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Girl Friday: An Extraordinarily Ordinary Working Life
Girl Friday: An Extraordinarily Ordinary Working Life is the hilarious and moving memoir about women at work, pay inequality and the alienating nature of the 21st century workforce. This is a story about resilience and reinvention, and it is also a story about how we are not human resources, we are human beings.
Kristine was 15 when she lied to get a junior office job as a Girl Friday in 1975 – she took the job because she thought she only had to go to work on Fridays. She went on to experience the full gamut of working life, from joblessness, self-employment, mind-numbing office roles, toxic workplaces and out-of-control workloads. Miraculously, Kristine clocked up forty years of admin work, and then in her fifties she became unemployable and ready to tell all.
Wisecracking, frank and completely relatable, Kristine Philipp’s Girl Friday offers stirring insights into the personal and political contexts of working women’s lives, the lengths older women must go to keep a job, the trials of walking the poverty line in later life and the power of friendships and camaraderie in the workplace.
Kristine was 15 when she lied to get a junior office job as a Girl Friday in 1975 – she took the job because she thought she only had to go to work on Fridays. She went on to experience the full gamut of working life, from joblessness, self-employment, mind-numbing office roles, toxic workplaces and out-of-control workloads. Miraculously, Kristine clocked up forty years of admin work, and then in her fifties she became unemployable and ready to tell all.
Wisecracking, frank and completely relatable, Kristine Philipp’s Girl Friday offers stirring insights into the personal and political contexts of working women’s lives, the lengths older women must go to keep a job, the trials of walking the poverty line in later life and the power of friendships and camaraderie in the workplace.
- GenresMemoir
240 pages, Paperback
Published May 30, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 10, 2024
Really interesting and insightful memoir about how the working landscape has changed over the authors life time and trials and tribulations faced throughout her life such as addiction, homelessness and unemployment and getting through these hard times, the importance of friendship and family. I particularly loved the quote “Find out who you really are under that worker cloak and indulge your passions like it’s your last chance to dance. Life is a death-defying ride so hang on tight and pedal like a madwoman.”
May 26, 2024
A decent book, focusing on a topic that doesn’t get a lot of spotlight - older women, particularly, their transition out of the workforce. At times, her experiences made me quite sad, but you can say without fail that Kristine has lead a colourful life and certainly made memories! Kudos to her for working incredibly hard and striving to do things that gave life a bit of meaning and joy.
October 30, 2024
Small in stature but full of life and fighting spirit, Kristine Philipp is larger than life.
Her intelligence and strong come through throughout her memoir, ‘Girl Friday’. Compelled to be a writer, she did not write her remarkable book about her life as a working class girl until she became ‘unemployable’ and ‘invisible’ in her fifties. Writing her book and working out why she was in the position she was in and getting her book published renewed her confidence in her obvious abilities.
Philipp says, “This is a story about me, but it is also a story about women and work and persistent wage inequality.” She gives a working-class perspective on the corporate world that might jolt any middle-class reader out of what might be their own comfortable middle class view of the world.
As an office worker, she shows how she was expected to be subservient and to do her best to make her boss look good and give her all ‘until I have no more to give’. But she points out “We are not just our jobs. We are not human resources. We are human beings.”
Anyone comfortably off and unaware how those in power structure the world to suit themselves could be shocked to learn all is not well with the world.
Philipp points out, though the basic wage established the Harvester Judgement for an unskilled labourer to support himself, his wife and three children, many families didn’t fit this rule which ’assumed that a man in paid work would gladly support his wife and children, content that women would never need or want to enter the paid workforce’.
The contraceptive pill liberated Philipp’s mother Laurel so she could stop having babies once her seventh was born in 1961. After the youngest went to school, she returned to work fulltime, in a factory, because her husband was so unreliable money-wise. However, she regretted not being home for her children.
Apart from the social effect of the Pill, Philipp learned the effect of unions, politics and bureaucracies on her family. For instance, under Whitlam, the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission granted equal pay to women for equal work if they did the same work as men. That year Philipp’s mother left her husband and took the seven children with her. In 1974, ‘the ‘breadwinner’ component of a male wage was removed, as more women provided for their families’.
