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 🤷‍♀️

Yes I had this too! Not for a retreat but when we had to go to London for meetings/conferences. Was considered completely normal.

Twin rooms, with a colleague! I mean WTF?! This wasn't even that long ago.... 20101-12? I wouldn't even consider it now, it'd be a flat no. I can imagine little worse, I wouldn't share a hotel room with anyone other than my DH, or at a push but would really rather not, my mother. I even have my own hotel room if I go away overnight with friends!

Fun, sarcasm and irony.

I loved getting drunk on cider at Friday lunchtime and trying to work Friday afternoon. It was the civil service so we could knock off at 3.30 and go straight back to the pub. Everyone was sleeping with someone. Some of the best times of my life!

Yep, getting my arse smacked or stroked by the hospital doctors was all quite usual.

Two staff rooms in some schools, one smoking and one non-smoking. You could smell the smoking one at the other end of the corridor.

In the first place I worked in the early 90s people were allowed to smoke at their desks on the weekend as the smoking room wasn’t open because there was no cleaners on weekends. Hated working a Saturday if certain colleagues were in.

Tbf there wasn't always a great deal of work after lunch pub, especially on a Friday. Fond memories of an absolute lunchtime blowout where my old boss got so shitfaced he couldn't remember his password on returning to the office culminating in him repeatedly typing in "bastardyou" and "fuckarse" with a running commentary until eventually the IT guy intervened.

What's wrong with that, I used to love to see it!

You could still smoke at a desk in the 2000s??

nightclubs went smoke free here in 03. Restaurants earlier than that, and offices before that!

Sounds like it must have been amateur night if that happened, a good regiment never allowed that to happen!

I worked in a school where teachers kept vodka in the freezer in the staff room and started drinking at 3.15pm. Several drove home hammered often. Once a week a guy came round to sell duty free cigarettes. Everyone bought them. The head took the batteries out the staff room smoke alarm so everyone could smoke.

Most of you seem to remember life being more enjoyable then than it is now. Have we gone too puritanical?

You weren’t allowed to, but people did.

At my work, the smokers waited until 5pm to light up.

But as I say, the print room guys smoked regardless of the time of day. This was 2000-2005.

I agree, smoking at desks in the noughties seems very late.

Worked in a call centre in my late teens. Several of us would go out drinking, then when the clubs kicked out, we’d let ourselves into the building to sleep on the staff room sofas until work started at 9.

When we had a product launch, management got us a big light-up punch fountain that they filled with red bull to keep us going. If we met our sales targets in launch week, they’d provide us with cheesecake. Everyone smoked. Everyone was shagging each other. Most of the management was on coke. Our sales tactics were questionable, to say the least.

Possibly.

But it’s also just us middle-agers, nostalgic about a time in our lives when we were young and carefree.

Surely smoking at desks was long before the noughties?

I’m sure young people starting out in their working lives also have good times.

Probably just not as good as our times!

Yeah as I remember it smoking at desks stopped very early 90s, it was only in smoking rooms from then. By 2000 there weren't even smoking rooms; we had to go outside. Most airlines banned smoking by 2000, a fair few airports too including all the major US ones. I used to book Air France because they were one of the last to fall, but even they'd succumbed by early 2000s.

It being none of work's business where you went at lunchtime for your whole hour.

This. When I went off for my maternity leave/career break people whonstayed in the office at lunchtime were the unusual ones. When I went back everyone stayed in.

And in fact having the opportunity for a several year career break no longer existed.

I worked for an airline where if you put weight on, you were put on the Fat List.
Only just before I joined, they scrapped the rule that said you had to leave if you got married. Your husband wouldn’t like you being away, would he? Who was going to cook his dinner and iron his shirts?
Not to mention the sort of first officer who put a note under my hotel room door - ‘The door is open, come and kiss me goodnight.’
I did quite fancy him actually, but the randy bugger was notorious - and married, unsurprisingly.

Reminds me of a great Mess party, it broke up about 8 am and as I was teaching at 9 I stuck my head round the Head's door as I walked by to say I'd be maybe a few minutes late. She told me to go and get a shower and breakfast then come in after Break. The Nuns were great!

Yy. And being able to take an hour for lunch!

One downside of minimum wage is that a lot of places went to either 35 or 37.5 hour week with any lunchtime unpaid. So now if you go over half an hour you're conscious that you're using time up that you could be getting paid for, so no one does.

Early noughties I worked at a local authority. Most council offices had bars in known as "the mayors parlour", used for evening "political events".

On the last working day before Christmas one mayor used to load up booze from the bar onto the tea lady's trolley and make his way round the office (dressed as Santa!) giving out drinks 😂

So true, most of the women I worked with could give it out as much as the men!

Yikes. What industry was this?!

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