What was normal in your workplace in the noughties that would be outrageous now

[Shhhhivegotasecret]

My example - all the men going off to continue business meeting at a Stringfellows leaving all the women behind…. Would be the stuff of tribunals nowadays, back then it was 🤷‍♀️

Bosses at one company did do coke at parties etc but I think that still happens now just more discreetly.

im sure I heard a rumour years ago that the local big named denim/jeans factory used to give the women pregnancy tests when starting employment. I don’t know if this was true. That would have been late 80s

We smoked at desks in my newsroom until 2004, then in a room next door until at least 2006 (most of the time the door was wide open adjoining the newsroom).

I’d better not commit to print all the rest of the shit that went on but God it was so much fun.

Omg did everywhere stink of smoke back in the day? Sounds like people were obsessed with smoking all the time in all places

Can I take a guess at the industry referenced by @Crushed23 ….was it advertising…. in 1978 my future husband was so appalled when I received a job offer for cabin crew (long haul with British Airways) on the grounds that the licentiousness of crews abroad was well known I turned down that job and went to university. I graduated in 1981 and went into the advertising industry….. my goodness, I will never knew what went on in British Airways but the advertising industry in the early 1980s was an eye opener…. I loved every minute of it but I did marry and when our son was born in 1984 I never went back…. Happy days indeed….

It was only when a PP suggested upthread that twin hotel rooms for colleagues was madness and they wouldn’t stand for it today, that I realised the insanity of it.

I remember my grandad telling me that he had to share a bed with colleagues (same sex). 1920s, 1930s.

Promotion being based on length of service regardless of competence.

think still a thing in much of the public sector!

Smoking, shagging, drinking and swearing on shift. Taking the piss out of the service users. Telling service users to fuck off. My friend and I used to leave work if we weren't busy and go shopping or to the gym. No-one cared.

Male boss with an all female team: he'd call us my little spunk trumpets. We weren't even offended. We'd just roll our eyes and laugh.

The office I sometimes work in now is full of 20 somethings and they spend their time eating and never talk to each other as they've all got AirPods in. I've never seen so much food in my life; how they are all not obese I don't know. At lunchtime they all troop out to vape. Different times.

Being served bloody Mary's at your desk for breakfast, kiss blasting on the stereo and being in the pub by lunchtime.. 🫣 I'm not sure how I'm still alive.

When I was a student I worked in a paper factory. One of the girls had a big birthday and a male stripper was hired .Everyone stopped working and gathered round to watch him dance about the factory in a thong while blasting music from his ghetto blaster.

I also think plenty of workplaces still have lots of staff sleeping with each other. i

@Crushed23 yy. In 2001 I did a fairly simple admin job in a bank and earned £26k. I worked 9-5, apart from days when we went to the pub on lunch when I would like be lucky to do any useful work after 12pm realistically speaking. I took an hour for lunch every day and when I finished work that was it - I didn't think about it till the next working morning.

I didn't have any line management responsibilities, didn't have to to go to strategy meetings or adopt company face or think about my smart targets or justify every fucking thing I did. I just had to work my hours.

Putting that into an inflation calculator that wage is now £46,643. I would take any amount of office smoking or slightly offkey comments to earn £46,643 now for a job with no responsibility beyond doing basic admin duties. Workplaces may have policies that make them superficially at least more palatable to be in now but they're all paying much much less.

This was in 2000 and something? Really? I used to use a typewriter at work but we moved to apple Macs in 1988.

I think political correctness has gone mad. Shame.

I've been with the same company for 20 years now. They've almost beaten the sense of humour, camaraderie, banter and innuendo out of us... but not quite. You just have to read the room and know your audience.

Genuinely astonished at that.

Clearly a lot of what ppl are mentioning on this thread (floppy discs?) happened much earlier than 20 years ago.

I would have been amazed to walk into a newsroom after about 1990 and see anyone smoking. 2004? That's beyond grim.

Going to the pub at lunchtimes, also occasionally bringing takeaway beers from the nearby pub back to the office and drinking them whilst working!

There’s an element of excitement from the taboo of going against all the political correctness in private conversation with your like-minded work buddies though. So there is that!

I would have been amazed to walk into a newsroom after about 1990 and see anyone smoking. 2004? That's beyond grim.

If you are in England, the smoking ban in the workplace was not enacted until 1st July 2007.

Putting that into an inflation calculator that wage is now £46,643. I would take any amount of office smoking or slightly offkey comments to earn £46,643 now for a job with no responsibility beyond doing basic admin duties.

wages have massively stagnated, not helped by the low interest rates we had for yrs post crash.

Give or take, that’s what our receptionists are on, which I often daydream about being my perfect job.

No responsibility other than being on time and fairly well presented, and absolutely no work to think about once you’ve left for the day

It was changing the screensaver where I worked in the 00s - most people had scrolling word screensavers set to "Be right back!" or the name of their football team etc. - if you left your PC unlocked it would get changed to "I'm a twat" or similar. Sometimes people didn't notice it had been done so they'd have "I'm a twat" scrolling on their screen for months.

Having a rota for who stayed in at lunch to answer the phones. Phoning into the office from a pay phone or clients office and having your emails (about 2) read to you over the phone. Dictating all correspondence (email and letters) and getting it back in a signature book to sign off. (I used to take mine outside for a fag and go through it at 4pm. Anything not back by 4.45 missed the post) internal post 3 times a day delivered by the post girl. 1 computer between 2. Some people not even turning them on for days as didn’t really need them!
big client entertaining, big lunches and drinks, being fined for being late into the office the next day.
amazing days !! Miss some of it!

Your receptionists earn £47k? That’s really impressive.

Ours are on ~£30k (in London).

Start work at 08.30 and have whiskey in coffee all morning. Lunch at the pub, more laced coffee all afternoon. Home to a bath and a G and T then out on a pub crawl with my workmates and friends in the evening.

I was pissed for the five years I worked for that company then one of our number sat for a sleep on a bench in a churchyard on his way home from the pub and died of the cold/alcohol mix. I stopped drinking and got my life together at that point.

@jesterdourt yes they have. I guess to bring it back to the question, every employee including junior staff being paid enough money to support themselves was normal in most workplaces in the 90s and this would be considered outrageous now.