I moved to London from Italy shortly after my 20th birthday. I had studied foreign languages in high school, with English always being my favourite. I wanted to experience living and working in the UK and become truly fluent.
Before leaving Italy, I had the bright idea of taking a typing course. I thought a typing qualification would be useful for any office job I might find in London.
So I learned to type on a manual macchina da scrivere. An Olivetti, as it happens, the iconic Italian typewriter. I remember how my fingers ached after three hours of hitting those keys. Especially il mignolo (the little finger), which had none of the strength of its bigger neighbours.
I passed my test at 220 battute al minuto, that’s 220 keystrokes per minute, or roughly 44 words per minute in English terms, with zero typos. My teacher laughed when I came out of the exam room and told me it had sounded like there was a rifle in there!
So, armed with what I thought was decent English and a shiny new typing qualification, I started applying for junior office jobs in London. Copy typing specifically, because audio typing felt like a step too far. It was challenging enough to type in a foreign language, let alone understand what someone was dictating!
In my first interview, the recruiting lady smiled and welcomed me into a small empty office. She explained that the first thing I had to do was a typing test, to check speed and accuracy. No problem there, I thought.
She sat me at a desk in front of a typewriter, very similar to the one I had trained on in Italy. I inserted a blank sheet of paper into the machine, and she handed me a one-page document to copy type. I glanced at the text: a mix of proper sentences and numbers, with the occasional question mark, parenthesis and apostrophe thrown in. Standard stuff.
She smiled, held a stopwatch in her right hand, said “go”, and I started typing. I wasn’t nervous at all. I typed as fast as I could, fingers flying.
I could see out of the corner of my eye that she was checking the stopwatch and nodding, apparently impressed. When she said “stop”, she rushed to my desk, pulled the page out of the typewriter and said: “You managed to type most of it in such a short time!”
I smiled.
But then she started to read what I had typed. And her expression changed. From satisfied, to confused, to something approaching horror.
“This is terrible!” she said.
“What do you mean?” I took the piece of paper from her hands and looked at it.
Those words, in that order, with numbers scattered in between, seemed somehow off. I looked again. What I had typed was total gibberish. It made absolutely no sense.
I checked the typewriter.
And that’s when I saw it. Some of the keys were in different positions from the ones I had trained on in Italy. The Q and the Z had been swapped. The M was not on the far right where I expected it. All the numbers were in the unshifted position. And the apostrophes, brackets and commas? All in different places.
“This keyboard is wrong! You’ve put the keys in the wrong place!” I said. Louder than I intended. But I was Italian.
The lady seemed just as surprised as I was.
I asked if I could look at the other typewriters in the office, because I genuinely thought they had given me a faulty one. And when she patiently showed me what the other typists were using, I understood.
I hadn’t been given a faulty machine. This was simply how British typewriters worked. Different country, different keyboard. A bit like arriving somewhere and finding that cold and hot water taps are separate, when you’ve grown up with mixer taps.
So I failed my first interview for an office job. I was gutted. I knew it was going to take time to retrain my brain on a different keyboard, and that copy typing was probably not the direction I should be going in.
I went back to the Job Centre and explained what had happened. They arranged a second interview for me, this time for a receptionist position at a firm of architects in central London. No typing involved.
All I had to do was answer the phone and direct calls to the right member of staff. Easy enough, I thought. I would learn everyone’s names beforehand and avoid the embarrassment of putting the wrong call through.
The offices were stunning. All windows, colourful walls, huge tables. Very modern, very London. Two men in impeccable suits sat opposite me and asked about my education, my plans for staying in the UK long term. I said all the right things.
As I was about to leave, one of the men walked me to the lift.
“You did very well,” he said. “You have a charming personality and a friendly voice.”
Finalmente! I thought. Someone was going to give me a job.
“But…” he scratched his chin.
“But?”
“Your Italian accent. That’s going to be a problem.”
“Do you mean my English isn’t good enough?”
“Well… We don’t want our clients to call our office and think they got the wrong number. You see, a foreign accent can make us sound less professional. We are a British company after all!”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“Do I need to get rid of my accent?” I asked.
“No, please don’t. It’s charming. You just need a different job, that’s all.”
As I made my way out of the building, I felt discouraged. Not defeated, just… discouraged. I was twenty years old, I spoke four languages, I could type at 220 battute al minuto on the Italian keyboard, but apparently none of it was quite right for London. Not yet, anyway.
But I wasn’t going home. Not a chance.
I did find a job eventually. Several, in fact, each one its own little adventure. But those are stories for another day!
Many years later, that man’s words still make me smile. Because as it turns out, my Italian accent never did go away.
Some of the words from those early interviews found their way into Il Colloquio di Lavoro, a printable Italian crossword based on the vocabulary of job applications, interviews and the workplace.
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