Little Brown Envelope
I’ve always been an ambitious person, knowing that I wanted to make a difference once I started working. Whilst I was at college and after I’d finished my course in 1988, I worked at my dad’s firm, doing some secretarial duties, sending faxes and telexes (remember them?), and my main job on a Friday was to go to the bank, draw out the wages in cash for the shop-floor workers, and count it all out before placing it in little brown envelopes. On the front of those envelopes I had to write the name of the employee, how many hours he or she had worked that week, and how much money was in their pay packet. Then, at 3pm, an hour before the shop-floor workers clocked off (literally, using their clocking-off card in a machine), I’d have the rewarding job of handing out the wages to each one, their hands outstretched and a huge smile on their face as they realised their working week hadn’t been for nothing after all. I loved that little job, spending time walking around the factory, searching out relieved smiles and happy people, each one thanking me profusely as though I’d drawn the money out of my own bank account.
I think there was a more appreciative attitude towards employers back in those days of cash handouts and little brown envelopes, whereas now, it’s an invoice or a digital payslip that we scrutinise and calculate then moan inexorably when we see the amount of tax that’s been deducted. Quite right, too, though it’s still money being put into our hands, only in a slightly different way.
The firm hugely expanded in 1990 and moved premises, and I moved with it. The brown envelopes were no more and it then became my job to produce weekly payslips instead, while someone else ensured the payments were made. But I still had the task of walking around the factory floor, handing out the payslips in a white envelope, names and department clearly marked. Somehow, it didn’t feel the same. It was less intimate, less rewarding. The employees took their envelopes and scurried away, back to their machines, some pushing them into trouser pockets while others ripped them open, before having a quick glance.
Providing people with something of value has always been important to me throughout my working life. Whether it’s been cash in a little brown envelope or a slip of paper in a white manilla, or a Word document containing an edited manuscript that the author has been working on for months, wondering if they’d ever see a financial reward at the end of it. We all deserve to be rewarded for our hard work, and while I’m nowhere near the end of my working life yet being the spring chicken that I am, I do feel, in a somewhat familiar yet strange kind of way, that I’ve come full circle. My edits might not put as huge a smile on a recipient’s face like those little brown envelopes did, but I’m pretty sure I still provide people with something they appreciate.
