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

@awesomekillick I started a new job 2 years ago (retail assistant manager). Day 2 I was left completely alone to run the store despite knowing nothing and nobody 😅 was on the phone to the owner of the whole company and he says “can you just fire that over to me in a fax just now please?”. I laughed - “Yeah I’ll email it over”. Nope, he really meant fax 😐 had to explain that I was 27 and had never used a fax machine in my life 🤣🙈 I was really embarrassed 😅 I didn’t even know fax machines where still a thing 😅

Yes the little brown wage packet envelopes from my Saturday jobs. Loved those! One of my first teenage jobs was in a supermarket called International. The manager always got drunk on a Saturday lunchtime and used to then fall asleep in his office or the toilet for the afternoon. As the youngest staff member I remember having to wake him up if there was a problem.

Luncheon Vouchers. Alcohol at lunch time. A smoking room. Hand writing letters. Micro fiche records.

Junior PR in the mid naughties (so really not that long ago!).

Snipping client press coverage out of the hard copy newspapers every morning, printsticking it together, then faxing it.

I saw a couple of years of lunchtime drinking before the financial crisis put an end to it very suddenly.

Like PP I had a boss who had his emails printed off so he could write out his reply then have it typed up.

80s in an office (bank).

Affairs all over the place-everyone knew but didn't seem to care.

A smoking room.

Franking machine which we had to take to the Post Office to have money put on it.

Photocopying involved a sheet of shiny pink paper but I can't remember the exact sequence of paper.

Management would scrutinise all staff cheques.

If necessary customer signatures were checked to signature cards that were made when they opened the account. Seems bizarre now.

I started a job in 2013 and they were still facing every week!

We had a bar in my first civil service posting (only 20 years ago) which was open at lunchtime and all Friday afternoon. We also had a roof terrace where we could sit in the sun with a great view of London.

Regular coach trips, where everyone would go. Shopping in London usually. Very Carry On.

Yes to the pub lunches. Central government late 90s onwards Quite often on Friday afternoons a handful of us would go back to the office to cover the work after a pub lunch and many stayed in the pub for the afternoon. Not unusual to go back down the pub to get something signed off by a manager. Id try and get in a round with one particular manager as then I couldn't get in trouble with my line manager for daytime drinking/3 hour lunch!
Working in a more HQ role it wasn't unusual to have drinks in the office Friday afternoon brought round by a senior manager. One very senior person with a well stocked drinks cabinet often entertained after hours. Very different times.

Snipping client press coverage out of the hard copy newspapers every morning, printsticking it together, then faxing it.
Brilliant

Smoking at desks, letter writing and memos instead of emails. Lots of socialising at lunch and after work.

1999 Sainsbury's Saturday girl - they had a smoking staff room and non smoking staff room.
I never used either as I always had a king size Twix and bottle of Doctor Pepper for my lunch wandering around town. Oh to be a teen again!

First full time job, 2001, the lady I worked with was in her 60s and had been at the company her whole working life. She used to tell me about actually physically having to connect calls on the switchboard. I was agog.

Second job, 2003, was like going back in time, they had the reams of paper with holes down the side for printing. Push one dreaded button and the entire computer system would print all day with no way to cancel it. I think the printer ink was on a ribbon too, and it made a huge noise. The computer system had a black or blue screen and white letters. Thankfully they updated about three months after I started, but it reminded me of computer games in the 80s early 90s.

God, smoking in the office! All my clothes and hair used to permanently stink of cigarettes and the ceilings were yellow in my first office. It used to be perfectly acceptable to go out for lunch and have 3 large glasses of wine (and then drive home at the end of the day!) Sexism was rife and sexual harassment was just the norm and tolerated as part of life.

Taking that out of the equation, offices were fun, there was a great sense of camaraderie with your work mates and we used to have a proper laugh (not like now when everyone sits in silence with their headphones in, staring at a screen).

I’m loving this thread! Some of these I hadn’t even registered were gone until reading them on here (mail carts, desk phones).

Company cars aren’t a thing now either. One of my first real jobs came with an enormous family “saloon car” which I had to have “in case I needed to pick up clients from the airport”.

A course on ‘how to do research on the internet’

Full ashtrays everywhere. We played pranks on each other constantly, our manager was the worst, I’m pretty sure nearly everything we did would be frowned upon now but we were such a close knit team. We worked hard, hit all our targets, laughed daily, everybody was good humoured. Sadly never experienced anything like it since.

We went out for drinks at lunch, after work and even before work sometimes. We went clubbing, danced for hours and still managed to put our professional heads on for work. I was one of the youngest, the oldest people in our team were in their sixties.

Our manager was promoted, the new manager was a fun sponge and as it turned out, a dab hand at embezzlement and so our merry team was disbanded. I miss those days.

The BACS run had to be filled in by hand and faxed to the bank! (2000's)

Getting paid weekly in cash. (Mid 90s)

Fax machines!

Smoking, typewriters, signing the Official Secrets Act even if all you did was filing in a DSS office, pub lunches, subsidised canteen, tea trolley, writing 'hi bastards' on an envelope I saw was going out to a former employer when I was doing post one day ... ok so that was just me.

I worked at Airtours in the late 80’s in the reservations department- if you were on late bookings and someone was travelling that day you had to fill in a form with three pages - carbon copy form- then run to the next floor to give the three pages to three different people.

My first job was at MTV when it first launched. Very glam. West End Girls by the Pet Shop Boys was the anthem of that time - felt totally apt.

Oh and the evening newspaper seller would deliver the paper in time for our afternoon break. We would gather round and chat about the local news. Lovely. No computer, mobiles or word processors. We typed, used calculators and wrote meticulous records by hand.

This is a great thread.

I have a question and I'm not sure how to ask it without being rude so please excuse me... Was work easier back then? Having the time to print out an email, hand write a reply, then get it typed up seems like a real luxury. You'd be answering only a handful of emails a day!

Working in the bank staff were not under any circumstances allowed to go overdrawn.

Using the desk phone all the time and therefore no music or headphones allowed. I find all these young people constantly listening and walking around with the headphone very rude. Also, less banter.