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!

Being as qualified as the lads in the office but being handed their letters on a dictophone tape to type up.
Being the office junior and remembering 14 different brews to make twice a day
Phoning your Friday pub lunch order through in advance to maximise your lovely paid lunch hour
Going on a sun bed in the lunch hour!
Using the bank-issued video recorder and TV (to watch bank training videos) to watch video from Blockburster over two lunch hours
Fax machine billowing out messages across the office floor, all hopefully marked private and confidential

Treasury tags.

Yes, @Taytocrisps there was a massive excitement about the Christmas parties back then. They were pretty wild as well. We used to be given alcohol vouchers to spend at the bar at each Christmas party (our company v keen on the old voucher system). Taking your camera film straight to Boots the next day for development so that you could be the first to share the compromising photos round the office 😳

Still have a phone where you press 9 to dial out.
Regularly use a stapler and hole punch

@sashh I am intrigued by your 'wet' photocopiers 😂

I had forgotten all about tea ladies!

I worked in an office that had one internet computer.

@sashh was the wet photocopier those weird copy machines where the ink was purple? Rather than a photocopier as we know them now? All the worksheets we got given at school in the 80s were purple.

BlueAce73 we still bring in cakes on our birthdays, and non-birthdays! I do miss the tea lady in my old job. She was apparently made redundant many years ago :(

Little strips of white correction tape when you made a typing error and tippex fluid
Plug in switchboards
Different coloured paper copies for different levels of recipient
Paper knickers and clean tights to put on before a night out if you werent going home to change first
Having to walk miles from the station during the 3 day week and no buses running
Clients paying or small ad spaces in postal orders

At least not everything I used to enjoy has disappeared! It’s been such a long time since I worked in an office I assumed there would now be a new H & S directive (likely concerning allergies) that prevented it, glad to hear otherwise

The sending postcards to the office reminded me that it was the LAW to bring back edible treats for the office from your holidays. It was unthinkable not to!

Calling our secretaries by their first names but them calling us "Miss Astrabees",in fact having a secretary at all. When I was training as a solicitor I had to take the solicitors personal laundry to the laundry and park their cars if we went to court and they were running late, I even got sent out to buy one of them a mars bar once - the male trainees were treated the same.
Yes! going out and getting quite drunk on Friday Lunchtimes, I couldn't manage 3 pints of real ale now and go back to work.
Biscuits, big tins of them.
Smoking, everyone but me seemed to smoke.
Once we had a farewell party at the police station for one of the Inspectors and all the local solicitors chipped in for a stripper.
Telex machine - I have no idea what it did but it took up a lot of room.
In the chambers of the barristers we instructed there was always afternoon tea for learned counsel when they got back from court just after 4, a big teapot and lots of nice cakes, I expect they still do that.

I think the 'wet' photocopier may have been a Gestetner machine. Never saw one in my working career but my school had one.
First place I worked still had a punch card department.

Worked in one small department that had a tea lady with a trolley come round twice a day. She did cheese scones to die for (taat?)

In my Mum's office they had Roneo copying machines. In mine, electric typewriters, golf ball typewriters, Xerox typewriters with one line or one page of memory (they costs £££s). Coffee vending machines. Giant photocopiers that could do 30 x 200 pages. Pushy franking machine/photocopier/fax salesmen. Dymo machines for labelling your metal shelves where you stored your different types of paper. Stationery requisitions. Adding machines with a handle on the side and a roll of paper. 'Modern' calculators where you could spell out Boobs or Esso or Shell. Good thread OP, it's just unleashed a whole load of memories 🤣

Large brown switchboards with flashing lights and flippy up and down switches.

Having to ask permission to use the photocopier and writing the number of copies you'd made into a book.

The Personnel department. Why they were renamed Human Resources is anybody's guess. It probably happened around the time clerk typists disappeared, only to reappear as administration assistants.

Petty cash dockets.

A3 analysis paper.

Women wearing scholl sandals ( de rigeur on the bank floor I worked at Late70s /early 80s)

Pagers

Fax machines

Tea trolleys- and canteens

Reams of huge print outs-- if you were overdrawn that morning and had items due to be paid- you were on my reams of printouts!!

Common sense - and ability to 'overide' - seems these days it's very much computer says no in lots of jobs

Ring binders

Fax machine

Telephones

Internal envelopes

Treasury tags

Printing out emails and filing them

Starting in the bank as an office junior in the 90's making my managers their cups of tea and addressing them as 'Mr' ohh and also going out for everyone's morning break requests eg roll and sausage

Green pens - to be used solely for placing tiny funny-shaped ticks in the huge accounts ledgers.

Paper time sheets and rotas! I'm only in my 20s so don't remember most of these, but I started working quite young so these were still a thing! Now I get my rotas on an app!

Double entry book keeping - in an actual book.

Instantly thought of my first job back in the early 90s.

The whole office shared one ‘word processor’ we used to type letters to clients. There was always a squabble to get on it.

We smoked at our desks. I’d have meetings with clients sitting opposite me while a B&H burned away in the ashtray on my desk.

Tea Lady brought round her trolley at 11am and 3.30pm every day.

On payday we’d order a cab to go and pick up a takeaway for lunch and deliver it to us (no such thing as Uber Eats!).

I always fancied the idea of being a tea lady. Everyone would be pleased to see you

Shorthand

Oh, and using the Phone Book : Yellow Pages to cold call prospective clients. Sophisticated!