18. Read the following passage and answer the questions which follow it.

It seems that noise, among other things, is a problem to today's office workers. It lowers their efficiency and the stress conditions can cause headaches leading to frequent absences.

Many of the girls whom I meet tell me that conditions in the offices in which they work are far from ideal, and that not only have they become a race of 'working wounded' because of the noise to which they are continually subjected, but that they also suffer from backache and eyestrain because of the unsatisfactory office furniture and bad lighting. Some of these girls are audio-typists, but the majority of them are machine operators. The machine operators it seems are really very unhappy with their lot. The business machines they operate leave much to be desired. Regular servicing is the exception rather than the rule so that the operator is continually struggling with an accounting machine which, while not broken down, is faulty and needs very careful handling.

A great percentage of the girls I spoke to were very dissatisfied with their working conditions. They had not found themselves in pleasant, modern offices, but in dingy surroundings with out-of-date furniture -

chairs and desks at inconvenient heights, resulting in backache for the user, and with badly sited fluorescent lighting which again resulted in headaches for the worker. The management, in many cases, were not interested in these complaints.

Many of the girls I am concerned with are particularly anxious to become audio-typists, and for this we train them but once in the job it seems to me that the concentration that is necessary, together with the volume of work they are expected to produce, is too much for them.

The wearing of headphones for long periods bothers them; they feel that the constant use of an electric typewriter puts them in a stress condition, and the whole situation worries them. I suggest that they could have a much greater variety of tasks in the beginning with shorter periods of heavy concentration. I am sure that many firms work on this principle, but it is certainly not the case with all of them.

In the past few months I have come across several cases where an office junior was required to type, deal with callers and take charge of a small switchboard. These girls all said that they had left their employment on account of attacks of migraine. I think that their employers were totally unaware that on coming straight from college to their first job the girls required a period of adjustment .. It is very important that a girl feels part of the firm in which she works. How else can employers hope for loyalty and productivity? Yet, many of the employers do not take any steps to help a girl settle in her job, or to make her feel happy so that they (the employers) may benefit by better productivity and less turnover of staff.

Boredom was one of the chief complaints I received from girls who had originally looked forward very much to becoming machine operatives and who had chosen this job because they felt they would prefer it to secretarial duties. I realise that this must be a great problem for the employer - it is difficult to infuse romance and excitement into an accounting machine. I did manage to assist one of these disappointed girls to obtain a position in a university where the various machines are kept in a large department and the girls and trained to work each one of them and their duties are rotated to obviate boredom.
Training for secretarial work seems to be much more prevalent than training for the machine operator. It is sometimes assument that machine operators can be taught 'on the job' and this, I think, is quite wrong. Reputable companies such as NCR, SWEDA, etc., the Comptometer Schools, and the local Technical Colleges all run courses to examination level in Machine Accounting, Office Practice and so on. Dayrelease in available and most employers take advantage of this opportunity, but there are still those who do not.
Imagine that the passage accurately describes working conditions at your place of employment, and that staff have held a meeting to discuss their grievances. At this meeting you were asked to act as secretary and to keep an informal record of the proceedings:

(a) (i)
(b)

(c) (i)
(ii)
(iii)
List the complaints that were made. (15 marks)
Draft a memo for submission to your Personnel Officer making recommendations that would result in a much improved working environment for the aggrieved employees.
What do you understand by: (20 marks)
'stress conditions'
'better productivity'
'turnover of staff'
'their duties.are.rotated'?
Which of the groups of girls mentioned in the passage has greater justification for feeling a sense of grievance? Give reasons for your choice.
Give another word or phrase similar in meaning to each of the following words as it is used in the passage:
adjustment infuse obviate prevalent (30 marks)
(LCC Secretarial Studies Certificate)