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

At my first proper graduate office job in 2005, the last one in at the end of the day had to switch over the back up tape for the servers. The ‘spare’ tape we would have to take home in our handbag. This frequently meant taking it with us to the pub for a drunken night out 🙈

Love this. I used to work in a role where we had wall to wall paper files going back to the 80s, loved looking at the microfiche and reading the writing style.

In the early 00s I had a job where my role was to reply to letters to customers who wrote in to ask what their pension annuity would be. I'd look it up in paper files and write them a letter to say that it would 3500 p/a etc.

JumpingFrogs

@Sparklingbrook My first job was in a bank (early eighties) and I remember being given a severe telling off for accidentally overdrawing on my account by a few pennies!“

I was in a merchant bank. It was a right of passage, preferably because: champagne.

First office job in London in 1987. I did audio typing on a very sophisticated golfball electric typewriter. there was one PC between about 10 people and you had to book in advance. My boss had the first email I ever came across and the Idea that you could just type something and it would appear on a screen thousands of miles away was mind blowing.

We used to save up our luncheon vouchers and go for a boozy pub lunch every Friday. And I spent hours on the phone to my mates as my grotty rented flat only had a shared payphone.

Also love CVs on posh paper 😂 and spending ages choosing the font.

Handwritten letters to companies age 16 to ask for a job or going in to ask about vacancies. If they sent back lots of paperwork (you Tesco) I'd ignore it. Got me jobs in pub kitchens and work experience at a teen magazine.

We used to have a sick room that was regularly used by hung over staff until our director told us off.

Cookerhood we must have worked together; you’ve described my civil service job in the early 80s down to a T!

I used to do double entry! booking keeping! Using big ledgers and plenty of tippex! Also remember having smelly bags of money tipped on to my desk and my job was to fill the wage packets on Fridays. I had to be careful to make sure the pay slip was folded properly so that the worker's name was visible in the little window strip at the top.
This would have been late 70's
Putting up with male comments about women was something we just accepted. No thoughts of complaining at all. One colleague in particular was disgusting when regailing us with his sex stories and he would have got a smack in the mush off me today.
Being nervous when the area manager was due to visit. These days I would not give a shit as no one, no matter how senior a position they may hold, bothers me at all.

Not civil service!

1987 ish. Mainframe computers, with internal email only. One printer for a building with 150 people in, you had to walk about 1/4 mile to pick up your printouts, annoying if you got there and found you'd forgotten to press Enter or whatever before you left the office. Internal mail with the brown envelopes, our factory was so big people used to cycle round it dropping off the mail to different buildings. Everyone had a pigeonhole for their mail in the department office.

Process equipment had chart recorders for the data instead of computers. Everyone knew how to intercept and transfer calls on the phone system. I remember fax coming along, I faxed my friend in her office in New Zealand, it was so exciting. Giving presentations on an overhead projector with slides you had made with indelible marker pen on acetates.

Newly qualified secondary teacher in 1982:-

No photocopier - worksheets produced on a very smelly Banda machine.
No computers in classrooms.
No whiteboards - blackboards and chalk.
Handwritten register, with girls then boys listed alphabetically.
Smoking allowed in your classroom (at lunchtime and after school.)
Lunchtimes in the pub.
1 hour and 10 minutes for lunch-break.

Happy teachers!

Took letters down in shorthand and typed on an Imperial or Remington typewriter. Mistakes were Tipexed out. We were paid once a month in cash. We could get a job easily. Walked into an office block and asked if their were any vacancies for a shorthand typist. Told to sit down and someone came down and asked me a couple of questions and I typed a short piece and I had a job. When I changed it was just as easy.

My entry level salary was enough to get a mortgage; you were promoted if you were hard working and good at your job; you brought in cake on special occasions and your colleagues didn't moan that you were trying to kill them with carbs

Late 2000s, so not mega long ago but it was so different. Lots of great chat - slightly edgy, but never mean. Drinks in the office on a Friday afternoon, often whilst finishing off work. We worked hard but had such a laugh. It’s now very, very sterile in comparison, which I find a massive shame.

