the Sir Winston Churchill Sail Training Schooner trip up the Irish Sea and around the Hebridean islands. Which led to google Czarnikow as they had sponsored me (after me complaining to Mr Gollop for a few years in succession that only guys got picked). Anyway I included Mark Lane because that’s where Czarnikow was back in the day. And here we are. How marvellous the internet is (it has provided me with a living for many years as a web designer). I am assuming yours is one of the millions of blogs (many of which I started) that were abandoned but in case that is not the case Hi! from Bev in statistics – Rodney Goodwin’s sidekick! Your leaving party (I’m sure it was yours) at the wine bar around the corner was legendary (from what I remember). Anyway, you may never read this but in case you do greetings my friend!