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

Lord, the smoking

I used to eat lunh in the strong room to avoid the staff room which was solid with tobacco fog. I also recall the lighting up behind the counter the instant the bank doors closed. So relieved that's all over now.

I'd forgotten the luncheon vouchers. Think they were something like 40p a day and could be used in supermarkets if you took a packed lunch and didn't use them. They eventually got bought out with union agreement for a one off payment of around £200 which was cheap, cheap, cheap.

Not office work, but when I worked as a barmaid I had to know the prices of all the drinks and add them up in my head. I had a little test as part of my interview.

"My first office job was in the civil service. The whole organisation was a homage to driving itself along on a giant wave of self perpetuated paperwork, photocopying and tea."

Change tea to coffee and you have the Ministry of Defence today.

At risk of outing myself ......

1989
I got a Temp job with a company
arrived at 9am to be greeted with
"ah, you are the spreadsheet expert, this is what we want put on it, we'll be back from training after lunch"
and they all left ....
I phoned may agency who said
"you know no less than them, apparently F1 is help"

and by lunchtime I WAS the spreadsheet expert

kazzy
ooh, the black Amstrad luggable
I got one of those when my white one broke down
it was well posh as it had a built in operating system !!!!

Alpha - eek! this programming language that you speak of, is it the same as RPG 4000?

I started work early 1980's and I remember my secretarial training at college 1981-2. They advertised that they offered word processing training as part of our course as this was the latest thing and would help us get the top jobs. The training consisted of the teacher sitting with the instruction booklet for the WP and telling us 'press that button now' . As they only had one WP in the college we all had about 2 hours training over the whole year as we had to do it one at a time.

When I started work I used golf ball typewriter, we had to take 2 carbon copies, mistakes rubbed out with a special rubber which rubbed holes in the paper so you ended up starting again. It was amazing when I first got a typewriter with a self correct ribbon.

In my second job we all used typewriters but there were 2 massive word processors Ina separate room which had huge floppy discs. The secretaries took it in turn to use these if someone had a long report to type.

I also remember we used to take it in turn to make the tea in the middle of the morning and afternoon . There was a rota for this but only female members of staff were on the Rota because it wasn't right to expect one of the male clerks to make tea or wash up.

I learned shorthand at college - pitman 2000. I still use it some time when I'm minuting meetings - mainly I use a lap top but occasionally I'll have to minute at a venue where's no room for my laptop so I get my shorthand pad out!

Ooh I remember the Pinks file and the weekly telephone cleaning people.
In the late 80s I worked at a metal finishing company (oh the glamour!) near Heathrow. We used to joke about the puddles of heavy metals in the car park but not such a joke! At about 10.55am every day we would down tools and go to the window to see Concorde, never got bored of that. No woman could enter the Polishing department alone and, even if accompanied, all the (male) workers shouted, whistled, jeered - all sexist obscenities. It was a real old fashioned combo of office and factory staff and there was a divide. I think the factory staff might have earned more than we did though!

Our firm bought this around 1993. Awesome. We could take it out to do work at clients. Before then, we used to have to being the paperwork back to the office to do the computing/printing and then go back to the clients with the reports.

What were those big blue zipped bags that you sent post in called? I remember I had a box of little orange tags to seal them. Are they still around ?

They still use pricing guns in the local grocery stores though.

Ah, but I bet these days you have to do an online training module in its correct use and resit if you get less than 80%, and then set a target following discussion with your line manager to price up 10% more beans next quarter than last quarter to be eligible for the performance related element of your salary award.

Seneca / BIWI
DH still gets people phoning to ask if he got their emails

BIWI I still remember a colleague of mine who would roll his desk chair to his doorway and shout down the corridor "Hey Seneca, I sent you an email."

When i worked for post office telephones it changed into BT. Id been promoted by then and sold the first ever 'mobile' phones which were the size of a bricks and had to have a receiver inthe car boot the size of a suitcase. We also sold the first ever phonecards I still have some of the otiginal promotional ones we gave out.. i thought they msy be worth someting but a look pn ebay says no!
Another memory was the advent of thr Trimphone. People were so excited by them and they sold like hot cakes..
I now have modern trimphone in my 1970s house !

I set up my own business, with a partner, in 1998. We used to say to each other "have you checked the email this week?"

Our office had a couple of those "laptops" that we could take home to use. To me it seemed like carrying a small refrigerator. We would save documents on diskettes and bring them in to the office to print.

How technology has moved on.

As late as 1988 when I worked in admin at Imperial College which even then was world-renowned in science & technology, there was one fax machine on that whole campus in South Kensington. From one of the engineering schools I used to trudge over to the Sherfield Building to send a fax!

Notsure if above was same one but looked similar!!

My dad worked for Hewlett Packard in 80s and 90s and early/mid 90s he used to work on a laptop at home which was about 4/5 inches thick and weighed a tonne. It had a green screen.ill attach an image.

He also had a pager for years. I remember him getting a Vodafone car phone. It wasnt a mobile and the receiver/main unit was stored in the boot. It was attached to the dashboard at side of car radio and you could lift up the receiver on a twirly cord.

Oh, I would love a pricing gun. Would be great present for young kids who still love to play "shop".

I remember whenever our computers went down (often) we used to be told to get on with non-pc tasks. Totally impossible these days so love it when there's a network crash

Late 70s? - the thrill of the Golfball typewriter - so powerful!

Wine bar for lunch using Luncheon Vouchers

Telephone cleaning company who used to visit around once a month to disinfect the phone handsets

Smoking at your desk

Tippex & carbon sheets

Tea trolley

Ah, the memories

We had a trolley service at 11am sharp with tea, cakes and sandwiches (not free).

Just remembered when I started at the immigration service I had a lesson on the proper way to attach files. White tape for a single individual and blue tape for multiples in a family group. Doing this wrong got you a telling off from the head of filing!

A colleague in the civil service told me that rather than clearing her desk at the end of the day (as was the rule), she'd parcel all her files into an internal envelope and address it to herself, and they'd arrive back to get the next morning!

This thread is making me nostalgic for tea breaks! We never use to have our tea at our desks, there was a special section of the office for that with sofas where you could have a good old chat. (Off topic but I also fondly remember the tea breaks at Marks and Spencers where everything was from the food hall but really cheap!)