What was the norm when you started work

[harknesswitch]

Inspired by another thread, what things were the norm when you started work that would now be unbelievable.

When my Mum told her employer she was pregnant, in 1972, they sacked her

When I started work you could smoke at your desk and we were even given branded ashtrays

No email, everything was printed out by a work processor and filled in by hand. We had one of those personalised ink stamps to use which we signed so they knew who had filled in the form

The fun has definitely gone nowadays
(With the exception of smoking which I hated).

Lates 80s/ early 90s- everything hand written, manually calculating everything, but actually i didnt mind as it meant you got to use your brain more! Internal memos rather than emails.
When computers did come in the screens (VDUs)were black with green text. When you printed something the paper had perforated strips with punched holes at the edges.
Fax machines with the awful dialling tone and people repeatedly ringing the fax machine number instead of the telephone number by mistake.
Smoking in the office, thick fog of smoke in the air, casual sexism that mainly went unnoticed.
Going to the pub on Fridays everyone coming back a bit merry.

Omoved to an office job in the mid 80s. Computers were just coming in and we had one between 2 people. We were told that we would use less paper. Worked for the same orgsnisation until I had dc, was a sahm for a while and then went back, leaving about 5 years ago. There was still the same amount of paper, if not more!!

Working in a shop. Women had to wear skirts, we had a smoking room, fantastic Christmas parties all paid for

Solicitors office. Paper timesheets so you’d record file number and letter out, telephone call etc. Dictation onto cassettes and you’d put pile of paper files with cassette on top for audio typists - if a tape broke it was awful as you had to re do work. As a trainee lots of time out of office to deliver documents by hand or meetings with barristers. They used to have a time slot at court for civil work where you could just turn up with files and get bits and bobs of admin sorted eg extension of time, it was like a crèche for trainees, you’d see your friends. Going to law library to do research. The TV series This Life set in 90s dies portray this well.

And the smoking in the office thing...my boss oce threw a still smouldering fag in my bin, not surprisingly the papers in it caught fire. My colleagues were busy flapping round, I just grabbed my mug and threw my tea over it while still having a phone conversation with a client!!

How excited I was to get a correcting Selectric typewriter! And smoking in the office. Of course, I remember when I could not put $5.00 worth of gas (petrol) in my Volkswagon, even if was on dead empty!

Wages in brown envelopes
Closed shop trade unions
Dripping and bovril sandwich roll for lunch
Massive tea urns

Yes I had a brown paper envelop full of exactly the right cash too! And I had to ‘punch in’ and ‘punch out’ of a big machine, that was in a hotel.

Also worked in NHS in big ramshackle old hospital buildings, one with a lift where you had to pull across the metal door. The emails always got ‘stuck’ and took forever. Yes to weird printed paper with holes in the side, that you had to tear off perforated edges and stack. Nobody could be contacted when out as no mobile phones. We all shared a ‘secretary’ who did what a mobile phone messenger can now do. We always seemed to have lots of nice and digestive biscuits.

..wasn't allowed to smoke though, too dangerous (textile machinery/oil etc) and had to smoke outside.

The smoking hard to even imagine now.

I work at a hospital and although there's so much amazing new medical equipment and technology there, it's also like going back in time - we use faxes and also pagers.

We get set breaks at work still - 15 min morning, 30 min lunch, 15 min afternoon
And we laugh all day some days! I didn't realise that was unusual but it is an office full of harmless (I hate the word) "banter"
Stupid things like (you can't help but laugh)
My boss walking past my desk and dropping my pen in my coffee so it stopped working. I asked him for a new one and he went "I'm not the pen supplier"
Opening your desk drawer to find it stuffed with balloons or glitter
My colleague asking what a mini twix tasted like and my boss "well, a twix. But smaller"
She also got leech and lychee mixed up

Married women had to immediately give up their careers (1974 - RAF)
Pregnancy - options were a termination or immediate discharge mostly within 24 hrs
Payscales - lower - for women doing the exact same role as male counterparts.
Pension - not immediately eligible at that particular time
Male instructors predicted all 50 of us would be married off and leave within 18 months...
Men were the predators, we were their prey
Colleagues chain-smoking (in hospitals!)
Men addressing conversations at my chest...
A white line painted on the concrete path outside the accommodation - and men not allowed to put a foot over the line.
Being allocated an upstairs room - so that boyfriends couldn’t be smuggled in through the window. (But I had an obliging friend downstairs...)

My first job involved operating a huge switchboard like you see on old films. It was so big there were two of us answering and connecting all the calls and pulling out the wires when calls had ended.

I trained to type on a manual typewriter but when I started work at 16 I used an electric one and then a Golfball one which I hated. We used carbon paper to make copies of letters. Correcting mistakes especially when you were making multiple copies of a document was a nightmare as you had to correct each copy separately with typex fluid or a special eraser pencil (which always smudged).

We went to the local wine bar about twice a week at lunchtime and were sozzled the rest of the afternoon.

I've had lots of different jobs.

