Chapter 11: The Public Servant (Continued)
And then it was back to work for Martin — still doing the same kind of work as before, but now in the Box Hill taxation office. Initially morale was good, though as time went on, the area was affected by some conflicts, most of them involving a fairly senior staff member who was eventually sacked after a lot of conflict with the management.
MARTIN: You know, I’ve only noticed while we’ve been writing this – I seem to be very much affected by the mood of a group. When morale was bad in the seminary or in the public service, I was severely affected by it. I absorb moods like a sponge! I am clearly much too vulnerable to that.
FERDINAND: Interesting… Apart from the morale issue, Martin enjoyed his time at the Box Hill office and made lots of good friends there. He went out drinking several times with the guys from the Debt Collection area, despite his well-known vulnerability to alcohol. And on one occasion, some of the girls from the office took Martin out to the Box Hill shopping mall and gave him a “makeover”, arranging for him to have a haircut and helping him buy a new wardrobe.
MARTIN: I think they basically took pity on me! But I was very grateful.
FERDINAND: Especially as there were no less than four young ladies involved!
As to the Murphy family, around this time, we moved from the (noisy) Richmond townhouse to an apartment actually in the Melbourne CBD, close to Melbourne Central. Martin found this a bit strange at first, but soon got used to having the centre of the city just outside the door. I think it was at this time, while he was living in the city and working at Box Hill, that he began to develop a caffeine addiction, which he still has!
MARTIN: Guilty as charged.
FERDINAND: His nerves, and in particular his “nervous bladder” would still play up from time to time. He perfected the art of jumping off the train at Camberwell station, quickly using the toilet there, and jumping back on the train before it continued on its way to Box Hill! This was all very inconvenient and embarrassing, but, as I have said, it gradually faded with time.
For a while, my poor human was afraid he was developing agoraphobia, although it now looks like it was just a type of social anxiety that started with his heartbreak at Swinburne. While we were living in Richmond, Martin started taking medication to help with his nerves. He started with Xanax, which was very helpful in reducing his overall anxiety. He has taken other medications from time to time and no longer feels any shame in it. At first, he did not like having to rely on a pill to settle his nerves, but now he feels there is no shame in that. “If it works, use it!” he says.
Pills, though, can only do so much, and Martin soon realized that he had to adjust his thinking.
MARTIN: This is something I have come to believe in very strongly. Problems like depression and anxiety do not really originate in the things that happen to us, no matter how bad they are, but in how we react to them. It sounds simple – it sounds platitudinous – but it’s true.
FERDINAND: Fortunately, soon after he joined the Tax Office, Martin became aware of the school of “Rational Emotive Therapy”, pioneered by Albert Ellis. This encourages people to become aware of, and challenge, negative or irrational thoughts, “talking back to them”, disputing them, and effectively reprogramming your own brain{12}.
One evening, coming back from work, Martin ran into somebody he knew at Flinders Street railway station. This was a fellow called Vince (the same name as Martin’s dad), who my human knew from two places: from the Defense Department, where Martin had worked back in 1988, and also from the Focolare. Vince came from a (strongly Catholic) Maltese background, and was an ex-seminarian like Martin. He was now involved in a Legion of Mary group that met at St Francis’ church, and he asked Martin if he wanted to come along to one of their meetings. Martin said yes. Nobody could have known then that this would have a big impact on Martin’s life, because of somebody he was about to meet.
MARTIN: Yes, indeed. It’s quite amazing to think that my whole life has been completely changed by two seemingly random meetings. One was the meeting with Fr Stenhouse on the Gold Coast back in 1981 that led to me joining the MSC’s and coming to Melbourne. The second was this meeting with Vince that brought me into the Legion of Mary. As you’ll see that really changed my life…. And definitely for the better!
FERDINAND: Martin was a bit hesitant about joining the Legion of Mary since he was, by this stage, getting a bit lukewarm about quite a few Catholic dogmas. Still, he went along, and began attending weekly meetings in the Pastoral Centre attached to St Francis’ Church. He would also go on outings with them, visiting the sick in some places, and also helped carry out a parish census in North Melbourne.
North Melbourne had its own Legion of Mary group (or Praesidium, to use their own terminology) but it was languishing at that time and had almost no members, so the St Francis group was helping out. Martin eventually acted as “president” at a few meetings of the North Melbourne group, and also became vice-president of the St Francis’ group, with Vince as president.
MARTIN: That was very good for my confidence. I found that I was able to act in a leadership role, in some situations at least!
FERDINAND: There happened to be several people from the Philippines in the St Francis’ group. One of the Filipinas (named Ellen) was keen for Martin to meet a friend of hers named Madeline.
