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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:
starfishmummy · 03/12/2023 09:36

Lucytheloose · 02/12/2023 22:35

Dictating onto a tape and getting your letter back from the typing pool three days later.

That was fast. Public Sector - we didn't send many letters - probably as well.

Our written draft first had to go to our line manager, then to the office manager for final approval, as the reply was sent out in their name. They'd always change something, "because they could". One manager had a habit of changing correct spellings to wrong ones. Then it went to the typists, maybe a week later it would come back - hopefully with no errors. Finally we could post it - second class was the norm.

When we got the ability to word process and the typists were a thing of the past - early 90s - I used that for my drafts. My line manager was fine with it but the office manager was not - they didn't understand that it was saved and could be amended in seconds if necessary.

Heaven help the "client" who wanted a prompt reply. Usually we'd ring them with the information and say that a written copy would follow in due course.

ManAboutTown · 03/12/2023 09:37

@biter

Re page 3: I worked in a civil service office and a couple of the men had topless calendars. Me, a stroppy 18 year old feminist asked them to take them down, they laughed. I complained to my boss, got ignored. I went out and bought a 'Chippendale' style saucy semi-naked men's calendar and put it up. Absolute mayhem. The women loved it, the men were incensed and asked me to take it down as it was offensive. I said I would when they took theirs down, they didn't but decided to deface mine overnight. I complained to boss. Again. Was told to stop stirring up trouble. Bought another calendar. 😬. It went on for a few more days and then I won. No more calendars. A proud moment 😊😂

About 30 years ago my group across Europe did a bit of work with Pirelli and received a few copies of their infamous calendar. In London all the guys perused it but it was put away in the head guys cupboard. The head of our Italian office hung it on the wall

Also in the early 90s a magazine for women started featuring a nude male centrefold with all the crown jewels on display ( I think it was called For Woman). One of the younger female staff members purchased it one lunchtime and then spent about an hour with her female colleagues in the office looking it over.😀

Twinklewonderkins · 03/12/2023 09:37

I started work in 1991 at 18 in a big haulage firm, carriers for very well known high street chain.
Sat next to a chain smoker who lit one from another and got through a whole pack at work.
soft porn calendars in the staff room. Men reading Sunday Sport and enjoying showing me and the other young women employees the pictures and asking us what our tits look like.
”Hilarious “ drunken xmas office party where we all got awards, mine was “best porn star lips’.

georgieneedstoleave · 03/12/2023 09:40

2002 ish, My boss -an orthodox religious man- I was preparing to leave due to restructure. Told me to wear a see through white shirt to my jobinterview to increase my chances of getting the job.

He was disgusting. Fuck him though I went on to get a job and be v successful elsewhere. Far better than his crappy job.

Ginmonkeyagain · 03/12/2023 09:41

I'm surprised at some of these stories form the noughties. I started my first graduate job for a local authority in London in mid 2000 and it was clear the workplace was changing.

Two things stick in my memory - my first union meeting was mainly dedicated to outrage at the closure of the smoking room and smokers having to go outside and smoke at the back of the building.

Where was a bit of a pub lunch culture on a Friday and some of the older male staff would sink several pints before returing to work. We young 'uns were a bit shocked, sticking to our lemonades (as far as we were concerned drinking was a Friday night thing).

I remember being shocked at how low tech things were. I was at unjversity from 1996 - 1999 and hadn't appreciated universities had better access to the internet. So I was used, after 3 years, to unlimited free email and internet access. At work in 2000 there was one computer in our office that was used to "go online", we had to ask permission for an external email address and emails from outside were opened and printed off by admin and put in our intrays to be read and replied to (we would draft a hard copy and admin would type it up and send it).

I mean to my 21 year old eyes it looked insane and old fashioned at the time. Try explainimg it to a 21 year old now!

TheClitterati · 03/12/2023 09:45

Smoking at our desk. Strick no joints to be smoked before 6pm policy.

Pints for lunch.

Everyone using desk phones.

My first job (late 80's) there was a tea trolley 😃 and staff canteen (office job)

Gestetners - again 80's

sawnotseen · 03/12/2023 09:46

Smoking at your desk. Pub every lunch time. Early 90s I was late teen/early 20s and worked flexitime in the civil service and two hr lunches were the norm. Working hours were recorded manually on paper so were fiddled constantly. I used to have to run down to the pub with my boss' phone messages!
Later 90s I worked in the City mile and the men would often spend £100s 'entertaining clients' in the hippodrome (which had become a lap dancing club) and spearmint rhino - I had to process their spend through their expenses claims( middle aged accountants). Dreadful!
Regularly being subjected to unwanted sexual comments. So glad my early 20s daughter doesn't have to put up with that now. I complained once to HR and 'strangely' got made redundant shortly afterwards. Women had to wear heels.
My friend worked in advertising in the west end and her bosses would regularly snort cocaine in their offices.

