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

Being told by the sales director to photocopy every fax that came in, the copy to the person it was for and the original to be filed. Checking the file copies at a later date only to find folders full of blank sheets where the ink had faded on the thermal paper! This was late 80s.

"2002 - Accountancy training contract in city of London.
We needed prior written permission of a partner to leave the office without a jacket."

Oh God yes! Shirt sleeve order. All the men sweating in their jackets on a hot summer day until one of the partners said they could take them off.

Great thread!

I was a summer temp at John Lewis in the early 90s. Very formal on the shop floor, you called your department manager Mr/Miss/Mrs but everyone else by their first name.

Really strict dress code. They had a navy blue and green uniform then. Shoes had to be plain black leather. I got in trouble for wearing black suede shoes (plain and smart) so had to go out and buy some new shoes!

Separate rest room and dining room for department managers. For everyone else there was a smoking room and a non smoking room with a big telly on the wall that no-one watched.

Oh and rumour had it that only the Managing Director was allowed to write in green!

I was an office junior in the early noughties..used to have to make tea/coffee twice a day..collect all the post from the secretaries, take it to the different solicitors to sign then put it in envelopes and type up the address labels on a typewriter..,

Had to refer to the senior partners as Mr "Smith-Robson".. etc

Faxes were common.., letters were dictated and when I was promoted to a secretary I had a tape player with a foot pedal..

Loved it though and made some friends for life!

My first proper job after graduating was a trainee position for an insurance company. This was in 1995 and I started on £11,500! As the office junior I was forever making cups of tea for my department of 5 and I remember having problems with the fax machine. It had that shiny paper that you couldn't really read stuff off. For the first year I was there, our department had a huge space in the office and our desks were spread out. Later on we moved floors and we were much more squashed together.

Yes to the tea lady! She used to come round mid morning with sandwiches. If I was hungry I used to eat my sandwich at my desk there and then!

We had computer monitors with an internal email system - great fun. It was a novelty at the time.

My sister had to do this - if an item was to go to another branch it was packed up and she had to go to a bus stop "Flag down the No 32" or whatever, pass it to the driver who put it on the seat behind him. He signed a form. This arrangement had been in force for years. The customer would collect it further down the route.

When typing multiple invoices for export we needed loads of copies - with many sheets of carbon paper the last ones were almost illegible. To avoid this the senior secretary typed the item first, passed it to the second lady who typed it out trying to copy it exactly and then it was passed to the junior. We had to bash away pressing the keys as hard as we could. The best of the copies were put together to look as though they'd been typed by one person iyswim.

'Cut and paste' really was cut and paste. If the author changed his (almost always male) mind he'd get the page you'd typed, cut out the paragraphs and stick them to a sheet of scrap paper in his preferred order and you'd bash away on a typewriter for another go.

On a manual typewriter I had to type out envelopes for cheques to be sent out to suppliers every Friday afternoon, then type out an alphabetical list of them all with relevant details and walk across the yard to another building come rain or shine and leave it on the chief accountant's desk.

There was a chartered 'shoppers' bus' which took us to the next town at Friday lunchtime to 'help ladies with their domestic responsibilities.' For two weeks in early December we were let out early so we could get our Christmas shopping done. Obviously on the last day before the festivities everyone went to the local pub and got pissed. Dare I say? Happy days.

We had a canteen, a manager's dining room & a directors' dining room. After all, why would the managers want to eat with the plebs! I think they were abolished in the late nineties. They were selling off the silver cutlery from the directors' dining room & I bought some!

I think some places still have these, but I don’t know what they’re called but we used to put documents in a tube thing and then in a funnel and it would get whooshed to a different department.

Defined benefit pensions....

And retiring at 55.

Finishing work at 5pm and then no work until the next day. No one phoned or contacted you about work issues. Wfh means that my husbands can be sent emails all evening, and feel she needs to respond to them. In the good ol days, that would not have happened.