By now my human had just about given up any thoughts of getting married or even having a proper girlfriend; he had begun to think it was just never going to happen! However, he accepted Ellen’s promptings a bit reluctantly, and agreed to meet Madeline.
MARTIN: But first there is something else I must tell you. This was in 1994, when I was still going through my Irish phase — going crazy on Irish music and so forth. There was an Irish themed store in Melbourne Central that sold claddagh rings – the traditional Irish ring featuring a heart, enclosed by two hands and topped with a crown. I believe it represents love and lasting loyalty. Rumor also says that these rings are supposed to bring good fortune and romance. Well… my parents bought me a claddagh ring, as a slightly belated birthday present and, as it happened, I met Madeline for the first time approximately four days later.
FERDINAND: How about that!
MARTIN: We first met on a Legion of Mary outing, and I have to admit it was not love at first sight. I thought Madeline seemed a nice person, but I wasn’t smitten right away. And apparently her first thought about me was that I was far too tall! But anyway…
After a lot of encouragement from Ellen and some of the other Filipinos in the Legion group, Madeline and I went out a few times. I have to say my tradition of disastrous dates continued; one time I offered to buy her dinner after a Legion meeting, and then found I had no money.
FERDINAND: Typical!
MARTIN: But gradually we became friends, and then more than friends.
We actually broke up for a while and then got back together again. And she went back to the Philippines for a while to see her family, and while she was away I missed her terribly. I think that was when I realized she was starting to mean a lot to me.
FERDINAND: Hmm… As I have said, I thought for a while my human was becoming commitment-phobic, but somehow, Madeline seemed to be able to cure him of it!
Madeline comes from the town of Banga in the province of South Cotabato in the southern Philippines; her father, who passed away in 1977, had served as the town’s mayor. By the time my human met her, Madeline had been living in Australia for ten years and was working as a nurse at the Western General hospital in Footscray.
In late 1994 my human finally overcame his terror of commitment and proposed to Madeline. Luckily for him, she said yes!
They went to Tasmania to visit Madeline’s sister Joy and her family; Joy had moved to Australia before Madeline and had helped her to move to this country.
Martin says that it was during that visit to Tasmania that he had some of his last really bad attacks of nerves. He had to announce the engagement to a family gathering including Joy, her husband David, their sons Michael and Christopher, and also Madeline’s mother, who happened to be visiting from the Philippines. He says he did not sleep at all, and was constantly getting up to use the toilet, the night before the announcement was made! Still, once the announcement was made, he says it all started to get easier.
There was an engagement party a few months later, with heaps of food provided by the Filipino community. A number of taxation people attended, including Janine; sadly, it was probably one of the last times Martin saw her before her untimely death.
Meanwhile, Martin was still working at the Box Hill Taxation Office. About the time he was getting to know Madeline he moved to an area called the “Swimming Pool Refunds Team.” A few years earlier, the High Court had made a decision that meant the ATO had to refund sales tax that had been paid on the components of swimming pools, so the team was set up in Box Hill to contact the people affected and send them their refunds.
Sadly, my human’s stress problem flared up again and he left the Swimming Pool Refunds team early, long before their task was finished. He went back to his job in the Defaults area – which was now rather threateningly renamed “Lodgment Enforcement.”
MARTIN: Oh, they love changing the names of things in the public service! Actually at one point I suggested changing the name of my area to “Special Help for Income Tax” (SHIT), but it didn’t catch on…
FERDINAND: I can’t imagine why not! About this time a number of people in the Box Hill taxation office caught chicken pox, and Martin caught it. He was off work for more than two weeks and was covered with ghastly spots. He also had one day of extremely high fever when he started hallucinating.
MARTIN: I saw Daleks, which probably isn’t surprising. I also saw an octopus crawling up the wall of my room.
FERDINAND: When Martin recovered, plans had to be made for the wedding. There were venues to be booked, an engagement ring to be bought, and also a joint bank account to be set up….
MARTIN: This sounds terrible, but it was when we were setting up the joint bank account – giving Madeline access to my cash – that it hit me I would be sharing my life with someone else.
FERDINAND: Anyway, at long last, my human mum and dad, Martin and Madeline were married at St. Augustine’s Church in Bourke Street, Melbourne, on the 24th June 1995. Fr Ed Wood, the spiritual director of the Legion of Mary group in which they met, was the celebrant.
As Madeline’s father had passed away some years previously, and her mother had gone back to the Philippines, Madeline’s brother-in-law, David, gave her away.
