RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29843, 8 June 1962, Page 18

RANDOM REMINDER

ECONOMY WAVE.

The tax clerks in the Palmerston North branch of the Inland Revenue Department may be smarting under a ruling that if they do not drink tea, they must not take a tea break, but in the long run they may feel that their martyrdom has been worthwhile. The ruling is that the non-tea drinkers must stay at their desks, working. It is to be hoped that tea in the department is

not taken in the office; that a cafeteria is provided. The most obedient civil servant might be irritated if he had to plough his way through the sheets of prevarications provided by his clients while the office boy was noisily gulping down his tea a few feet away, perhaps crunching at his ginger biscuits with sounds suggestive of a concrete mixer. But if one Government department enforces such a rule, there is

nothing to suggest that other costly habits might not also be discouraged. Government employees who can not write need no longer be issued with expensive pencils, for instance. What savings could be affected , . . those who do not wash would not have a soap ration, nondrivers would no longer be issued with departmental cars, and, of course, those on diets would have no need of a lunch-hour.