You could smoke in an aircraft in 1998. Only the last few row of seats, but still. We were trained in fire fighting ‘well, yes, that’ll come in handy when some twat decided to smoke in the toilets and stub out their cigarette in the piles of paper hand towels’.

Yy Air France was the last major carrier to outlaw smoking. Therefore I always booked with them!

My first 'office job' was in 1998, during the university holidays, as a production assistant for a TV company.

People used to smoke at their desks. Blows my mind now, thinking about it...

London in the mid 80s. So many things that others have mentioned. The tea lady who came round with the trolley, going out for lunch with friends who worked nearby and sinking a bottle of wine, smoking in the office, the telex with the big long string of paper that came out of it. Six computers at the back of the open plan office which you had to take turns to use.

Everyday sexism was alive and well. I worked for a Japanese company and was transferred to a section where women didn't usually work. I was told by my manager that I would now be treated as an honorary man. I think I was meant to be flattered by that!

There was a lot of crap by today's standards but I really enjoyed living and working in London in the 80s.

NHS in the 90s , drinking on Friday lunchtimes and going back to clinical work
Lots and lots of affairs and shagging in the on call bedrooms.
Legendary Christmas parties, all departments would host one and booze from mid afternoon till late.

1996: my first part time job in M+S. I was a shop assistant (just working weekends whilst in Lower 6th/Yr 12).

I remember writing letters to enquire about job vacancies (or work experience) and enclosing my CV. I used "posh paper" and cool fonts! I got a pager first, then an old Ericsson mobile phone/brick. Wages were paid weekly in cash..in a brown envelope! I remember M+S would only accept debit cards (Switch or Delta), cheques (with a cheque guarantee card) or cash. No credits were allowed!
It was a job that opened my (rather sheltered) eyes to how the world could be. Two days before Xmas, they put me down to work in the food section (I worked up in the Kids' dept). The carnage was awful (I couldn't believe how people were behaving!)! For some stupid reason, the store didn't put the dividers on conveyor belts, so I ended up getting completely bawled out by some nasty woman for putting her massive Xmas food shop through with another bloke's shopping. They were standing together, chatting away, and getting quite close to each other. No obvious gap in shopping on conveyor belt. I thought they were a couple. Funny how you remember stuff, eh?

I remember there was a smoking section in the staff room. It was more accepted that men would be sexist/leery towards women. Oh god, that reminds me of something else...I remember during a job interview (for a different role - I was about 20) the manager asked me if I was thinking of getting married/having kids!!!

In a City law firm in the mid 90s we (the women trainees) wanted to wear trousers and we were told to ask one of the female partners. We were then given permission to wear trouser suits. We couldn't wear bare legs, open sandals or sleeveless tops. In fact it was mostly suits.

I remember when we got word processors with internal email. (no external). Me and my friends in other teams spent hours emailing each other. We dictated letters into dictaphones and our secretaries typed up the letter plus a carbon for the file. Spent quite a lot of time gossiping with the secretaries in their pool. There was a hierarchy of secretaries depending if you were a partner's secretary. (they were of course all female).

I remember people smoking at their desks and later on the introduction of the smoking room.

My firm was in several buildings and we had a tube system to send documents to the other buildings.

Alcohol on a drinks trolley that came round on a Friday lunchtime. Ladies not allowed to wear trousers. It actually wasn’t too long ago!

Smoking in the office, manual typewriters and carbon paper, no trousers allowed for females, luncheon vouchers.

Work was so much more task based. Everyone had a job to do and got on with it! Very few meetings, no 'reaching out to people or 'socialising' ideas

No mandatory training or e-learning. No one really was concerned about health and safety.

Applying for jobs was much easier, you just filled out a paper form and went for an interview where you talked about your previous experience. You weren't expected to jump through hoops for a an entry level jobs like you are now

No email, we spoke to one another (people would come and perch on your desk to ask you a question or shout across the dividers!) or you would phone.

You could have a laugh in the office. Lots of banter and jokes without fear of people taking offence.

People actually took a proper lunch break, for an actual hour, and it was very rare to start early or finish late. On the downside, there was less flexibility and you were expected to be punctual, which could be a pain if you had small children.

Late 90s.
Smoking in the break room.
Big bulky computer monitors with green font.