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Original poster

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

658 replies

Shhhhivegotasecret · 02/12/2023 19:32

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 🤷‍♀️

OP posts:
jesterdourt · 02/12/2023 23:43

This is a super fast paced environment and the atmosphere is very, very fast paced. They have exceptionally high standards but everyone is very, very warm and welcoming and they do look after their staff well as demonstrated by the low turnover.

this doesn’t translate as low stress to me! 😆

jesterdourt · 02/12/2023 23:44

Do people even now know that’s what cc means?

nope

Handovertothetedcross · 02/12/2023 23:44

Pluvia · 02/12/2023 20:27

I worked there until 1992, and I worked in numerous newspapers and magazines after that; while some colleagues smoked and there was a smoking room in some of them, I genuinely don't recall anyone smoking at their desk in the years since.

I worked in media companies in the 90s (magazines). There was one trade magazine (only six of us in the office) where the editor smoked at his desk until one day he managed to set a pile of paperwork alight at which point he was required by the property manager to smoke on the fire escape. At a large international media company in Camden you were allowed to smoke in the kitchen (which didn't have a door) so smoke drifted out and over the floor where 100+ people were working. At the end of the day when most people had gone any smokers who were finishing stuff off or hanging about before going out for the evening would light up at their desks and then throw their dog-ends out of the window, onto the heads of passing pedestrians below.

Omg that's so funny 🤣🤣🤣

Ellmau · 02/12/2023 23:44

No smoking in the office but smokers were allowed extra smoke breaks.

Moveoverdarlin · 02/12/2023 23:45

I got a job in a newsroom in 2004 and the big bosses smoked at their desk. One offered me a cigarette in my interview. Then they brought in a rule where you could smoke on an upstairs landing, they (the owners) were furious when the smoking ban came in.

Teriyakieverything · 02/12/2023 23:45

jesterdourt · 02/12/2023 23:44

Do people even now know that’s what cc means?

nope

😲

tenbob · 02/12/2023 23:46

jesterdourt · 02/12/2023 23:40

PP said she would love to have a low stress admin role similar to what she had in 2001 but paying a £40k-ish salary

All I said was those roles do exist!

No one said they didn’t just that the majority of reception jobs aren’t paying 40k & low stress. In the same vein you can earn 2m as a partner in a MC law firm but many people working in law won’t earn anything like that.

Yes I think it blatantly obvious to anyone with half a brain cell that the average receptionist salary is not £40k
Surely no one feels they need to point that out, do they?

Presumably pp wouldn’t be pondering if she could get a low stress admin job on £45k if that was a typical receptionist role, because she would already be aware of the concept of a receptionist job..?

Maybe bedtime for a few…

jesterdourt · 02/12/2023 23:47

Maybe bedtime for a few…

Off you trot then 👋

Starlia · 02/12/2023 23:49

Late nineties and early noughties I remember the morning and afternoon tea trollies. We always had social events on Friday afternoons. High performers would go to conferences at which everyone, including the key note speaker who was often an Olympian, would get absolutely smashed. SO MUCH SHAGGING.
i was subject to plenty of sexual harassment and I gave it straight back.
Now I manage a team of people who will complain about literally anything. Constantly offended so the actual work can never be done.
There were definitely problems ‘back then’ but it was so much fun. I hate how serious and boring the workplace is now.

jesterdourt · 02/12/2023 23:49

@Teriyakieverything I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it 😆

ANightingale · 02/12/2023 23:52

Teriyakieverything · 02/12/2023 23:42

Omg, I remember the pre email days, I used to hand write Inter Office Correspondences on carbon copy paper for distribution to multiple recipients, hence where the ‘cc’ in email distribution comes from.

Do people even now know that’s what cc means?

I did, but I'm also old enough to remember carbon copies!

Ocani · 02/12/2023 23:55

Yes I think it blatantly obvious to anyone with half a brain cell that the average receptionist salary is not £40k
Surely no one feels they need to point that out, do they?

Well we do feel a need to point it out because as soon as I noted that my very average no stress no responsibility admin job from 2001 would in 2023 pay £47k adjusted for inflation, you immediately started banging on about all the receptionists you know who earn that.

I'm not really sure why.

Anyway, this is the average wage for a receptionist according to indeed:

What was normal in your workplace in the noughties that would be outrageous now
Teriyakieverything · 02/12/2023 23:55

@Starlia I think people were more resilient back then, and people just more upfront, it’s (I think) more authentic and a more genuine ‘bringing your whole self to work’ , but I can’t stand that phrase. Now it’s walking on egg shells and any bullying and harassment is more underhand and insidious.