@PaperMonster

I think some places still have these, but I don’t know what they’re called but we used to put documents in a tube thing and then in a funnel and it would get whooshed to a different department.

*@PaperMonster* there was a shop in Harpenden that had those in the 80s. My mum took me to see it as a child, I was fascinated by seeing your money whoosh over your head!

OMG have loved reading all these and reminiscing. Despite the lack of tech, blatant misogyny, sex in the printer room, alcohol at lunch and in the office in fridays after 4pm, working in an office was great fun! You can’t possibly compare it to the office of today ... much more stressful, much less fun, having to be more mindful of new rules, regulations and codes of conduct. This is all as it should be for today’s young women, and men, starting their new careers, but I’d love to re-live those carefree work days of old!

Late 90s. A huge amount of sexist behaviour, I worked on publishing and the publishing director asked a woman in editorial if she was pregnant because he had notice she had eaten a lot of satsumas recently. Same man once asked the men in sales to "stop staring at TheWashingMachine's arse"

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When my dad was dying in the hospital in 1990, we were allowed to use the staff canteen, there was a smoking area but you couldn't get a seat in it, it was full of Doctors smoking like hell.

The only female managers were childfree. The expectation that once you got married you would have a baby and your career progression would end. Being interviewed for a promotion whilst pregnant and the 2 male interviewers constantly asking me how my dh would feel looking after his child whilst I was at work and wouldn't be be bothered by having to do that. This was in the late 1990s.

@Sparklingbrook

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.

I love this thread and feel we must have work in same bank !

Seniority and then length of service, I remember by the time the paper holiday list came to me, phoning my friends who were all in much smaller offices not bank and me pressing them to decide in Oct when our next summer hol could be out of few choices I had 😂 we were allowed the list for 3 days.

Also Christmas and holiday savings clubs where we paid monthly then got it all back at hol or Christmas time.

Oh yes the Christmas savings club and the very generous staff shares options!

Begins with a B @Inanun2?

yy to all the above.

Started work on what is now called a Grad Scheme. Except that you didn't have to have a degree, there were other 'ways in'. Now you need a degree for the most basic of jobs.
I was the only female in my cohort.

And, in those days, you used to write your hobbies on your CV to show what an interesting person you were. Now nobody neither knows nor cares.

@TheWashingMachine

Late 90s. A huge amount of sexist behaviour, I worked on publishing and the publishing director asked a woman in editorial if she was pregnant because he had notice she had eaten a lot of satsumas recently. Same man once asked the men in sales to "stop staring at TheWashingMachine's arse"

Agree, lots of sexism in the late 90s. I was in finance and each time there were new trainees the men in the office had an informal vote on 'best legs in the office'. The result was posted on a notice board. The only time I heard anyone say anything negative about this was when one of the female trainees got upset at not winning and a female manager suggested it perhaps wasn't fair on the older/larger female staff!

In the same workplace, the adult son of one of the male partners often came in to the office and the 2 of them would discuss which female staff members the son liked the look of. The partner would then try to set up dates. When I joined, and older female member of staff warned me to pretend to have a boyfriend if this person asked.

It was virtually unheard of for a woman to have a tattoo but if a man had a tattoo he was required to wear a bandage or plaster to cover over it if it was slightly visible under his white shirt when he took his jacket off, despite not being in a direct customer facing role.

Over in the Lloyds building women were not permitted to wear trousers.

Large laminated year calendars on the wall for all sorts of things. Most places had one for holidays - you'd put a sticker on for the dates you were off (DP's small employer still has this).

Friday was POETS day (piss off early tomorrow's Saturday).

Friday lunchtime booze ups.

Mid 90s started work as a software developer with no internet access. Only one computer in the office was connected. Had to print out pages of code to be reviewed by the boss with a red biro.

Made great life long friends in that job due to all the pub lunches and nights out. I don’t know if it’s just my age or if work really is less fun now.