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 🤷‍♀️

The disgraceful misogyny and sexual harassment.

On big nights out all the guys throwing their credit cards onto the table - the waitress would pick one randomly and he got the bill. 🤯

Lapdancing clubs being a perfectly ok way to entertain clients.

Booking hookers for important clients being tolerated, not talked about but tolerated.

My bosses boss who would leave expensive bottles of wine on the desks of those providing him with coke.

He also do a lot of throwing things on the floor when angry.

Lots of shagging, sometimes for career advancement (for men and women, there were quite a lot of senior women) and sometimes just for fun, and sometimes turning nasty. At least one person I knew claimed Mr cokehead boss raped her.

The solution to important make clients being sex pests was to warn everyone and out the young female/male staff in a different hotel when away with work.

Bullying was absolutely RIFE. And general shouting and swearing. I once walked into an office when some guy had another guy’s head in the photocopier.

The solution to bullying from one of the notorious big bullies was to expect you to put up with it, but eventually move you once you had proved your metal to move you and someone else got a turn.

Lots of drinking and drugs and bedhopping. That was fun but It was pretty savage really.

Late 90s/early OOs

Filing clerks who put trays and trays of paper neatly into folders and files!

stationery cupboard open once or twice a week with the need for a senior manager to approve the use of post it notes for lower staff!

hour lunch breaks, looking busy when nothing to do, getting jobs in the public sector because of who you know, no hot desking and desks covered in personal memorabilia, big desks with huge computer monitors, Christmas decorations , subsidised canteen.

Oh and an immense amount of casual racism. Very few people of colour in professional roles.

Worked in an office where the MD ordered the mirror in the ladies loo to be smoked glass to stop us ‘spending too much time in there. Job interview for one of my jobs was a ride around town with the manger in his car (dodgy).

In my workplace some men used to get their golf membership paid for by our employer. They only paid for golf as far as I can recall. Some of us used to think of asking for a paid gym membership.

I am thinking recruitment 🤔

Must have been around that time that I was working in a greengrocers during the summer and we were not allowed to sell in pounds and ounces anymore. One customer came in and asked for 3 pound of spuds- to be told oh Mrs x it’s kilos now - she said oh sorry 3 pounds of kilos please 😂

My boss used to nip to the bookies several times a day. If his horse won he’d buy us cakes. If it didn’t we’d all have to keep our heads down.

There were bad things that happened (although I think some of these muse have been the 90s not noughties), but work was so much more enjoyable in many respects. Even moreso in the nineties. I find myself internally shaking my head at work these days, I just feel like I’m colluding with the insanity of the professionally offended at times just to keep a job.

Lots of sweaty sexual type banter, references to attractiveness. Totally inappropriate but it seemed very normal back then. Absolutely shocking what we put up with.

Some appeared quite harmless for example one day I was wearing a skirt and my boss had to check a plug under my desk: "oooooh Miss Camden, excuse me, but I just have to climb under your desk for a moment LOL!!"

New girls looking for fast promotions by wearing inappropriate clothing, cheap perfume and with big hair stinking of smoke.

The PA bitch to the MD complaining that I wore trousers to work and that I should be wearing skirts or dresses.
This was in 1992!
Luckily the MD overruled her because he liked my bottom. I was even more incensed and she became an even more vindictive bitch towards me.
Luckily a new more modern MD took over and she was soon history.

Promotion being based on length of service regardless of competence.

Saving the days work to a floppy disc.
Memos from head office typed and sent to branches.
Calling senior staff Mr or Mrs.
Smoking- we had ashtrays with the company logo on them in the back office (high street bank).

I used to work in a predominantly male industry. There was a stores warehouse. I'd book stock out and the lads would pick, and bring to the office for me to post. Mine would come addressed "FAO big tits" and my taller friend (also a lady) FAO Legs. It was passed off as "lads banter".

My female boss taking us (all the female employees) to a male strip club on Christmas. The male strippers where young and gorgeous but it was a gay men venue and as a bunch of girls we felt a bit out of place. The employees we all went along with the gig because we didn't want to piss the boss but we were not really comfortable.

Some of the partners spoke openly disparagingly about the secretaries and called them "Dorises" eg "give my typing to one of the Dorises".
@PilatesPeach Is this really any different than older women being referred to as "Karens" today? And often by other women. It seems nothing much has changed. 😞

We had a smoking room. Friday lunchtimes, everyone went to the pub (except me, I've never really been a pub person). Lot of casual shagging between colleagues.

Once a month, the head of department would host a lunch for everyone who had a birthday that month. It was a given that everyone would be out all afternoon and blind drunk by the end of it.

There were a few girls who were renowned for getting particularly drunk so it was accepted for someone in the group to book them into a hotel near the office so they could sleep it off and be in work the next day

Fairly open coke taking in the office. Never in sight but references made to needing a sharpener after a liquid lunch nod nod wink wink

Wild corporate entertainment.
Hospitality tickets for F1, rugby, concerts. Quite often the senior people wouldn’t want to go so tickets would get passed to junior people.
I went to the rugby World Cup in Paris in 2008ish, and was put up in a £700/night hotel room, full VIP hospitality and amazing seats, as a recent grad with no relevance to the company hosting, because my boss’s boss couldn’t go and my boss didn’t like rugby
It is all banned under anti bribery laws now

1987 boss still smoked in his corner office
2006 tea lady made hot drinks and delivered them
2020 I still had to make the owners tea as the only female in the office (they were all over 70!)

I don't miss smoking between courses in a restaurant with people eating at the next table

I do miss two hour lunchtime shopping trips on the kings road and leaving work early on a Friday to go to the pub

At times we had so little to do in our public sector office (N Ireland, 90s, very overstaffed) that my boss told me to stand in the photocopying room and copy blank paper, or even shred it, so that if a senior boss walked down the corridor, they'd think we were busy. Nutjobs.

It was more fun.

There are still many assumptions made, careers blocked and sidelined and a massive element of facefit in modern workplaces that inevitably includes race, sex, age etc, but it's all done within the confines of pages and pages of policy now so harder to pin down and argue against. Plus we all have to pretend we're passionate about everything from spreadsheets to mission direction for the sake of earning way less money (relevant to the expense of actually living) than 20 years ago.

20 years ago?? Really?? Also what is wrong with the pub at lunchtime?!

This for me too!

I was shocked to see this: it was particularly egregious because it was a tier 1 COMAH Site, and making pharmaceuticals!