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 🤷‍♀️

People were smoking at desks in my office right until the smoking ban in 2007.

Your absolute statements are incorrect.

1999, me as a green 18 Yr old female apprentice in a very male dominated industry. Pamela Anderson calender on the wall, Pammie wearing a santa hat and virtually nothing else, the sun left open at page 3 on the mess room table every day, the Star left open at worse. Not to mention the draw I was told never to go in, because it was 'for the boys on the night shift'......Yet all this seemed perfectly normal. My mother would have had a fit if I'd mentioned it lol.

in 1999 I was working in a sales role whilst at uni.
The store manager made me go and buy him condoms for his night out because he 'was too busy'

Early 90s - the building of my Sixth Form college was non-smoking for staff and students alike, but there were no restrictions on smoking outside - of course, it was legal for 16 and 17 year old to smoke in those days.

There was a specific rule banning students from going to any local pubs during the day!

Late 90s, my sixth form had a smoking area (basically just a concrete area with bins and some posts where a roof used to be). That's where I spent most of my time outside of lessons, despite not being a smoker! It was just where everyone would hang out.

The only pub close enough to get to between lessons always said they didn't serve students, but they definitely did... no uniform so how would they know! And no ID needed if you could pass for 18, in those days.

I know what you mean about sex discrimination. When I started work women got to retire at 60 whilst the blokes had to work another 5 years. How mad is that?!

There were loads of pubs near mine. I was a swotty type so didn't go, but others definitely did. What they cared about, quite rightly, at that college was that people got on with it, turned up and did their work - if you didn't, you were chucked out - if you did, you weren't really policed.

The atmosphere was quite adult - you called the staff by first names and so on, but most classes halved in size during year one because they were strict about completing assignments. It was a refreshing change to work in an environment where people who didn't really want to be there weren't wasting everyone's time.

Ours was the same, much more like uni than school. I loved it. There were only five of us left in my Eng Lit class by Easter!

Early 2000’s, working in the dance music industry and you were encouraged to go out at the weekend and get off your nut (E’s, mdma, coke, acid etc).
Because everyone did it, you couldn’t have a sick day if you felt like shit as everyone felt like shit (especially on a Tuesday).

Women earned significantly less than men and were openly discriminated against with no recourse to law. How mad was that, eh?

How fucking mad is it that women still, over the average working lifetime, earn 35% less than men? Despite working more years to qualify for the state pension...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/28/women-paid-less-than-men-over-careers-gender-pay-gap-report#:~:text=Women%20are%20paid%20just%20%C2%A3,of%20Britain%27s%20gender%20pay%20gap.

A bit before when I started work but I found a newspaper in my grandparents house and the tone of the job adverts in the paper then were amazing!

Pub on Friday and smoking at desks.

Early noughties our application forms still asked what your marital status was

These posts about men putting up semi-pornographic pictures reminded me of my weirdo old boss, who had a picture of Oliver Cromwell above his desk.

This is the 90s - I used to work for an export company that was based in the yard of a haulage company. We shared our office block with their traffic office which was all men. Every morning I used to come in to work and their door was open with pictures plastered on the wall of completely naked women with open leg shots. They sat comparing page 3 pictures of the Sun with the Star for that day. They had a stack of Razzle magazines in the office.

I was only a young girl and they used to be nice and friendly and be like come in. There was absolutely no thought that I might be uncomfortable. Never even entered their heads. And it was just normal back then, no one to complain to. At least today's women dont have to put up with that!

😂
Made me chuckle

In the police so most things are no no’s now! Thankfully most have been eradicated by the time I started.
I work in a very large station now, there’s a big room right in the centre of the building that’s sort of abandoned but it was once the bar. Yep the police station had a bar inside 😂

A police bar. That doesn't surprise me really!
I loved the smoking room in our old office
I didn't smoke, but if you wanted to find most people , that's where they were!

A brilliant sitcom with Robert Webb was The Smoking Room if you can find it. Ended largely because of the smoking ban.

I went to a police bar for a 40th… was queuing for the loos and 2 police officers came out of a single cubicle 🫣… I had wondered what the noise was about!

Affairs between police officers were commonplace, don't know if they still are. There was a bar in the police station where I worked back in the 90s. It was open evenings and occasionally at lunchtimes.

There was also a very nice canteen.

Then the next place I worked at had only recently gone non smoking, but the smell of old cigarette smoke was still strong in the office.

I was a police cadet in the 90s, 16yo when I started. Yes, we also had a bar at the police station which was heavily used. I can remember walking down the corridor near the bar and dodging drunk (off duty) police officers and one of them pinned me against the wall and snogged me while groping my boob!

I worked for an internet company during the dotcom boom.

There were long and boozy lunches on a Friday and after work meet-ups. One bloke's screensaver was 2 naked women licking ice cream off each other and he'd also have porn mags strewn around. I don't miss that crap but do miss the long lunches. I'm lucky if I get a 10 minute tea break now.

This was in the late 90s but Page 3 posters and similar on the walls in the manager's office in the insurance company I briefly worked in.

Same in the office in the garage I used to use, and there was also a large poster of a woman's arse, wearing a bikini thong with her arse part covered in sand. As a female customer I felt quite uncomfortable about this.

You can still get the page 3/topless girl calendars.