For those of you who worked in an office in 1960's - 1980's

I worked for the inland revenue for s couple of years in the late 1980s. The office was filled with smoke and my first job was filing P45s. They were carboned on the back and I used to go home with black hands and smeared over my face if I wasn't careful. Every day we did filing in the big paper files and once a week a file search for all the files that were missing that week. The basic bare essentials of taxpayer records were on a mainframe computer by then, located about 100 miles away. It was always 'going down' and a message would flash up across the top of the screen saying it would be back in 4 hours. The rest of the records were on paper. You could send an 'electronic message' to another tax office by typing it on the computer terminal and it would automatically print out at the receiving office. We had a typing pool, the typists used electric typewriters. We did have a 'Xerox' machine though it was very expensive and we were only allowed to photocopy certain things. The day Margaret Thatcher resigned we were at work and someone heard a rumour when they went out to buy stamps so my colleague spent half an hour trying to phone a telephone news service (I know ) to confirm whether it was true or not. 2 hours later the green line at the top of the computer terminals flashed up to say she had resigned. Everyone cheered and we all went to the pub at lunchtime.
Blimey I feel old

We typed and filed a lot.
There were always carbon copies of items to keep track of. Each colour slip went to a different place.

10 key for adding up sums.

Battle with the photocopier (if you had one, nobody understood how to make it behave)

On phone a lot, yes!!

In my second job, which I began in 1989, we had internal email, though not external.

But I also remember Gestetner and banda machines, which we used in school and university.

Forgot - when I did work in a Building Society Branch, I regularly had to go to the nearby Banks and cash cheques for at least £1000. Then had to walk back to the BS (on my own) with the cash in my bag! Never even worried about it!

I worked in a dental surgery office in the seventies. Everything on paper. All the dental work had to be copied from the patients notes onto massive forms to claim from the NHS. All reminders by post.
All bills on paper by post. Car boned receipts books. Big accounts books. Adding machine like the one shown on earlier post. Appointments made by phone or people coming in. Manual typewriter and carbon paper.
Daily surgery lists copied out by hand and the patient records retrieved from filing cabinets and returned when all the paperwork was done.
Anyone remember those enormous Kalamazoo appointment files?

I worked in a bank.

We spent a lot of time behind the scenes physically sorting paper transaction slips into order using pigeon holes. They were input on a large computer which printed out every transaction onto perforated sheets and debits and credits had to tally at the end of the day or all hell broke loose

We opened and closed accounts by hand using a large book of unallocated account numbers that had to be crossed off once used. If you didn't and one got double allocated, all hell broke loose

Lots of filing, lots of looking up addresses which were filed on card, lots of looking for lost cards

I also used to man the switchboard which was probably my favourite job. At least until some twatty bloke lost his temper when I tried to put a customer through and bellowed down the phone at me at full volume. HTF my eardrums didn't burst is beyond me

My first job was in a branch of a high street bank. The first job of the day was to reconcile the cheques that had been through clearing (ie paid in at a branch or bank other than the account holders branch). This meant using an adding machine and typing in the amounts on the cheques (average day in our small branch would see 3000-5000 cheques to add up) and tally it against the grand total provided by the clearing house.

davros the comptometer in my dept (1980's) looked like this - there was no paper roll. The woman who operated it was an absolute whizz on it. I have never managed to figure out how it worked.

ProfYaffle the head of my organisation STILL works like that!

I work in residential conveyancing.

Faxes are still routinely used by solicitors and banks!

I think that photo is a comptometer(?) not a calculator. My first job also 1977. I loved working in an office, such a laugh!! I worked for a company that was owned by a BIG American company and we had a fax machine but almost everywhere else didn't so we had no-one to send them to other than internal! The computer room was huge and you had to go to a slidey window to talk to them or pass them work, no-one was allowed in in case of contamination. I took shorthand and typed on an IBM golf ball typewriter. Otherwise we used Ping Pong memos. I used to help out on the switchboard at lunchtimes which had a whole room and was a dolls eye switchboard with those leads and plus you pull out. We went to the pub A LOT and there were licensing hours in those days. We'd wait for the pub to reopen at 5.30pm and everyone would be in there. I also remember the strippers in the pub at lunchtime. Happy days!!

In 2001, if I wanted to send an email from my desk on London, I had to call the Liverpool head office and they would "switch on the internet", I would send the email and then call them back to switch it off again!

I started as an office junior in 1988 in a large HQ of an insurance company. This is how our day went...

Get the mail from the mail room.
Write the reference numbers from each letter on stickers and send the stickers down to the files in the basement where a team of what seemed like very old men and ladies would pull out the paper files.
While they were doing that, you would walk round the departments on a prescribed route picking up their typing and taking it to the typing pool.
You would then pick up typed letters and deliver them back round your route.
Twice a day you had to go to the fax machine and check if there were any faxes for delivery.
Lunchtime you checked if the files were back from filing. If they couldn't find any they'd write on the sticker who had it and you spent a couple of hours each afternoon doing 'paperchase' which was trying to find files that you needed but were in other depts.
I wish we'd had pedometers as we must have walked miles each day.

You did this for approx 6 weeks then got moved into a department to do admin. There were 2 pcs between 16 folk, and 1 phone between 4. I calculated policy values and I had a huge desktop calculator that I used.

The first sighting of the internet in the office was 1997 - I remember because we spent ages trying to get it to dial up so we could write in Diana's online condolence book.