The wedding (with the full Catholic Mass, and some Filipino traditions such as a cord binding the newlyweds together for part of the ceremony) went off beautifully.
MARTIN: I’m just glad I got through it without wetting myself, given my past history of having a nervous bladder.
FERDINAND: Afterwards, there was a reception in Richmond, near where we used to live, and the next day Martin and Madeline flew off to a honeymoon on the Gold Coast — Martin’s old stamping ground. He says it had changed enormously in the years he had been away, and seemed like a completely different place.
When the new Mr. and Mrs. Murphy came back from their honeymoon, we went to live in Madeline’s flat in Footscray. About a year later they bought a house in Ascot Vale, quite close to Moonee Ponds.
Also in 1995, as things turned out, Martin was given his first and only promotion in the Public Service, from the “entry level” (APS-1) to the first level up (APS-2).
MARTIN: I was never exactly what you would call a big shot! Although I did do “higher duties” for a while at the APS-3 level, and found it more interesting. But for me, unfortunately, more responsibility almost always brought more stress with it.
FERDINAND: Soon after the wedding, Martin asked if he could transfer back to the Moonee Ponds office to be closer to his new home. Initially, the Box Hill people weren’t happy about losing somebody they had just promoted and he had to plead with the director of his area. Luckily, that gentleman was agreeable, and Martin returned to the Moonee Ponds office.
He was in Moonee Ponds Lodgment Enforcement for a while, and then he moved to the Enquiries area where he had to answer the phones. He enjoyed this at first, although later, as we shall see, it stressed him out. However, he did enjoy the (admittedly rare) occasions when he was really able to help someone. He remembers one old gentleman being in tears of gratitude when Martin was able to tell him that a large payment, to which he was entitled, was finally coming his way.
MARTIN: Just occasionally you were able to make a positive difference. Didn’t happen often, though.
FERDINAND: There were enormous changes when the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was introduced in the year 2000. Martin, who was never a morning person, had to attend a special training session at about seven a.m. on the morning the new tax came into effect, much to his disgust!
MARTIN: Yeah, and at the same time, Australian Business Numbers (ABN’s) were introduced, which caused a lot of confusion among the general public at first.
I remember one phone call from a bewildered-sounding lady who said, “I’ve just bought a cow. Do I need an ABN number?” I was able to assure her that she didn’t, although one of my co-workers wryly suggested that the cow did!
FERDINAND: As part of their duties, Martin and his co-workers would get a lot of phone calls from tax agents and accountants.
MARTIN: Usually they were good people — they were just trying to protect their clients, and dealing with a very large and often inefficient organization, so it was no wonder some of them got a bit impatient at times.
Just now and again, though, you would get one with a real attitude problem. I remember one female tax agent screeching at me at the top of her voice, “I want it done immediately! Do you understand? Do you understand??” about something that hadn’t been processed on time. Well, I just can’t understand how anyone could think that kind of behavior was helpful – or professional! But that sort of thing was very rare, and the great majority of tax agents were easy to deal with.
FERDINAND: In 2003, Martin and a long-time co-worker named Belinda were posted to a location in the Melbourne World Trade Centre, close to the famous (or infamous) Crown Casino. This was a temporary promotion for both of them. They acted as “team coaches”, making sure that the other staff members (who were mostly on contracts and not permanent employees) were doing the job properly.
Martin has never been a “touchy-feely” person and was in the past reluctant to touch either males or females. But, especially after his marriage to Madeline, he found he was able to become more demonstrative. There was one embarrassing incident in the WTC team when he found he had been a bit too demonstrative.
He came up behind one of the girls he was “coaching” and put his hand on her shoulder intending to ask her something. She screamed and nearly jumped through the ceiling. It turned out she was a somewhat nervous type, and had had a stalker in the past, so Martin’s attempt at affection didn’t go down too well. He was a bit more wary about signs of affection in the workplace after that.
Sadly, when Martin had been there about six months, that team was closed down. Belinda and he went back to Moonee Ponds, and all the temporary workers lost their jobs.
MARTIN: I thought that was most unfortunate, as that was probably my happiest time in the ATO. I enjoyed the work and formed good friendships with the people in that team. But it had to end.
FERDINAND: Now, there is one other embarrassing matter I need to mention. Martin has always had a somewhat sensitive stomach. He can get very gassy… and to be honest, I have often been glad that we teddy bears have little or no sense of smell!).
MARTIN: Err… Do we have to?
