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

I worked in Paris in 2006 and people smoked at their desk! Cigars as well.

First job as a weekend sales assistant while still at school I got double time for working Sunday and triple for working a bank holiday

No contact with (non-work) friends or family while at work - no cell phones nor pay phones. If there was an emergency someone would have to call the main number and get the manager to get hold of you. I kind of miss this aspect!

I remember the blatant sexism. As a first-job graduate, I would come into the office in the morning with colleagues, and my boss and his side kick would stand by the door loudly speculating as to who was wearing stockings.

A later job, I attended some trade shows in the US and my employer expected me to share a room with a total stranger. In their eyes, travelling for work was a privilege. They were stunned when I refused.

Law firm - 1996(ish)
I can remember when solicitors/partners didn't have computers on their desks, secretaries done absolutely everything
Emails started being used and saying to my boss "hmmmm, can't see this taking off you know"
Everything being done on paper, lots and lots of handwritten notes and letters
Using word processors for Court documents
Tippex used in abundance
Smoking room
Absolutely piles of letters and memos to work through on a daily basis (still the same I suppose but all electronic now)
Women had to wear skirts in Court, under no circumstances could you wear trousers

1978. I went to the bank with my tiny little old director weekly, for payroll money. He chained the briefcase to both of our wrists! I was so mortified, but not scared. I'd then make up the pay packets, using paper tax charts. Count on the pounds and change, and write the amount on the window packet.

1979. I had to type lengthy telexes every day. The machine had keys about an inch tall, and as you typed it spat out a long reel of ticker tape. Once done, I'd dial the number, and feed back in the ribbon so that it sent the message. All very well. But to type I sat on a high wheeled stool. Which inevitably would roll over and break the tape. Oh the joys of trying to find the exact spot at which it broke and get it free without breaking it more.

Drinking, smoking and sex in the offices, shower room and anywhere else they could shut a door. Law firms were the worst!

Loving these! Bookmarking to read later.
Making me feel nostalgic for late 80s/90s as I worked on London for a company selling IT solutions to banks (not that ‘IT’ was an expression then) and it is comicsl niw tgat things that were mindblowingingly cutting edge no seem do retro!
All the above, plus (outing to anyone who knows me as my pupils have heard this story) an engineer gave me a 20mb (yes 20 mb) hard drive he’s taken out of a machine when it was decommissioned/upgraded or whatever , and it was the size of a footstool do had it under my desk and used as such. A customer called up urgently needing one and I sold it to him for £20,000
Boss was delighted but now my tiny phone has????? Gb of storage.

Forced to wear a skirt, trousers were deemed unacceptable for women.

Late 80s. Had an interview with Kwik Save, there were fag ends lined up along the window sill in the manager's office. You had to memorise all the prices in the store as there was no barcode scanning or price stickers. Thankfully I didn't get the job.
Applying for jobs by just ringing up and then being told to pop in the next day for an interview, there always seemed to be easily available jobs.
I was the only woman on the shop floor (wood machining), pornographic pictures were taped to the machines, not page 3 stuff, but graphic, legs akimbo type pics, that was grim, no smoking though, because of the wood dust.

@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.

I think you can still opt out of Sunday working even now.

Smoking in the office.

Drinking in meetings.

Drinking at lunch.

Senior staff getting 16 year olds pissed at work events.

1 PC for picking up emails at 3pm for 400 staff.

7 phones in the building that were recorded, onto a massive reel to reel tape that needed changing.

Young staff taking responsibility for themselves without their mums getting involved.

Quarterly overnight print runs in the "print room" on massive dot matrix printers that I had to stay and monitor.

1993. Civil service. There was a smoking room -thankfully so i avoided that smoke filled office.

One computer to each room. Had to send letters to the typing pool and when you walked in there, it was all hairspray, perfume and nail varnish.

Pub every Friday lunch, and a few pints then back to work.

Christmas parties in the office, over 70 of us having fun and a lot of bum grabbing.
And those are the best memories and no one offended anyone.

Where i work now is also great. Local government. 6 in a room and we are great friends.

Interesting that so many people are saying no appraisals. I had annual appraisals when I started my first 'proper' job in 1984.