I had a summer job in an office in 1987, after I did my O levels and before starting sixth form. It was with a business that traded exotic woods (less exciting than it sounds).

Although I was the summer temp, the hierarchies mentioned above were alive and well and everybody there was keen to give me advice on how to progress to the dizzy heights of filing clerk. I was starting A levels in physics, maths and chemistry FFS.

My tasks comprised the following:

Each month, putting statements and invoices in enveloped and sealing the envelopes using the roller damper. Somebody else mentioned this upthread.

Going our for fags and sweets for my colleagues.

Ripping the perforated edges off the massive green and white striped sheets of computer paper.

Shredding documents.

Filing (I was crap at it. Like another poster upthread, I just took a punt. It was only later that I realised that Keruang and Sapele are exotic hardwoods and not customers' surnames. In my defence, everyone was bloody handwritten!)

On one memorable occasion, staggering around the office with a massive heavy wooden tray containing cakes, with a strap around my neck, because one of the salesmen had turned 30 and wanted to show some largesse. It wasn't open plan, either: loads of cellular offices and stairwells, so loads of doors to attempt to open with my massive burden!

No email, of course. The office manager spent her days smoking, spraying on Blue Grass and telephoning customers and suppliers in a hilarious posh voice.

My mum had a super 8 camera in the late 60s and filmed her office. Not a computer in sight, of course. They were all smoking, dancing to the radio and buying fags from the tea trolley (the tea lady, in her overall, walked into the shot then reversed out like Acorn Antiques!)

Oh yes, the email thing! I met someone on holiday and she emailed me at work (no one I knew had their own email address) so my office manager would print out her emails for me. Imagine that now!

This was around 1999/2000 so not that long ago!

I worked for a Building Society but not in a Branch. We used to have to make up the Passbooks by hand and some of them had not been sent in for years and years! If the transactions were not available on computer, we had to go back to microfiche and even film to catch the transactions!!

I did shorthand and used to take dictation every day from my boss and then type up the memos and letters, all with carbon copies!

It was a fun time though - we used to go to the pub every Friday lunchtime and never did any work in the afternoon! Those were the days!

Reading your experiences and listening to others, it really seems as though work was enjoyable years ago. It certainly appeared less stressful and like a poster said - actions were not expected instantly. Nowadays when a colleague emails, they will phone a few minutes later if you do not respond immediately. Technology also means you are always on call, checking emails on your way to and from work and whilst on leave. People do not switch off and are not expected to. I have received emails late at night regarding an early morning meeting with the expectation being I will check my email on my commute.

Late 70's we used pen and paper mostly. There was a keyboard of sorts known as "the machine" which gave us up to date information from HQ. Day old information came via a daily delivery of microfiche. The phone rang constantly the switchboard still had the plug system. Lots of paper in files along the walls, had to search through so much is something got lost.

In 2001 I worked for a small charity. You could only email and access the internet from one monitor - the office manager's! I felt like I had stepped back into the stone age especially as I had a PC at home. I also had to collect and take mail to the post office on a daily basis.

I do recall a service manager I supported who wrote out a full address on a blank piece of paper and handed it to me to write on an envelope.

I left after six months.

I worked as an accountancy assistant in a regional HQ for a large retail corporation (FTSE 100) in the early 1980's. I did double-entry book-keeping up to trial balance on an entirely manual system. Knowing the basics certainly helped me in my later career as a computer programmer/analyst working on financial systems.

We had THREE dining rooms. One for senior managers, which was waitress service. One for the salaried staff, which was self-service, but we had water glasses & tablecloths, and we didn't have to clear our dirty plates away. The weekly paid staff had the old-school type of canteen with formica-topped tables & they had to clear up after themselves. I don't remember any money changing hands so I think the cost of a fairly basic 2 course hot meal or salad must have been included in the salary package.
This company also gave us a Christmas Bonus. Weekly staff got cash, salaried staff got 3 bottles of spirits, and the senior managers got a hamper.

The sheer hierarchy of it all really bugged me. My desk was in an office with 9 weekly-paid staff, and they didn't want anything to do with me when they found out I was salaried (even though I had no supervisory responsibilities & we worked for the same manager). I don't think I was earning that much more than they did.

Only senior managers were allowed to join the pension scheme - something that really rankles now.

The company was split up about 10 years ago and the retail division sold off shortly afterwards. The regional office I worked in has gone.

Touch typing the most useful thing I ever learned. Can still do over 60 wpm easily without looking at keyboard. Taking shorthand dictation soon became outdated. I used a lot of tippex strips which were good except with carbon copies. Rip it out and start again.

I had a temp job one summer that involved searching for information backwards and forwards on microfiche, I lasted a morning, operating it gave me something akin to seasickness. They sent me home once I'd covered their desk with puke.

I remember the smoking at work. In the staff room, in meetings.....

My mum was an infant school teacher. I remember she spent ages writing out stuff for the kids to do - easy sums, spellings to learn etc, then having to banda it. Purple ink everywhere from.the banda machine.

I was using microfiche in the office just yesterday actually. So not totally obsolete yet! I work for a Local Authority and all the original drawings for their buildings going back 70 years or so are on microfiche. If we find an interesting one, I phone a man up and he comes and collects them, and about a day later it appears in my inbox as a PDF. At some point he brings the index cards back and I refile them

We used to get tea breaks, too, for the whole office. And someone with a trolley would come around for the managers.