FERDINAND: This got worse during the time after his Swinburne heartbreak when he was having depression and anxiety. A “crook stomach” became one of his anxiety symptoms. For a while it seemed to settle down, but then, during his time in the World Trade Centre his “funny tummy” flared up again quite badly. We now think that it may have been due to some kind of suppressed anxiety, even though (on the conscious level) he was enjoying the job.
Martin’s team was located next to a team from the Superannuation area, and on the day he left, he was mortified to hear one of his Superannuation neighbors say, “That guy had noises issuing from every orifice!” So he did not exactly manage to keep his problem a secret…
MARTIN: (Groans loudly).
FERDINAND: When he got back to Moonee Ponds, Martin was officially in the Registrations area, with the processing of Tax File Number applications as his main task. But as time went on the work became more varied, with ABN applications, phone calls, and other types of correspondence also being dealt with in his area.
In fact, my human considers himself highly privileged to have seen one particular letter that came into the office. This was a very angry missive written by somebody who had received a large tax bill. It began, “Dear sir or madam: Fuck off!” and carried on like that for several pages. At the end, it was signed, “Yours very sincerely.”
MARTIN: Whoever wrote that had real talent!
FERDINAND: People moved on with the passage of time, and Martin now found himself working with a different group of people except for a few old friends like Belinda. There were some interesting characters, including a rather camp guy who made no secret of his sexuality; he would arrive in the morning and say cheerfully, “The queen is here!”
MARTIN: I think I grew up rather homophobic – inevitable with a Catholic background. But as time has gone on I hope I have become more accepting of people as they are – you have to, frankly, unless you want to be constantly at war with the world! And I no longer see it as my place to judge other people on their sexuality or their religion or whatever. I’d like to come back to that point later on.
FERDINAND: As time went on and old friends moved on, Martin felt his motivation evaporating. He had always felt like a bit of a “square peg in a round hole” in the ATO, and that was only getting worse as time went on. His stress level remained high; in fact, at one stage he developed a duodenal ulcer, probably caused by stress.
The phone work became a particular cause of stress for my human, partly because of the variety of calls: he really never knew what type of call he was going to get next. And there was also the fact that the phone work was gradually being placed under more and more monitoring and supervision. Of course, that is quite normal for telephone workers, but for Martin at the time, sadly, it only added to his anxiety.
And finally, my human started to become irritable due to stress. I can assure you, as his long-time teddy bear, that he is normally a very gentle and inoffensive specimen of Homo sapiens! But regrettably, at this particular time, his anxiety started to manifest itself in eruptions of anger.
There was a machine that kept track of how many phone calls each person in the section took. One day that machine broke down, so that my human found out he had been taking phone calls for a while and not been getting credit for it; his calls would not show up in the daily statistics. My human flew into a most uncharacteristic rage. He went up to the acting manager at the time, banged on her desk and told her just what he thought of the machine. I understand he told her to take the machine to the top of the Rialto building (Melbourne’s tallest building at the time) and throw it off! That was when he knew that something was seriously wrong. He was becoming an angry person, something he never wanted to be.
MARTIN: Exactly.
FERDINAND: Because of this, my human reduced his working hours, working only four days a week, though even that seemed too much at times. And he started to think about “escaping” permanently, especially as the ATO was starting to offer redundancies. He used to fight off boredom by making up his own words…
MARTIN: “Ungoopulated” was one of my best creations, I think!
And of course I was always “in the red” on my flextime, the result of coming in late and leaving early.
But, although I was miserable and unmotivated, I also clung to that job like a security blanket. The thought of leaving and taking the risk of trying to find another job – facing the outside world – was scarier than staying. Looking back, I think that religious life had seemed like a refuge from the world, and now the public service was my refuge! But that was never going to work out.
FERDINAND: I should now talk about some of the other things that were going on. For one thing, about this time, my “regeneration” was completed and I received the completely new (and rather handsome) body that I now inhabit!
MARTIN: Very distinguished.
FERDINAND: I should probably mention that Martin and Madeline have not had any children. But Madeline’s nieces and nephews – and of course, my good self – seem to fill that void. And for a while Martin started to build up a collection of teddy bears, including one in a Star Trek uniform. Fortunately (looking sternly at Martin) that phase has passed, and I remain Martin’s one and only bear… right?
MARTIN: Definitely!
FERDINAND: Anyway, since his marriage to Madeline, Martin has made several trips to the Philippines; luckily the fear of flying which developed during his bad period in the 1980’s has gradually worn off. He has visited Manila, and the area of Mindanao from which Madeline hails. Many of Madeline’s relatives live in Koronadal City, a large provincial town close to Banga, their original hometown.