ManAboutTown · 03/12/2023 09:47

@Ginmonkeyagain

Quite a few people I work with were born after I started work. I explain to them not only were there no smart phones or wifi. There was....

No internet
No email
No Wifi
No people doing their own word processing on Word but handing drafts into the WP team
A switchboard not a direct line

Musiclover234 · 03/12/2023 09:47

Some of these comments were more the 70/80s/90s rather than the noughties tbh

ManAboutTown · 03/12/2023 09:48

Musiclover234 · 03/12/2023 09:47

Some of these comments were more the 70/80s/90s rather than the noughties tbh

Totally agree - as I said upthread a lot of this stuff was cleaned up in the 90s

TheClitterati · 03/12/2023 09:48

I near noughties as nineties!

It's early

the80sweregreat · 03/12/2023 09:50

Our old 'Dolly switchboard ' was a scream
They did update it eventually, but it was funny
No internet or texting and everything paper based

sawnotseen · 03/12/2023 09:50

There were fun times mostly though!
A couple of my friends worked on the LIFFE floor in trading, wearing those crazy blazers - and made a fortune in their 20s.

PuttingDownRoots · 03/12/2023 09:52

Thats part of the point though. It should have disappeared decades ago but was still persisting even 20 years ago.

How about an unofficially published newsletter detailing who had slept with who in the last few months? That stopped after it was leaked to the tabloids... in 2008.

sawnotseen · 03/12/2023 09:52

Sorry, 90s not naughties. By the 2000s things had changed.

ManAboutTown · 03/12/2023 09:52

Anyone worked in a place where the tea trolley came round with the urn mounted on the top

The tea was industrial strength particularly if you were near the end of the route

Happy days!!

sawnotseen · 03/12/2023 09:54

....and the messengers bringing us letters and memos in buff coloured A4 envelopes, on trolleys, several times a day.

frogswimming · 03/12/2023 09:55

The strip clubs and drinking at lunchtime was in my office in early noughties. I had a boss 15 years older than me who started work in the 80s, she still had to wear skirts. So that rule must have changed in the 90s in my office.

frogswimming · 03/12/2023 09:57

We still used the fax till about 2010 I think!!! And one of the bosses still wrote his reports out and then gave them to the secretary to type. There was about one secretary per three people, now one per department who is more of a pa.

ManAboutTown · 03/12/2023 09:59

There was one bonio in my office who - in the early noughties - got his PA to print out his emails so he could read them

And I worked at a global investment bank

Ginmonkeyagain · 03/12/2023 10:00

Ha! I temped at a payroll company in 1999 that still had a tea trolley. They would announce over the tannoy that the tea trolley was on your floor.

What has changed is younger staff seem to be more serious and focussed. Since return to the office our most recent grads cohort have got in to a regular habit of big lunches together in the canteen and Thurssday night socialising. One of the "older" grads confided in me recently that they thought the newer grads were not taking things seriously enough.

I nodded sympathetically and said after covid it was good to see them letting off steam and as long as it didn't affect their work I was fine with it - and didn't mention that at their age I would regularly roll stright in to work after night out at Fabric or Turmills and we'd take turns at sleeping under the desk. 🫣

Comedycook · 03/12/2023 10:03

I used to get luncheon vouchers as part of my wages. The lady from payroll would come round and hand out the little book of vouchers. £30 worth. I used to love them!

hookiewookie29 · 03/12/2023 10:04

Smoking in hotel bedrooms while we cleaned them!

Comedycook · 03/12/2023 10:05

frogswimming · 03/12/2023 09:57

We still used the fax till about 2010 I think!!! And one of the bosses still wrote his reports out and then gave them to the secretary to type. There was about one secretary per three people, now one per department who is more of a pa.

I really need to update my CV...I think I still have faxing on it as one of my duties.

ManAboutTown · 03/12/2023 10:05

frogswimming · 03/12/2023 09:57

We still used the fax till about 2010 I think!!! And one of the bosses still wrote his reports out and then gave them to the secretary to type. There was about one secretary per three people, now one per department who is more of a pa.

In the noughties we had one PA for about 7 or 8 of us. It wasn't typing but mostly organising travel and the like. Mine was a machine - she got me out of places when there were major problems.

Her main job was looking after the global head of our business. As default she booked me into hotels that he stayed at.

Loved her to bits