DiamandaTheGreat · 02/12/2023 23:56

Fascinating thread. Very different times! We went to the pub at lunchtime at least twice a week (PAs/legal secs in a high-profile London law firm, 2003-2007) and it was extremely well-known which partners were shagging who, which ones were coked up to the eyeballs by midday etc. Before that I worked for a fashion house in Knightsbridge and the smoking was insane, literally 60% of most people's days were taken up with fag breaks in the little courtyard garden, specially designed for it 😂

TapertandEdkins · 02/12/2023 23:59

I remember my company sponsoring a potential client to go to a professional meeting overseas. I had to meet him there and take him out for dinner. After dinner he insisted on me taking him to a brothel he knew of. I sat on a sofa in the little waiting area until he came out. I was 23 years old.

keeptalkinghappytalk · 03/12/2023 00:00

Huge staff canteens ( department stores, factories, big offices, hospitals) serving up chops, chips, stews, spotted dick and jam roly poly puds with custard! And tea poured from vast metal pots...

Talipesmum · 03/12/2023 00:03

ANightingale · 02/12/2023 19:58

didn’t realise people don’t go for pub lunches anymore at lunchtimes?

Some do where I work but it's strictly soft drinks.

We go for pub lunches occasionally and if people aren’t driving they might well have a drink - not loads or getting drunk though.

Focalpoint · 03/12/2023 00:04

For me the workplace is way way more weird now than it was in the 2000s.

I work in a office where people play pool and PlayStation at 11am.

Things I miss are:
Having my own desk with a pedestal to keep my stuff in and a bin under it.

Not having to book a desk and "self serve" pretty much everything.

That you could phone people without "arranging a call"

Pre instant messaging days when you just walked over to people's desks for an actual conversation to sort things out.

Training was real people in a training room not a load of slides and videos with a test at the end.

Eve223 · 03/12/2023 00:04

DZbornak · 02/12/2023 21:51

I am thinking recruitment 🤔

Show quote history

Exactly what I thought as well. Sounds like my time in high street recruitment in the early-mid 00s, after which things slowly started to change.

The industry was riddled with coke heads, champagne, and colleagues shagging colleagues and/or clients.

Cordeliathecat · 03/12/2023 00:08

Lolaandbehold · 02/12/2023 23:21

Having my ass slapped by at least two blokes every time I walked across the floor. Going to Stringfellows with the lads and having a (nude!) dance bought for me (several occasions).
Get the grads to get the breakfast order. 40 sausage sandwiches with varying condiments. The thought was that if you couldn’t get a breakfast order right, how could you be trusted with a multi million order.
One of the guys dealt coke from the desk. Discretely-ish. He’d come up to me and give me a shoulder massage as he was talking orders from the folks on my desk.
COO (50s) shagging every 20 something grad that joined.
Out with clients a minimum of 2 nights a week at some top restaurant followed by a table at the latest club. Home at 2, up at 5 for work. Often still hammered. The clients would then throw you a few multi million dollar orders next day as a thank you. (Because hey, fuck best execution).
This was finance, pre 2008. It’s very different now.

in spite of it all, I had an absolute blast.

This was all still going on 10 years ago in my finance job. Probably still is in some smaller finance houses.

notacooldad · 03/12/2023 00:09

This. Also getting edible underwear as a Secret Santa present
My colleague got this for her secret santander this year. She didn't have to eat it though.
She also got fanny wipes and lube!

Pigwig10 · 03/12/2023 00:11

The police station I was stationed at (early 90s to around 2000) had its own bar. We would often go up after a late shift (finished at 10pm if it was an uneventful one) for a drink or two before driving home. Some of my colleagues used to down pint after pint. I remember asking one if he wasn’t worried about driving home after drinking so much only to be told that he wouldn’t get ‘done’ even if he was stopped on his way home. That shocked me even back then!

BooBooBaloo · 03/12/2023 00:15

CheshireCat1 · 02/12/2023 19:34

Ashtrays on the desks

And smoking meetings

Tanktanktank · 03/12/2023 00:18

I was contracted by the company I worked for to work in a large legal firm in London in 1989 for three months, all the girls (secretaries)had to take a turn serving the directors their lunch in the dining room. they tried to include me on the rosta and I told them to get lost as I wasn’t employed by them.

on Fridays you couldn’t get round the office as everyone had their weekend cases with them and wanted to know who’s country house you were staying at that weekend. (I wonder if this still happens).

back at my office we had Friday drinks at 4.30pm in the boardroom and most of us went to the pub for lunch every day. I always had pie chips and gravy on a Friday (my mum thinks this is very wrong and I would’ve never served this up at home until last year I though F it and now I have chips with my pie and gravy at home).

pretty much everyone smoked at the office. DH and I were pretty much the only ones who didn’t and had hell of a time banning anyone smoking at our home, including my mum.

went to a beer festival c1986 I think and 7 of us went home in a very small car, three on back seat, one laying across the three, the driver, one in the passenger seat and one sitting on the lap of the one in the passenger seat.

Bellavida99 · 03/12/2023 00:23

Social club on site with subsidised bar prices when I worked at Royal Mail in the late 90s! Drinking on breaks and before and shifts was completely normal. Fires in waste paper bins from smoking in the drawing office at the water company in the 90’s. 2 large wines or sometimes a whole bottle at lunchtime at water company. After work bbq’s , weekends in Amsterdam paid for by work with truly shocking tales. Porn and cigars expensed on hotel bills! Affairs were rife. But I wouldn’t change a thing. Poor young people starting working life WAH really miss out