Being paid in a little brown envelope after queuing up at the clerks window once a week.
When working in a pub having to add up everything in your head and always staying for drinks after clearing up. And the smoking!
Being paid double time for working bank holidays or unsocial hours in a supermarket.
Being paid time and a half for working nights in a nursing home plus you had a free meal left for you.
Working in an office - proper lunch hours, book keeping in ledgers by hand but also entering on computer that had to be backed up on floppy discs every night. Proper breaks where everyone mucked in to make tea and bring biscuits/cakes. Subsidised canteen. Fax machines, carbon paper and files on carousels. Your own desk, none of this hot desking malarkey!
Proper sick pay.
Sexism was rampant and women were always asked about children/marriage but we didn't know any different really. Obviously I'm older and wiser now.

@lalafafa

Having a morning and afternoon tea break plus an hour lunch. Getting paid double time for Sunday’s and bank holidays. Being able to opt out of Sunday working. Half day closing on a Thursday.

We had a tea lady who came round with a trolley morning and afternoon. Tea was free but if you wanted a cake you had to pay. In the morning they did really lovely crispy cheese rolls.

We also had various full-time commissionaires on reception and on each floor. They were all retired ex army chaps who could tell amazing stories.
Nights out in the week (paid for by bosses with expense accounts so us lowly paid staff could live it up) normally ended up with some staff sleeping in directors offices where they had nice sofas and showers. Of course they had to get up before the bosses arrived.
Lots of shagging and walks of shame.
Calling up sex lines in the USA and then ringing the internal number of someone else in the company so they got the chat when their desk phone rang.

All the ancient sounding office equipment that has been mentioned, and pagers and dictaphones. Long faxes, reeling out of the machine.
We used to write court reports and affidavits by hand, which went off for typing. I literally used to cut and paste my reports sometimes.
I was fascinated by the electronic typewriters that appeared, with their tiny screens that you could get a couple of sentences on and correct typos, the precursors to word processors.
Admin would put together packs of forms, all with carbon paper, for admissions to Care, reviews and justice work.
We eventually got two mobile phones, the size of bricks, for out of hours work, which were swapped round to whoever was on call, one for social work and one for appropriate adult and weekend court work. In those days, you got a dinner allowance, too. And sometimes get invited to the bar (!) in the Police Station.
The smoking was bloody awful. We didn't get so much blatant sexism, but it was noticeable that those in senior management were almost always men, (that hasn't changed)

I started full time work as a teenager in 1972, in an office of an insurance company based in an old country mansion. It had a proper dining room (not a canteen) where lunch was served, usually a roast, a home-made pie, or fish and chips (no foreign food like pasta or curry). The 'senior' person heading each table served the other seven staff and you ate what you were given. I'd been a picky child and my whims indulged at home, but I learned to eat all my vegetables in that dining room because as a junior I'd have been far too embarrassed to risk being berated by an older person if I hadn't. Morning coffee and afternoon tea came around on a trolley.

The happily married guy who worked alone in the post/stationery room had a comprehensive stash of porn magazines which he ran as a sort of lending library. I read a year's supply of 'Forum' magazine from his collection, and most informative they were too. Weirdly it didn't even seem creepy. He didn't scare anyone.

The manager relaxed the rules on females wearing trousers during my time there, but said he had to draw the line at bare midriffs!

'The Computer' was an ICL behemoth the size of a car and it was fed punch cards peppered with tiny rectangular holes produced by the three key punch operators. Nobody had screens. We had stacks of pre-typed 'form letters' for routine correspondence, which we addressed and signed in fountain pen, we hand-wrote drafts of more complex letters which were vetted by the section head before being passed to the typists, who'd type it up (two sheets, using carbon paper), and type the address on the envelope too.

I trained as relief receptionist and learned to use the new PMBX switchboard, so modern and advanced compared to the one with wires and plugs which preceded it (I learned the PABX switchboard in my next job).

Smoking at the desk was the norm in all the offices I worked in until it was banned by law in 2007. At my last workplace the small number of smokers still lit up on the stroke of 5pm, right up to my leaving in 2017 - the bosses smoked so what they did, others did.

I hate office work but it certainly changed out of all recognition over the 45 years since I started, and the first one was the best by far.

In 1969 I was asked the date of my last period during the interview. Also sexual harassment was extremely common.

1970s civil service.
No dress code, I went to work in jeans.
My boss puffed on a pipe all day and had an afternoon nap at his desk.
Carbon paper.
Treasury tags.
Very lively Christmas parties in the office.
Manager was a known groper.

1985, my first full-time job:

RSI ... a pandemic caused by "VDUs", ie computers, and numerous people with arms in slings.
Smoking ... even when I'd got to the office super early, rounded up all the ashtrays and thrown them in the bin.
Telex machines ... and delivering endless reams of telexes to managers who couldn't be stuffed reading them.
Intrusive questions about my private life from old geezers who, when I politely demurred, demanded "You gotta problem with men, then?"

And the best:

Unwrapping a wholemeal salad sandwich and having people gather around my desk to gaze at it in awe and ask "Are you a health freak?"

I started working in an office in the mid-70s and we were allowed to wear trousers, and have bare legs in summer. I'm quite astonished at the people saying trousers were frowned on much later (I'm not in the UK).

I hate office work but it certainly changed out of all recognition over the 45 years since I started, and the first one was the best by far.

I agree with this - office work was far more interesting and fun when I started compared to now.

In the medical for my first job I was asked if I suffered from heavy periods.