Margaret Johnson started her career in finance on February 1, 1966.
"That's when I started at Otago Savings Bank in Dunedin."
On November 30, 2020, she left the industry, after more than 54 years.
"When I started in 1966, Dowling Street branch was the largest in Otago and it included Head Office.
It is now an apartment building.
"The first job of the day was to sort deposit and withdrawal slips into numerical order, sitting around a table and having a gossip session whilst working! Each slip was microfilmed and each amount was manually posted to individual ledger cards on a Burroughs Sensimatic accounting machine.
"You worked your way to the main counter after working on ledger machines, opening new accounts at reception, and after 12 months it was an exciting moment when you made it as a teller!"
Every customer had a bank passbook and each transaction was entered at the counter. Old passbooks were hand-written.
Interest was calculated from the 7th of a month to the 7th of the next month. For weeks before the annual interest date of March 31, every staff member was expected to spend the first half hour every morning manually working the 3 per cent annual interest on to the ledger cards in pencil. Using brain power — no calculators!
On July 10, 1967, decimal currency arrived.
"People lined up to get their passbooks converted to decimal currency. I don't know what they thought would happen if they didn't!
"My next appointment was to Ledger Supervisor, in charge of all ledger machinists and responsible for balancing their work down to the last cent.
"In 1974 the General Manager's PA was about to retire and I was offered that role. I had a new small photocopier that replaced a Gestetner, and an electric typewriter!
"One of my responsibilities was preparing the agenda and typing the minutes for the Board of Trustees meetings. Setting up the boardroom included buying cigarettes for the Trustees! A packet of cigarettes was placed in an ashtray at every place setting until the General Manager of the day, who was a heavy smoker, suffered a massive coronary and then all that changed — cigarettes were no longer provided!
"I was part of the team organising bank conferences and that is where I met Gerald McDouall, General Manager of Wanganui Savings Bank."
