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

The company I just left a few months ago still uses fax machines and only got laptops and work email addresses for each store in June.

My first job in 1974 was as a technician/librarian in a University department. Every morning I had to make sure that the machinery was aligned to receive a NASA satellite weather map as it passed over the UK and then set the output with an acetone type liquid. I carried huge wooden trays of punch cards to input them into the computer across the road (which was the size of a house). I was given the first golf ball typewriter in the university to use and used carbon paper and a gestetner machine.
My second job in 1977 required me to read through huge files of paper and write decision letters by hand. These were sent down to the typing pool and 1 or 2 days later came back to be proof read with another colleague, then returned for correction and back to the pool if necessary. The post and the telephone were the way we communicated - every phone call had a hand written note made of the content and decisions and was filed. Lots and lots of paper!

Reading these has made me so nostalgic ! I had a blast in my first job - there were 4 or 5 of us juniors on our section and although we did work hard I also made some really good friends and I'm sure it wasn't as pressured as nowadays. As people have commented, nothing was expected 'instantly', as the processes involved just didn't allow for that.

I also remember we had to call the head of our office department 'Mr so-and-so'. If we'd used his first name I imagine it would have been a disciplinary matter!

At one time in the Eighties the "typist grades" were supposed to lock away the power cords to the typewriters at night. Everyone has a price and there was one who would forget to lock the drawer if you left a bag of her favourite sweets on her desk. She was known as the Pineapple Cubist.

I used to answer the typetalk phone too!

I used to answer the typetalk phone too!

I loved the dodgy tannoy messages 'Don Kiddick to reception please'

Very little amending back then as bosses and secretaries generally got it right first time.

Indeed: I think technology and the ease of corrections has made people less careful. Worst thing these days is that professionals/managers etc have a tendency to do their own "typing" and send stuff out to clients etc which included glaring errors. At least in the old days, most documents would be checked. The typist would highlight any obvious errors made by the drafter, and the person signing the letter would check for errors made by the typist, and if the signer was a third person, that means 3 different sets of eyes on the same letter. I cringe these days when I see some of the crap purporting to be professional documents.

I've been a legal secretary since the early 80s. The main difference is that technology means you don't do any more work now, you just do the same work several times. Very little amending back then as bosses and secretaries generally got it right first time. I love tech but the way the younger tech-savvy lawyers work these days gives me the vapours.

Yup, £5 of luncheon vouchers at the Co op bought a bottle of wine, a baguette, a box of mushrooms and a bag of frozen spinach = lush meal for two

Luncheon Vouchers - we had those back in 1986 when I started work. Meant when you had spent all your money on rum and cokes at the weekend you could still eat at lunchtime.

I started in accountancy & auditing in the early 70s. Used calculators with a handle like PP's pic, and wrote up cashbooks & ledgers by hand.

First bank I audited, there was a separate air-conditioned room for the computers - a bank of huge machines - and only the operators were allowed in there. They worked overnight and fed information in by punch-cards, then we got reports next day on huge green sheets.

Separate department of typists & secretaries and juniors like me had to wait for someone to get round to typing our letters. I never learned to touch type because I was 'accounts staff' and still struggle with not much more than 2 fingers now

My dad was a journalist & typed up his stories on an Imperial typewriter like this

Now you've made me feel really old OP

In my first job in 1977 we had calculators with a pull down lever

We still had those in a firm I worked at in the early 1990's! Some firms took a lot more time to make progress than others.

At my first proper job the computers were on an IBM mainframe - we each had dumb terminals. The clever bit was at HQ abroad.

Each month I had to generate a massive printed report
(on the old wide green/white paper with holes down both sides)
that was too much for our printer so I'd print it on the London printer and they would post it down to our branch office a week later.

One month I generated the report but London could not see it.
So I sent it again.
And again.
Until I got a VERY angry phone call from HQ in Italy as my 200 page report was coming out again on their high speed printer !

My Mum worked in a news agency and worked the telex machine, it was super impressive

Banda machine, was that the one where the printouts always had that weird smell and in squidgy purple ink?

Learned to type on an Imperial Typewriter, though there were electric ones, I preferred it.
Early office was for research work, so on the phone, and off out to visit. One computer, database, and it took 30 mins to warm up
Memo's, phone calls, internal messages in brown envelopes, letters. Once got one from Turkey and the front of the envelope apart from the address was covered in stamps

The lady I work with has been in this office for 51 years!!! She still fills in a handwritten ledger for wages records, even though we have it all on Excel too.

My dad worked for a multinational and they had a subsidised 5p lunch in the 1980s. They also had an internal messaging system introduced in the late 80s/early 90s which was a forerunner of email.

In one of my first jobs in the early 1990s I was astonished to find that my line manager didn't have his own pc. In fact none of the senior managers did. It seemed really backward for the time.

I started working in a bank in the late 80s. We didn't have a fax machine when I first started.
Memos used to arrive every day from head office and there was an internal mail system that we used to send information to other branches.
There was a typing pool for all customer letters. We had a book full of standard templates so we just filled in a form telling them that we wanted letter 1a and giving them the information they needed to fill in the blanks on the template.
Also used microfiche - always remember someone trying to read it by holding it up to the light rather than putting it in the machine!

I remember the Banda machines. We had one at school, and I predate fax machines and computers by several years

In my first job in 1977 we had calculators with a pull down lever - similar to the one in the picture, a microfiche machine and we used the telephone a lot. I used to help with the postage and this was before self seal envelopes. We used a roller damper to moisten the glue to seal them.

I then worked in an office where we had a ticker tape machine – we sent the tape up to the central computer in Darlington to get a printout in return.

In my next job we had a telex machine. After that I worked somewhere where we eventually had computers and a fax machine. Same as bluebellation I remember being amazed by the fact that someone could send a document via the phone and it came out the other end exactly the same.

We relied on the post a lot. When I worked for British Rail in London we used to have a runner who basically spent most of the day going around London carrying urgent documents between the various offices.

I never used a typewriter as I couldn’t touch type. At my school only the “academically challenged” learned to type. I wish I could touch type now, and have tried so many times, but just get gobbledegook.

I now used a desktop PC with multiple software and a multifunction printer.

Oh gosh circulars where there was an information sheet/letter and then everyone had to sign she they'd seen it and pass on to the next person on the list!

And ringing a fax with it's own number and waiting for the fax report, stapling the report to the docume t and giving it back to the person to say it went through.

Post round where mail people came delivering internal mail several times a day.

Everything was so much slower. Pre online banking. I remember telephone banking being a new big thing you had to register for!! Before that you went into a branch.

So much more was done in person or by post. You wrote to the gas/electric people .

No instant replies like emial. Post wait for reply, file reply....

I fondly remember my first week, when me and another whippersnapper were put onto filing and couldn't work out the alpha-numeric system so just bunged them in anywhere. I often wonder if they ever came to light ever again or if there is still some poor sod ringing them desperately every week to see if his case has been decided.

I think the NHS still works on that basis!

My first job was a little later (early nineties) but we still had bugger all technology wise. At some point they installed a modem thingy which linked us to a searchable database at hq. I can only remember it being used once. I'm sure they used to turn it off and put a cover over it when not in use. And lunchtime drinking and smoking at desks were completely acceptable.