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 got my first job in 1997 in Kensington, London (proper as in what I had qualified in rather than waitressing and retail work which I had been doing for ten years previously). My boss was a chain smoker who smoked in our tiny space. We had to be at our desks by 9am and couldn't leave before 6:15pm and we were not allowed take a lunch break but had to eat at our desks shoving food into drawers if a client turned up.

I was paid £9,000 for that pleasure. It was a family run company and as bad as they were to us they were horrible to each other. Thankfully it remains my worst ever work experience and I have worked for amazing people ever since.

@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 those!

Those holey envelopes were green before their time. Not a single use envelope but as many times as it took to fill all the boxes. I wish we used them but no we are very frivolous with envelope usage.

No KPI’s!! No ridiculous appraisals where you had to prove you were worthy of your job despite the fact that you do that job EVERY DAY WITHOUT BEING SACKED FOR NOT DOING YOUR JOB!!! being phoned at home every day youre off sick and having to state exactly when you would be recovered enough to get back to work. Employers have a lot to answer for in driving up the stress and anxiety absence levels in workplaces I think.....

Proper work canteens, a social club on site with a bar, typing pools, admin department, post rooms, first aid room and the dreaded basement that everyone was scared of.
Supervisors had chairs with arms, clerks where not allowed to use them, managers had massive cushioned chairs with high backs.
The ground crew coming to collect their cash wages on Friday and having to sign for it
Proper training facilities in a country home so you were residential for all of your training. It all had panelled rooms and was very ornate. God we had fun.
There was a climate of, you work hard, you play hard.
Bosses took you out for lunch when you left
People sent letters in or rang the switchboard who introduced them and 'put them through'
I too remember the laughter, the banter and the practical jokes
The men in the warehouse used to tell the lads to 'watch their language' when you had to go in there

My first office job was around 2000 or 2001, I was a receptionist/typist for a very old school firm of solicitors. The partners had to be called Mr or Mrs which I found bizarre (and have never encountered anywhere since). At 11am every day the most junior member of staff (i.e. me) had to make tea/coffee for everyone else. Manual typewriters were still used for completing some legal documents. We had Windows 95 computers but they were only used for typing and printing, there was no file management system (it was all paper files in filing cabinets and treasury tags) and no email, and a separate computer running DOS was used for a will database. Dictaphones and mini tapes were still used for dictation, nothing was digital yet.

Oh and the language used in letters was incredibly formal and archaic.

I worked in another law firm around 2010 and they still had a typing pool.

Smoking in the office (other people, not me).
Carbon copies.
Faxes.
Electric typewriters.
A no-trousers rule for women.
Internal post folders (no email of course). No computers at all in the office actually.
All in the 80s. It seems a different world.

@therearenogoodusernamesleft

I'm so curious about this! I often think how much longer things must have taken before the internet/computers, yet everyone seems to be working more than ever.

Was there not the same pressure there is now? Was the pace naturally slower as it just took time to type letters or courier documents?

Great thread!

The pace wasn't slower, but there was less pressure if anything. You had no emails demanding instant responses, and everyone knew that it would take several days before they received a reply to the letter or internal memo they'd sent. Incoming post was date-stamped and went in your in-tray, and you dealt with it in order of receipt. Phone calls were written onto a memo form which went in the in-tray as well.

I can remember the days of having to hand-write dozens of cheques; oh the joy when we got continuous ones you could feed into a printer - but oh the consternation when the printing didn't line up properly and you had to run the entire thing again.

The first fax machine I used was the size of a Mini and was housed in its own separate booth in the print room. You had to ask permission to use it. The damn thing was about a quarter of a mile away from my office (British Aerospace in Stevenage anyone?).

In the arts in the 80s so very relaxed rules on dress, thank goodness, BUT sexual harassment and male privilege entirely engrained. Letters and contracts typed with carbon copies (and copious use of tippex) following a combination of dictation and audio typing, depending on what the boss found easiest. As an assistant, it was expected that I would get my bosses lunch, sort out a certain amount of his personal admin, and be one of a rota of women that accompanied him to the theatre. Faxes were used a lot, and word processors gradually crept in during the 80s, eventually turning into very basic computers. When the boss wasn't around, we used to use work phones to organise our social lives, but many of my friends weren't allowed to do this at all - meaning that spontaneous social activity was really difficult. And smoking! I''m a non-smoker and I ended up in one office where several people were heavy smokers, and through a process of negotiation it was agreed that smoking was allowed at all times in the back office, but in the front office (where my desk was) they could only smoke if the window was open. I remember the smokers always wanted that window open even in the winter months.

I'm so curious about this! I often think how much longer things must have taken before the internet/computers, yet everyone seems to be working more than ever.

Was there not the same pressure there is now? Was the pace naturally slower as it just took time to type letters or courier documents?

This will be an unpopular opinion, but yes, the pace was slower. My first graduate job was in 1992 and the workplace is unrecognisable.

I worked for an international manufacturing group. Stuff took AGES to get done. Projects that would now be completed in months to years. Expectations were different then.

The men who worked in the factory would proudly announce that they doubled their holiday allowance by being sick whilst on their holidays, meaning that they got those holidays back as ‘pink days,’, ie they got to take them again. Of course nobody could prove that they hadn’t been ill whilst in Majorca.

The factory had a ‘cash office’ manned by a woman behind a counter. You went there if you needed cash for a business trip. Bizarre. I suppose it was predicated on the assumption that nobody had any spare money to buy a train ticket with, even though credit cards were a normal part of life at that time.