I moved to a different job with the same employer in 1988 and the appraisal kept referring to me as 'Miss Lucky'. Any note from my boss or other colleagues also used my surname.

Agree with the smoking at desks, and lunches at the pub or wine bar. There was a huge amount of wasted money. My team of 9 people had a budget for newspapers. Every day the head of the team was delivered a newspaper and The Economist, New Statesman and Spectator arrived every week and were circulated among the team.

The team I joined was part of an 'office automation' pilot so we all had our own PCs rather than having to use the typing pool. We were sent on courses to learn how to use them - a whole day for leaning how to use email or the diary function. Two days for word processing. There was one fax machine in the building which served around 2,000 people!

No mobile phones until the early 90s. In one job the team shared a mobile phone but the battery was useless. If someone went on an external visit they took the phone but kept it switched off. They also took a pager and if someone wanted to get hold of them they paged them asking them to phone!

We all had our own desks - big corner ones with plenty of room for personal belongings. When I was promoted to a certain level I was entitled to my own office - a huge space with a desk, my own printer, and a separate meeting table. I didn't get to enjoy it for long. The move to open plan came in the early 2000s if I remember rightly, soon after I returned from a career break.

In some ways, I'd agree that they were happier times (except the smoking, which I always hated). But they were certainly less efficient.

Smoking in the staff room (where even non-smokers had to eat their lunch) on a hospital ward!! It's unbelievable to think of now. I didn't smoke but would come out of there with my uniform reeking of smoke, we all must have stunk to the poor patients we were tending to.

Also women not being allowed to wear a trousers uniform as opposed to a dress uniform as the senior nurse of thus particular hospital wanted her female nurses to look like " proper nurses."

Plus using cardboard sharps bins for used needles etc - flimsy!

We still don't have company mobiles (we don't use the phone a great deal but the landline is fine for those that do, we all have a phone on our desks). We still all have our own desks with personal possessions on too. I've never had an office of my own but have never had to hot desk either.

Early 90s.
We could wear trousers and got 4 weeks paid leave (went up to five after a few years - we had a great union).
Smoking at work.
One computer per several offices (so 8 or 9 people).
Annual sports afternoon.
Flexitime - I used to get in early and leave early as I hated the rush hour.

And banter. A bloke in the next door office and I used to trade amiable insults in a way that would probably now get the two of us disciplined, but which really enlivened the working day. We sometimes even used email for the purpose, mostly for the novelty value.

Open office, late 70s. The only bloke had a page 3 nude on the wall by his desk. We used to take it in turns to tippex over the nipples when he was out of the office, but he always had a stash of nudes to replace it.

@Mandalay246 I started work in the late 80s and didn’t encounter any problems wearing trousers at work until the late 90s when I got a job in a professional office and I went in wearing trousers on the first day to be told that trousers weren’t allowed. By the time I left two years later they were!

When I was a cub newspaper reporter and did my journalism exams back in late 80s/early 90s, computers and laptops and printers etc were not yet a thing. We brought typewriters into the exam room and, for the mock stories we had to write up, it was the tradition to type every paragraph on a separate little sheet of paper - so you could swap your paragraphs round or type a new intro without having to retype your whole story.

What a bloody faff.

@harknesswitch

The brown internal envelopes, the type with holes in them and boxes to write the name and dept it went to

We still use these envelopes regularly

Business formal attire even though we weren’t client facing.

Using a big old black and green screen computer - no windows, no email etc.

Printing everything out on one of those massive printers where you had to thread a continuous sheet of paper through its little holes in the side. Someone else printing would interrupt you print so you had to shout “no prints on printer 3 please!”

No electronic transfers, had to print (on same printers) cheques and post them.

Had to walk around the office delivering memos to other departments

Signing in and out of work.

Drinks on a Friday after work - every Friday, ending in a nightclub.

Cakes for the whole department on your birthday.

Good times.

The owner of the newsagents I worked for almost 20 years ago, he asked me if the reason I was late was because I was busy having sex. I actually was unwell but managed to come in anyway.

Another one - no air conditioning, in the summer you just opened a window

I honestly have no idea how that is acceptable to ask a young trainee. I wouldn't be surprised if these comments or questions are still being used today by sexist idiots.