Madeline has a very large family with what Martin describes as “hordes” of brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, etc. This was quite a shock for Martin who had been used to a very small “nuclear family” – just himself and his parents – for so many years. Indeed, he has been heard to say that he feels as if he married an entire Philippines province, not just one person!
One of Madeline’s sisters, Teresa (Teri), developed cancer and tragically passed away in 1999. She left behind three young daughters, and Madeline had promised to look after them. The girls stayed in the Philippines but my humans helped them out financially, paying for their education.
Madeline’s mother also became ill and died a couple of years later. Madeline went to the Philippines to be with her mum in her last illness. Although Martin totally understood this, he became very depressed while she was away… and not just depressed. His anxiety seemed to flare up badly at that time.
While Madeline was away, Martin actually put in his resignation at work. He was ready to walk out of the ATO, the same way he walked out of the Defense Department some years earlier. Luckily he was talked out of this rash decision by some of his colleagues.
It was probably no accident that it happened when Madeline was away, as his anxiety seemed to peak at that time.
MARTIN: I think this goes back to the abandonment issues I mentioned earlier. I really only became consciously aware of them around this time. I became very needy for Madeline, very emotionally dependent on her. There were some days when Madeline was working and I was at home, and I would cry when she went off to work! I mean, you were some help, Ferdy, but it just wasn’t the same…
FERDINAND: I understand.
MARTIN: And when she went to the Philippines without me that was awful. Every day without her felt like an ordeal. Actually that’s the only time in my life I started drinking regularly; Guinness helped me sleep at night. Nothing stronger, I hasten to add. And then there was the whole thing where, in some sort of a period of heightened anxiety, I resigned, and had to be talked out of it. It was an awful time of my life.
FERDINAND: You were certainly very relieved when Madeline came back.
MARTIN: Yes, I was in tears of joy. It was selfish of me, in a way, to be like that – Madeline had an excellent reason for going back home – but at that time I was just very needy, as I have said.
FERDINAND: Having visited the Philippines several times, Martin has grown to love that country and its people. He read up on the history of the Philippines and greatly admires the country’s national hero, Jose Rizal (who was shot by the Spanish colonial authorities in 1896). He says he wants Rizal to be better known outside the Philippines and would like to write a book about him.
The Philippines has strong ties to America — in fact, the country was ruled by the USA for many years, only gaining its independence after World War II. . As a result, the vast majority of people there speak English to some degree at least. And they tend to assume that anyone from overseas is American, so – particularly in Madeline’s hometown – Martin gets a lot of shouts of “Hey, Joe!” which is the traditional greeting for an “Americano”.
And although he is still definitely not a big drinker, Martin has been known to enjoy the occasional glass of San Miguel, the local beer. He says it’s really good on a hot day (which most of them are in the Philippines!).
In 2010 we went on another trip to the Philippines with side trips to the USA (Los Angeles and Las Vegas) and Canada. Martin was able to bring me along this time, I’m glad to say.
In Canada we visited one of Madeline’s nephews who lived in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Martin and I loved Canada and definitely felt we could live there.
MARTIN: Yes, indeed. As for Las Vegas… it’s garish, over the top and all of those things. But it’s worth seeing, if only for the architecture of Caesar’s Palace, the Venetian, and other places.
But one very stressful thing did happen to us in Las Vegas. We almost got talked into buying a timeshare apartment in Miami or somewhere! I (with my desire to please everyone) often have difficulty in resisting people who want to talk me into something, and on this occasion Madeline also allowed herself to be charmed by one of the guys doing the talking, who was a Filipino. So we actually agreed to buy a “condo”; but after a sleepless, worried night, we managed to cancel before it was too late!
FERDINAND: I thought what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
MARTIN: Usually it does! But I thought this was worth sharing. Be careful about people putting the pressure on you — even when you’re on holiday.
FERDINAND: After we returned to Australia, Martin, who had taken extended leave, rang his manager to arrange a date for him to return to work.
In the course of that conversation, the manager mentioned that redundancies were being offered, and asked if Martin would be interested in one.
MARTIN: Of course I said yes. I had been feeling really burnt out at the ATO for a long time by then. They were introducing new technology – new systems – which I didn’t like. Basically, I no longer saw a future for myself there — and didn’t want one!
FERDINAND: Martin had to go back to work for several months, and admits that he actually didn’t do much in his final stint in the office. He was basically just waiting for his redundancy “package,” as were several others. His longtime workmate Belinda, who had worked with him in the short-lived World Trade Centre team, took a package a few weeks before he did.
Eventually, all the forms were filled out, and he said his farewells and left the Moonee Ponds office for the last time on the 22nd December 2010, after 22 years of service.