Things you no longer see/do in the workplace

[TheGrumpiest]

I always really like those threads about food/shops that no longer exist, so I thought I'd start one about the work place. I joined the workforce in the early 90s working for quite large companies.

Luncheon Vouchers - loved these! Like Monopoly money.
Tea trolley lady that came round twice a day. Tea and coffee was free. Small packet of biscuits 5p.
Strippers 😲 A milestone birthday? Getting married? = stripper in the office at lunch time .
Rolls of fax paper on the floor every morning. You had to seperate and tear out each fax with a ruler.
Endless Memorandums with huge circulation lists typed out. You had to cross your name off and pass on to the next name once you had read it!
Friday lunch time = pub. People got quite tipsy.
Lack of HR type processes/concept of people management/development etc. People were just asked to not come back the next day if deemed unsuitable... One lady saw her own (unique) job advertised in the local paper and realised her time was up 😲

BTW these aren't necessarily things I miss about the workplace. Just things that don't exist anymore or not acceptable! Tell us yours!

I’ve never worn heels, but the thing I most resented after lockdown was having to wear a bra again.

Telex machines
Carbon paper
Tippex
Typists
Really blatant sexism/bottom pinching
Memos
Strict dress codes
Fax machines
Motorcycle couriers (no instant email)
Drinking culture
Lunch culture
Jobs for the boys/blatant nepotism
All sorts of discrimation/disability, sex, homophobia, race, etc.
Absence due to back problems rather than stress
Being asked at interview what your father/husband did and when you planned to have a baby.

I no longer wear heels at work! I wore them every day at one point, then not at all through the pandemic. Now I can't even imagine it!

Is anyone else remember photocopies that were wet? You had to dry them before you could put them into a pile.

Spikes for pink or green duplicates
Lethal!

@Trulyweird1 In about 2005 I did an emergency temping placement on reception, and one of the partners walked in, did a double take and said 'Oh, we usually have a blonde!' 😬 (I am very brunette.) Thankfully I only had to do a week there!

Came on to say fax machines!

I started working in 2000 and worked in the private sector. It was very professional. Then in 2002, I went to work in the public sector and it was like going back in a time machine to the 1970s. I still work for the same organisation and I reckon it's only been in the last five years that we've caught up to where my first job was 20 years ago!

Secretaries to type letters - we do it ourselves now.
Going even further back, the typing pool.
Carbon paper
Tippex
Dictaphones

Many years ago we used to have a lady in a brown uniform who came in to clean the phones.
Luncheon vouchers were great and yes, we used to get tipsy in the pub on Friday lunchtimes.
Skirts! Women weren't allowed to wear trousers in the office.
The manager putting his hand up our skirts at every opportunity 🤮 When I tried complaining about him I was told I was a troublemaker and transferred to another department....

Two half a lagers at lunch time.

Massive printers that were shared by about 200 users. So you'd go to get a print and then have to spend ages taking off what had come off before yours and put them into pigeon holes. Some lazy bastards never actually went to get their stuff, so if your boss asked you to get theirs it could take you an hour. Drove me batshit. It was raised every single week by the admin manager and never changed.

I was with a customer recently and was delighted to see the internal mail envelope still in use there.
When I first started travelling for work our paper tickets were delivered by the travel agents daily, and someone from accounts came round with an envelope of cash in the right currency for you.

When I started at a big corporate in 1987 we had to walk to the fax room, walk to the print room, walk to the post room, walk to the petty cash office for tickets.....you could spend a lot of your day travelling to and from different areas and would chat to colleagues en route. Now everything is online or next to your desk, so more efficient I guess but I did miss the interaction with other colleagues.

We spent a fortune installing an on-site travel team with the appropriate technology for booking, printing tickets etc - all gone now of course.

Having a fixed desk with your own pedestal and personal items on your desk. Now it's all hot desking and any personal items are removed.

Company cars as a perk. The company has long since moved to giving an allowance instead.

Inter-office envelopes which had a big grid where you'd cross off your name in one box and write the name of the new recipient in the next box.

Having to write memos to colleagues and waiting hours/days for a reply (yes I'm old, and yes this was before email was established).

Updating and printing a new office telephone directory, only for it to be out of date by the time it was printed (office of few thousand people).

We used to have a paging system in the late 80s (before mobiles) so if, for example, I wanted to get hold of Joe Bloggs (who was away from his desk), I'd call the switchboard and they'd page "Joe Bloggs, 3824" (the number being the extension he should call). People started to abuse it though and you'd hear names of celebrities or cartoon characters being called out. Oh, the fun we had before technology took over

Pigeon holes for Mail still used in school staff rooms.

Agree with this. I started in HR in the private sector about 1997 in what was a very forward thinking company for it's time. I then moved to public sector in 2001 - stepped into a world of typing pools, multicolour copies of all letters and calling the Big Boss 'Mr' (first name very much frowned upon)

I'm still in public sector HR and think a lot of the stuff we were doing in 97 was better than we do now.

During my time in an office 1997 ish

Telephones (dialling 9)
drinking alcohol at desks on birthdays
Bringing cakes in on your birthday
Dial up
changing back up tapes in server
floppy disks
swearing constantly
blatant bullying/sexism
many fag breaks on the fire escape
pinching stationery
dot matrix printers

PA systems when the telephonist couldn't track down the person being called. Viking Direct catalogues with the free gifts.

Smoking rooms. It's hard to imagine now but in the 90s, you could just go for a fag anytime in a smoking room ( and come back stinking!).

Some of these are dredging up memories. We had a smoking room. It was disgusting!

Also remember the floppy disks and rolodex cards.

And how can I forget having to dial up to get the internet, and that awful noise it made while connecting.

@MissBattleaxe - never mind smoking rooms, when I started work in 1989 people smoked at their desks. In open-plan offices too.

I'm a bit concerned that some things people have mentioned on this thread I still have.....for example, my own desk/pedestal/stationery, and a deskphone (dial 9....).

And we still bring in cakes when it's a birthday!

Wang computers with that awful green text on a black background. You could type and draw a straight line and that was about it.

We still have phones and use them a lot, and only got rid of the fax machine very recently (we had one customer that insisted on it till a couple of years ago).

Still get lots of letters by post (invoices etc). Still use hole punch, stapler all the time, we are some way off paperless for regulatory reasons.

The boozy Friday lunches seem like a very distance memory, that would be completely unthinkable now. I used to like the brown envelopes with string and a list of spaces for names, seemed very efficient to re-use them so many times (green before their time).

Having to walk 10 mins to the far end of the building to get papers you'd printed off the one printer that supported 150 people. Using those vacuum tubes to send documents to the other end of the factory.

The mainframe computer room with all it's heat and humming noises. Terminals with green screens, internal-only email. Then Wordperfect for word processing and Lotus 1-2-3 for spreadsheets.

Yes to high heels!

At the beginning of my working life I used to wear high heels to court when I was in charge of boxes and boxes of paper bundles on this trolley thing I had to push. Madness. What was I thinking?

Stencil machines! You would type onto paper so it cut through and then put it in a roller and wind the handle to print lots of copies.
I was a secretary and was told by my boss that he expected me to wear pencil skirts and heels (and I never questioned it but did what he expected!)

reusable orange internal post envelopes, where you crossed out the last person's name and added the new one

We still have these! (We do have email too thankfully)