There was huge opposition to putting computers in. Huge. That company pulled out of the U.K. in the 2000s, funny that.

None of those things would happen now: businesses are less tolerant and are under more pressure to deliver consistent profits if they are publicly quoted. Benchmarking came in during the 1990s: that ironed out most of the quirks and, sadly, some of the nice things like sports and social clubs and staff canteens.

Plus, particularly in banking and finance, the complexity of what is being offered by the business is much greater. There were a load of innovations in the 1990s: different types of mortgages and loans, complex derivatives. More detailed rules around product safety, hygiene and traceability. So the roles people did changed, and Joyce who had been there since 1962 probably found that she didn’t like the direction the business was moving in.

Smoking was still allowed in certain areas of our office when I started my first "proper" job.

I phoned up to ask if if it was ok for women to wear trousers (this was mid 90s). It was ok, but even the idea I had to ask!

We all had computers on our desks but we hadn't yet started attaching documents to emails - there was sooo much paper everywhere and faxes were very important.

We also had an electric typewriter for doing labels for letters :)

Not in that job but when I did a "vacation placement" (I guess we'd call it an internship now) there was a tea trolley (early 90s).

being phoned at home every day youre off sick and having to state exactly when you would be recovered enough to get back to work

Have to state whe I reckon I'll be well enough to be back at work is bad enough. I don't know 🤷‍♀️ I'm hoping tomorrow but you never know

@therearenogoodusernamesleft I don't think the pace of working was any slower: people did work, and very few worked part time. The main thing is that there wasn't constant contact or interaction. Sometimes that can speed things up, sometimes it can slow it down due to distraction and double (or triple or quadruple++) handling. I think in general if something did go wrong admin wise at least it was easier to fix just because there were fewer people who could potentially get involved and fuck things up further.

I work for the NHS and it’s surprising how little has changed in 25 years.

Not me but my DF (buyer for an engineering works) used to finish at 3pm every Friday. That was the official finish time as well, not a special agreement that he had.

@ChrissyPlummer my company has just put in place that we officially finish at 3.30 every Friday and I LOVE IT!

@bigbaggyeyes any chance of a job?

I started my first proper job mid 90’s. Aside from tech developments.
It’s office jargon that I would have been dismissed as wanky Americanisms, that has become notably very normalised. I can remember thinking the expression ‘ my team’ was the height of pretence back then, but it’s nothing compared to some of the meaningless drivel people come out with 20 years later.
You can’t just phone John in payrolll, you reach out to them. I think my 20 year old self would have been pissing myself, if you told me this is how people would speak in the future.

Law Firm in the City, started the year 2000. Smoking in offices, private offices, faxes on chairs, EVERYTHING had to be printed and filed, not much email - oh and a list of partners you knew not to be left alone with in the kitchens who would rub against you on the pretext of fetching the milk.

@Honeypickle

Law Firm in the City, started the year 2000. Smoking in offices, private offices, faxes on chairs, EVERYTHING had to be printed and filed, not much email - oh and a list of partners you knew not to be left alone with in the kitchens who would rub against you on the pretext of fetching the milk.

I started the same in 2001. To be honest I don't think it's changed much. Our office was non smoking. I thought faxes were irritatingly archaic then, and I still do (yet still serve elusive defendants by fax). My firm then had senior female partners so an ok culture, and whilst people talk far more about diversity and inclusion now, there's still bad behaviour. I still get a boozy client lunches.

I think the major changes are email in the 1990s (which I missed) and post pandemic WFH - living through it right now!

Paid in cash every Friday with a payslip telling you your tax and national insurance contributions.

I loved being paid weekly it seemed to go much further.

Mid 90s -

Tea and sandwich lady

Switchboard operators in a switchboard room

Fax machines

Pub lunches

Smoking in the office

Some typewriters still in use

Landlines - mobile phones still a rarity

Handwriting documents and letters

Started in a bank mid-80's. Other than the things that other former bank clerks have mentioned, I remember:

• being told off by the senior manager for serving on the counter with chipped nail varnish.

• same manager did not like that I wote the number 7 with a horizotal line across the middle "we are not on the continent you know Miss X"

• Internal memos were typed on a sheet of paper with a staff list attached to the front. When you had read it, you signed next to your name and passed it on to the next person.

• Holiday bookings were done on a large A3 sized piece of graph paper with names listed down the side and dates across the top. A staff list was attached to the top and people were in groups of 6. You penciled in your 1st choice of a fortnight then passed it to the next person on the list. You could not select the same time as anyone else in your group Once all main fortnights were in, it went round again for a single week to be added and so on until everyone had allocated their annual leave.

Our holidays in the bank were done in order of length of service. So the longest service person got the list and first pick then it would go down to the other staff in length of service order.

1999. Partners smoked cigars in the office in the evening. They also openly discussed bets to get me into bed (none of them won). Being told it wasn't advisable to wear trousers by a female partner (I had a nice trouser suit).

There was one partner who didn't have a computer at all in his office, and his room was the messiest I have ever seen. Papers absolutely everywhere, and he was a litigator- everyone had to keep files tidy as they may get reviewed in court, I don't know how he got away with it. Plus he rarely seemed to be ever there.

In another firm partners used to regularly fuck off on a Friday afternoon and leave trainees to deal with completions, and also regularly leave juniors to deal with all the shit and miss out on firm events. A great example of leadership there.