I started working in the Post Office in 1967 straight from college. During my career I was involved in two significant events in New Zealand history.
Firstly, the change to decimal currency on 10 July 1967.
I attended the post office savings bank training school at Trentham Army Camp for the month of June in 1967. Whilst I was at the training school I trained as a teller. We had to be able to add and subtract in our heads. There were no calculators available in those days. We made the entries in bank books by hand using rulers to protect the balance in the bank books. The figures had to very clear because people could make withdrawals from any branch of the post office throughout the
country so it was important that the tellers at other branches could read what the account balance was.
The amazing thing was that we had 3 weeks and 3 days training in pounds, shilling, pence and only two days at the end of our training in dollars and cents. My first day on the counter was 10 July 1967, decimal changeover day. As you can imagine it was very scary. It was particularly scary because we had to repay any losses. If we overpaid someone we had to pay the money back.
During the day I served an elderly lady for a withdrawal. She believed I only paid her half the amount of the withdrawal. My teller position was immediately closed down and my boss counted the cash in my till against the day’s deposits and withdrawals. I balanced so I hadn’t under paid her. I never received an apology from her. I believe she was confused with the new decimal currency.
The second moment in history was the introduction of lotto in 1987.
I was involved in putting lotto terminals in post offices throughout the country in small towns (in the days when there were post offices in every town - remember?) where the local businesses weren’t prepared to put the terminals in their shops because they firmly believed lotto would not last! They believed bonus bonds and golden kiwi were enough so why did the government want to introduce lotto.
As a result of this we had to install the lotto terminals in the local post office in these small towns. My job was to supervise the installation of the lotto terminals and train the tellers how to use them.
It is hard to believe that now. I guarantee those same businesses would bite my hand off to have a lotto terminal in their shops
today.
Those were the days!
Jan Palmer