After her parents split up, Philipp writes, “Mum arranged for a divorce, property settlement and secured a bank loan, unusual for a single mother back in those days.”
Later she points out ‘financial independence was key to escaping domestic violence’.
In summing up, she writes, “The gendered pay gap is women’s curse, and the cause of working-class women’s ongoing social and economic disadvantage. Economic emancipation for women would move mountains towards ending macho entitlement.”
As a child, Phillip dreamed of ‘a nice boyfriend, my own groovy apartment and a good office job’. Was that too much for her to ask in real life?
A constant recurring theme with Philipp is her physical place in the world, a home and her reasons for keeping a job––to avoid unemployment and homelessness.
When a teenager, she moved to Queensland and lived a punk lifestyle and became involved in drugs. In 1983 she turned her life around when Anne Deveson interviewed her for her ABC documentary series ‘Faces of Change’ as one of the women she perceived as challenging existing conventions and roles. People liked Phillip and her thoughts and this propelled her desire to become a storyteller.
Readers will feel for Philipp and even cry with her as she pinpoints the ridiculousness of some of the policies and practices of Centrelink and of a government scheme supposedly to help low-income earners buy homes.
I strongly recommend ‘Girl Friday’ to any seeker after truth. Kristine Philipp has not lived a conventional middle-class life and has not always followed the rules laid down by those currently wielding the power in our society, and all readers won’t share her conclusions. But, ‘Girl Friday’ invites readers to walk in someone else’s shoes, to feel her pain and hurt, to endure unjust treatment meted out to her as a woman, as a working-class woman on low pay who was expected to do far more than her share of work and have others claim it as theirs. As Philipp comes to learn who she is and what matters in life, receptive readers can empathise with her and grow from the experience.
Her intelligence and strong come through throughout her memoir, ‘Girl Friday’. Compelled to be a writer, she did not write her remarkable book about her life as a working class girl until she became ‘unemployable’ and ‘invisible’ in her fifties. Writing her book and working out why she was in the position she was in and getting her book published renewed her confidence in her obvious abilities.
Philipp says, “This is a story about me, but it is also a story about women and work and persistent wage inequality.” She gives a working-class perspective on the corporate world that might jolt any middle-class reader out of what might be their own comfortable middle class view of the world.
As an office worker, she shows how she was expected to be subservient and to do her best to make her boss look good and give her all ‘until I have no more to give’. But she points out “We are not just our jobs. We are not human resources. We are human beings.”
Anyone comfortably off and unaware how those in power structure the world to suit themselves could be shocked to learn all is not well with the world.
Philipp points out, though the basic wage established the Harvester Judgement for an unskilled labourer to support himself, his wife and three children, many families didn’t fit this rule which ’assumed that a man in paid work would gladly support his wife and children, content that women would never need or want to enter the paid workforce’.
The contraceptive pill liberated Philipp’s mother Laurel so she could stop having babies once her seventh was born in 1961. After the youngest went to school, she returned to work fulltime, in a factory, because her husband was so unreliable money-wise. However, she regretted not being home for her children.
Apart from the social effect of the Pill, Philipp learned the effect of unions, politics and bureaucracies on her family. For instance, under Whitlam, the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission granted equal pay to women for equal work if they did the same work as men. That year Philipp’s mother left her husband and took the seven children with her. In 1974, ‘the ‘breadwinner’ component of a male wage was removed, as more women provided for their families’.
After her parents split up, Philipp writes, “Mum arranged for a divorce, property settlement and secured a bank loan, unusual for a single mother back in those days.”
Later she points out ‘financial independence was key to escaping domestic violence’.
In summing up, she writes, “The gendered pay gap is women’s curse, and the cause of working-class women’s ongoing social and economic disadvantage. Economic emancipation for women would move mountains towards ending macho entitlement.”
As a child, Phillip dreamed of ‘a nice boyfriend, my own groovy apartment and a good office job’. Was that too much for her to ask in real life?
