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 🤷‍♀️

Our actual IT bods used to pounce on any unlocked and unattended screens.

Company wide email, 'send to all' along the lines of

"I'm a compete fucking twat who doesn't care about the security of my computer or of our customers. Someone sack me quick, for the good of the business!'

Or worse!

I'd forgotten about that.

None of these things were applicable where I worked in the early 2000's. Late 80s now - smoking at our desks, having particular tasks set aside for a Friday afternoon because I was too drunk for normal work ....

I was one of 2 women in a workforce of about 150. We had a smoking cabin half way up the site and the men would kindly hide their porn mags when I went for a cigarette. We also used to go for a few pints at lunch!

I started work in 2003 and we had a smoking room, although it was rarely used (most people smoked, but outside the front doors). It absolutely reeked.

We used to go to the pub on Friday lunchtime, stay for a couple of hours, then back to work until 4pm on flexitime and head straight back to get stuck in for the night. Loved those nights 😁

We used to have quiet times at work, when you could catch up on your filing. We'd have temps who had no real work to do, so we'd have them tidy up and dust the bookshelves or even run errands for us. Nowadays everyone is over capacity at all times.

I worked nights in Tesco around 2002/2003. People were still allowed to smoke in the work canteen. I remember being quite surprised, I'd done lots of temp jobs as a student in factories and big and small offices from about 1996 and there was no smoking in any of them.

Being able to support yourself in London by temping.
Absolutely. I was temping for ages. Out pretty much every night. Always had cash to spare.

Everything already mentioned and much worse in the 1970s workplace 😑 😱

There used to be a tea /snacks trolley pushed round the offices twice a day. You had to pay for the tea/chocolate but it saved you walking to the vending machines.

My boss would question the reason for every doctor appointment I had, and say he hoped it was so I'd go on the pill as he didn't want any more pregnant staff.

I started work in a hospital in 2005 and we had a staff smoking room until about 2008. At all the hospital the trust. Normally next to the canteen. Clouds of smoke would billow into the corridor every time someone opened the door.

Everyone smoking
Explicit sexual harassment and discrimination of all kinds the norm.

Just remembered there were a group of about 20 male members of staff in the office (Finance Corporation) who paid a monthly subscription to buy ‘top shelf’ magazines such as Men Only.
The magazines were passed round to chaps on the list for them to read & send to the next reader. This was arranged via a large brown internal department envelope.
For some reason I would receive these magazines in error sometimes!!

My boss at my late 90s office job used to ask about my dating life and would regularly tell me to sleep with more guys as otherwise “it would heal up”. “Use it or lose it” was common advice from him!

A guy putting his hand up my skirt whilst saying wahay! And me slapping him very hard round the face. I think we'd both be sacked now.

Also yes to bring able to support yourself temping. I worked in a big southern city, and was able to live in a nice shared house less than 10 minutes from the town centre, out drinking multiple nights a week, new clothes and shoes. Obviously I should have saved it and bought a house with hindsight 🙄 but it didn't occur to me, I was having great fun!

I remember going to my dad’s work in 90s and some offices had full topless calendars but by the time I worked in 2000s that would have been frowned on in most offices, although the FHM / Loaded / Nuts type calendars were seen as fine.

In the naughties every Friday from 12 noon we were in the pub til midnight although everyone took a turn every week to be the designated person to go back at 4pm to answer client messages / fob then off til Monday without slurring too much. Miss those days!

My male boss calling me "a dizzy tart"

A smoking room to those that mention that tho is different. Yes there was one of those in the big daily newspaper where I worked from the late 90s. I never went in it tho.

Genuinely surprised that people worked in offices in the early 2000s where folk smoked at their desks. Obviously Emap and Northcliffe (firms I worked for and where it was certainly not allowed post about 1990) were more forward thinking. Who knew.

Working in a freezing code data centre and accepting my nick name was 'nips'

I had my daughter in 1989 and because I had forceps I had to stay in for seven nights. Women who had Caesareans had to stay in for 10 nights.

There was a lounge room in our ward. It had the only TV. You were allowed to smoke in there. I remember trying to go in once and the room was so thick with smoke that I was choking. Women weren't allowed to take their babies in there but would spend hours in there and then go back to the ward.

And yes, we knew about the link to cot deaths.

Women being treated less favourably than men, even if the men were in less senior roles.
A Smash Hits style poll of most fanciable female employees being voted on, and posted on a memo board as part of end of year ‘japes’.

Working in pubs/clubs around 2005-6and having to dodge the lit cigarettes of hundreds of drunk people. After the ban came in it was very weird not having the fug of cigarette smoke in the air, it was replaced by the STENCH instead of spilled alcohol and BO.

Having to empty the ash trays at the end of the night - yuk

its unthinkable now that we thought it was ok to allow hundreds of drunk smokers to light up in an enclosed space with others.

Another job in about 2007- going round clipping one end of the Ethernet cables so they couldn't be removed from the sockets and stolen, would have been about 2008. The idea now that an Ethernet cable would be worth stealing or of much essential use now in a WiFi/data connected world.

In approx 2009 sharing an office computer with 5 other members of staff and handwriting most documents still. We didn't have individual email addresses, Although there was a fax machine in the office, for contacting external people, once a day someone would drive any paperwork that needed approval internally over to the other office about 2 miles away where the senior managers were.

2008/9 ish again being treated to a slap up lunch on training away days (public sector). We don't even get tea and coffee provided for us now.

We were doing that in parliament when I last worked there (2011) 😵‍💫

I find these threads interesting because there’s been a massive shift in most industries , but my teens work in hospitality and it seems like it’s an industry where time has stood still a bit.
The kitchen is still a hotbed of sexual harassment and abuse in many restaurants. Anyone else feel this?

I started my first proper job in 2000, so this thread brings back some happy memories (in amongst all the truly dated shockers).

Pub lunches. Friday pub lunches where you didn’t return to the office, and carried on into the night. Expense cards. Drinks in one of the main gathering room (outing myself here for anyone who worked there at the time - ‘library dos’), with the booze all put on for us, and all sorts of shenanigans as a result of it being free-flowing. Smoking in the office after 5pm. The print boys smoked in their office even during office hours - all that paper….! 😬

We didn’t have any of the strip club stuff, luckily.

DH and I met and got together there - happy, happy days!

You definitely do not see the like of it now.