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 🤷‍♀️

“Tit Monday”. This was the first day of warm
weather where women in the city would wear less clothes (because it was warmer weather, obviously). The men used to send round an email announcing it was Tit Monday, heralding the arrival of less clothed women.

Not quite work but my college (16+) had a bar. Fully accessible during the day and would often find one of our lecturers in there.

Early noughties, holiday rep type job overseas. There were season long staff (mostly early 20s guys) who ruled the roost over the peak-period-only staff (generally uni students) and the longer term but younger gap year students. If you were "lucky" as a younger female member of staff, you were allowed to eat lunch at the longer term staff accommodation but they would test you by reading porn mags in front of you.

Lots of casual shagging and, if word got out that you (ie: you , one of the younger females) had hooked up with someone, you'd face essentially a panel of the older guys interrogating you about what you'd got up to.

The only time I saw the older staff got bollocked for how they treated the younger women was when one got taped to a chair and left over lunch. And that was only because they were left in a public place where clients would see them and that was unprofessional.

First proper job I was one of two female management trainees, other 30 were men. Found out on training course they were all earning £500 more than us which was a lot as our female pay was £6000pa

... somewhere, in a derelict building in a deserted town, a grubby old fax machine beeps in the silence and unspools another sheet of paper onto the towering, dusty pile on the floor, two decades worth of unread faxes from user6776 ...

Wow where did you work??!?

Office christmas parties in the actual office.
Christ. Nuffield said.

We were allowed to smoke at our desks and every Friday we would have an extra long lunch break at the pub and have a few drinks

I misread I thought it said nineties

Yes yes.

I feel like my 2000s in the work place was a parallel universe. I worked in a newspaper office as a sub editor and if smoking had been allowed at desks more than half the team would have. We did get occasional faxes but most people emailed or posted press releases.

we did used to have a Christmas piss up with local contacts like council press office and a detective who used to leak us stories.

@Xmaswrap

If you worked in a lab, you should have put something interesting on it to sniff.

I had a student job in a travel insurance office for the summer break. It was mind-blowingly boring and full of really snippy people who hated each other. Claimants for property loss would be asked if they had photographic proof of claim-item being with them on holiday to support insurance application for payment. Lots of women and men would send in photographs of themselves in various holiday attire wearing necklaces, items of clothing or with items in the background like portable speakers etc. They were claiming these items were lost or stolen or damaged during a holiday. No one rated the men out of 10, but the male insurance assessors had a rating board for females based on the size of their breasts, chav potential, perceived attractiveness, perceived sexual experience etc. It was cringeworthy back then, and now I just shake my head thinking about how awful it was. It was accepted as lads culture back then. Working there made me work very very hard in my final year exams to make sure I never had to go back to a place of employment like that one.

These are funny. Smash hits and nips.

Not work, but when I had my son in 1978 we had an ashtray next to our bed and we could sit and smoke in a ward full of newborns. Even visitors could smoke in there.

Blaming young women for getting unwanted attention from much older men. I had an older female colleague comment "well if you will wear skirts like that what do you expect". It was a M&S skirt, fitted and came to a few inches above the knee - I was 21 at the time and it was my first job. I was more shocked at her comment than the lecherous one from my male colleague.

Boss would bring a crate of beer into the office at 5.30 every week on a Friday and we’d sit in the office drinking beer after work until it was gone. I was young and child free in those days but looking back I now realise that it was the women with childcare responsibilities and the Muslim staff members who didn’t join in and missed out on the office bonding.

I was invited on an all-expenses paid trip abroad for a product launch by a client company and my boss told me that they couldn't possibly let a young girl like me go. (It was a professional role - I was a graduate - and it wasn't even my first job). His female deputy quickly followed me out the office to explain they wouldn't have let a male staff member go either. All these years later and I still wonder if she thought that was true or was just quicker to think it could lead to a tribunal.

I did not know this was even a thing till I watched Emily in Paris!

never worked anywhere smoking was allowed indoors, even from 1994.

On a work retreat, I had to share a hotel room with a colleague. We could choose who and it was assumed to be same sex but still ...

I totally agree!

Yep - we regularly closed the whole office on a Friday lunchtime; go to the pub; come back late and half cut and attempt a couple more hours of work, then back to the pub.

Work based training and learning company by any chance?

That guy was a massive prick.

I think the drinking culture was much heavier. I am older so probably don’t go out as much but Friday night drinks was massive. Now everyone works from home on a Friday so work nights out seem to be on a Thursday and much more civilised. I used to go to work drinks every Friday without fail because I’d have major fear of missing out. Some people were easily spending £100 every Friday which would have been a lot back then. I don’t think people in the same job could quite frankly afford it now.

Civil service in the 1990s, all day drinking, but with the booze decanted into Coke cans. Billy, who did the weed run for the office. Lots of casual shagging, sometimes in the office. Rampant sexism, fine to comment about your tits “I see it’s a bit cold today, Aydel, I’ve got lovely warm hands, shall I…?”