A constant recurring theme with Philipp is her physical place in the world, a home and her reasons for keeping a job––to avoid unemployment and homelessness.
When a teenager, she moved to Queensland and lived a punk lifestyle and became involved in drugs. In 1983 she turned her life around when Anne Deveson interviewed her for her ABC documentary series ‘Faces of Change’ as one of the women she perceived as challenging existing conventions and roles. People liked Phillip and her thoughts and this propelled her desire to become a storyteller.
Readers will feel for Philipp and even cry with her as she pinpoints the ridiculousness of some of the policies and practices of Centrelink and of a government scheme supposedly to help low-income earners buy homes.
I strongly recommend ‘Girl Friday’ to any seeker after truth. Kristine Philipp has not lived a conventional middle-class life and has not always followed the rules laid down by those currently wielding the power in our society, and all readers won’t share her conclusions. But, ‘Girl Friday’ invites readers to walk in someone else’s shoes, to feel her pain and hurt, to endure unjust treatment meted out to her as a woman, as a working-class woman on low pay who was expected to do far more than her share of work and have others claim it as theirs. As Philipp comes to learn who she is and what matters in life, receptive readers can empathise with her and grow from the experience.
June 30, 2024
Kristine Philipp describes herself as a punk, feminist, environmentalist, unionist and freedom fighter. Not surprisingly, she also quotes Karl Marx quite a lot! Philipp worked for forty years as an office administrator and does she have a few stories to tell! Like many of us, she has battled mind boggling levels of corporate bureaucracy, impossible workloads, toxic workplaces and the odd psychopathic manager. To top it all off she has fought her way back from substance abuse and poor physical health. She did really struggle at times to keep a roof over her head, when all she ever wanted to do was to earn a decent living as a single woman. What I found fascinating about Philipp’s book is that her career charts the technological and workplace culture changes that have rendered the office admin role virtually obsolete. Nowadays, if an admin role is available, you will almost certainly need a university degree to be even considered - a far cry from Philipp, who walked into an office job at the tender age of fifteen in the mid 1970s! Philipp has had a varied working life, earning a degree in film studies and becoming a stand-up comedian along the way. Her lifelong dream though, was to be a writer. She finally gets her chance after she ‘ages’ out of admin work, only to battle Centrelink for income support, but most importantly she wins back control over her time and relishes her new found freedom. Coming from a large family, she has heaps of cute childhood memories to reminisce about as well. Philipps’s book is a salute to all those unsung back office staff, slogging away at the nine to five grind. Though mostly well written, it does get a bit repetitive at times and could have done with tighter editing. I can recommended this memoir for anyone who has ever worked in an office and, oh, please leave the post-it notes behind when you are shown the door - thank you!
April 3, 2024
A funny, open, honest and at times dark memoir
A really enjoyable read. A funny, open, honest and at times dark memoir. Laying out the challenges of being a single working woman and trying to navigate workplaces dominated by managers who think they are smarter, more educated and more important than those in administrative support positions. I love that the book weaves so much historical and political commentary with storytelling. From one Girl Friday to another, I’m glad you achieved your dream.
A really enjoyable read. A funny, open, honest and at times dark memoir. Laying out the challenges of being a single working woman and trying to navigate workplaces dominated by managers who think they are smarter, more educated and more important than those in administrative support positions. I love that the book weaves so much historical and political commentary with storytelling. From one Girl Friday to another, I’m glad you achieved your dream.
May 6, 2024
Interesting story! I enjoyed the perspective of what it is like to be a woman at the end of her working career.
July 16, 2024
When Kristine Phillip entered the workforce as a teenager, she thought that she only had to work once a week, Friday. Much to her surprise she became tethered to the world of work, chewed up and spat out after she had reached her expiry date. With much wisdom, insight and dark but sarcastic humour, Kristine observes the rights or there lack of women have in the work place, and how conditions have changed over the years and will continue to do so as society evolves. Recommended.
December 30, 2024
An ‘Aussie battler’ story worth reading
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews