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

Oh and ashtrays on the desks!

We had a disc fax in the early 90s - when floppy discs were floppy. We thought it was the dogs'!

Remember the Golfball typewriter. spacing wasn’t the same for each letter. Made ‘white out’ a bit of a nightmare.

Absolutely love this thread. I worked in office mid 1980s and can remember the chug-chug-chug noise of the telex machine, early fax machines, olivetti typewriters for us girls who did the men's typing.

We used Snowpake (a kind of tippex) to correct mistakes or typing rubbers for carbon copies. If you forgot to put a bit of paper behind on multi documents you got a massive black smudge on the document corrected.

I also remember back in 1982 going on work experience from college to the local council and being placed in an office where all the men had huge page 3 calendars hanging at their desks.

The following year I went for a job interview for a typist job and the man interviewed me in a room with wall to wall nudie calendars. Never ever forgot that.

I do miss the old days but I'm glad they can no longer allow calendars to appear so dominant in an interview room.

Worked for a publishers in 80s owned by a US company. Lots of takeovers and staff changes and (in pre-fax days), telex. The absolutely terrifying MD's secretary trained me up. It was located in darkened office next door to her's and felt like being at the desk of a nuclear mission control system. But just being in direct communication with New York, when the teleprinter type thing sprung to life, was very exciting. Can also remember the first PC which our entire editorial team shared for a while. How excited we were that we could instantly make something italic. And there was a tea lady with tea trolley...

I did an internship in Paris and everyone smoked in the office. It was 2005!

When I started in the local council in 2007 my day's work went: open post and log on ancient database. Hand deliver post around 3 storey building and pick up outgoing letters/printed off emails. Deliver outgoing letters & emails to senior manager for him to sign/amend spelling etc. I was supposed to take any spelling amendments back to the author of the letter and get them to re-type it, but I got so bored of that I just took it downstairs, found the file on the system and re-typed it myself. Then I had to send all the emails from the department email address, post the letters and file all the hard copies. 2007! This went on until there was a big office re-organisation and most of the staff got shifted to different locations and were forced to use email properly.

BIWI - that's great I obviously missed some pages.

The DX still exists. Apparently it's. cheaper than Royal Mail.

I had some lovely temp jobs during holidays when I was a student - the temp agency was a fancy Knightsbridge outfit and their clients were all terribly naice. There was the gentleman who required a cup of lapsang souchong at specified intervals during the day and not much more - he wore tweed in town. The ad agency who had me in for three weeks on a holiday cover during which time I must have answered the phone about four times and done virtually nothing else (I do wonder whether the people I was covering for ever got found out?). The PR agency who supplied free cigarettes for meetings (they had tobacco company clients and their staff needed to be seen smoking the right brand during meetings) - we were actively encouraged to smoke.

Nobody's mentioned the DX - weird lawyer only courier service. In fact couriers - god how much cash used to be spent on couriers! that's a business that has died since email meant you could scan over entire colour plans / presentations etc.

@JasmineOill - read the whole thread - it was nominated, and has been moved to, Classics some time ago!

Alpha - My sides are hurting with laughter that's a fab story. One can't help but wonder, what was this serious administrative program?
And the lucky old guy who saved them in the end!. That's really made my day.

FineSally - Not you too! I used to work on the NHS patient system (Exeter) yrs ago which was developed in MUMPS! I wonder wether the NHS still use It? anyways...many happy memories of it, and it was good pay too! Exeter administrators were quite well respected in those days

This thread should be nominated for classics.

alpha & jasmine my DH used MUMPS very briefly about 40 years ago and still has agencies contacting him about jobs. Ditto COBOL.

He's been retired for 2 years.

One major high-street bank still has some parts of its system written in COBOL.

^different ... argh.

Jasmine, I can tell a story from my old workplace, some few years ago now, but not too many. I heard this on the grapevine. The group still went on programming whatever serious administrative program it was they were programming in the RPG IV language (through a tool initially called Synon/2) and people who knew it were pretty scarce but this big industry had machines running on it still, and just had to have the work done. One day I heard they'd find someone they could hire, he'd learned the language at a young age, ages and ages ago, like you could have done. Now, he was nearly 60 and after a long career doing something completely difference, he had found himself now to be a long-term unemployed, as easily can happen at that age. He hadn't worked with the tool for years and years, but still knew the grips, of course, much in the same way you do when once learning to ride a bicycle for instance. They hired him on the spot. Not only did he get a new job at nearly 60, but also he found he was the youngest member on the team And I think there was some good money in it, too.

Mum I was a temp kitchen hand in one job and as part of my duties I was the tea trolley lady :) Never, in any job, have I felt so appreciated

Davros - I had forgotten about the centring by counting back. Goodness it was all so tedious!

The double space after a full stop - hahahahaha I got cross with my daughter today when I saw her homework on the laptop. There were NO spaces.
"Two spaces,..you put two spaces! How many times do I have to tell you?"

Alpha - YES! RPG 400/as400. I was unemployed at the time and the local job centre were offering training in it for free, they said it paid tons once you were all trained up. Something happened, I can't remember but I never made it for training. Since then, I've always wondered how life may have turned out if only I had training in RPG400 . It sounded so unique, so out there!...and you've shattered that dream , thank you .

Triple entry book keeping - a civil service speciality that is luckily long gone

DP worked for the Civil Service in the 1970s. Apparently as well as a daily tea trolley, featuring free tea and cakes/biscuits, every day after lunch a trolley would come round with soap and flannels for people to have a post-lunch freshen up.

I remember centring something by going to the middle and back spacing half the characters to be typed!
You can also tell when someone's been "properly" trained because they put two spaces after a full stop although I suspect a lot of people do that now because it puts the full stop in for you but maybe this is where the idea came from

I worked in a reception at a college and was jack of all trades as far as secretarial work was concerned. I was trained as a Senior Secretary so was proficient in shorthand typing but was required to do audio typing as well (which I'd never been trained for!) so learnt that as I worked. I deputised for both the Principal's and V-Ps secretaries as well as typing lecture notes onto lithograph paper. I was also in charge of sending the post. I had to stand in for my colleague, who manned the switchboard, so when 2 of them were off at the same time I had my work cut out! I loved that job

It's interesting how you've said about things taking longer because they weren't WYSIWYG - we're all being encouraged to use LaTeX now, which isn't.

I really liked using microfiche at university, it hurt my eyes much less than hours on a computer (and the lovely librarian who looked after the microfiche collection used to give me toffees! I don't think many people went down there).

Ah yes, @Kazzyhoward - I'd forgotten about the tab stops!