Things that happened in the 90s work place that wouldn't happen now

[PrincessHoneysuckle]

Well it might have been just my very unprofessional one but anyway.
1.Smoking in the break room.No windows that opened and around and 6-8 people at a time smoking in a small room
2.Stripper.
Male stripper turned up to the office for a woman's birthday surprise.No music just him gyrating on her,there might have been a can of whipped cream involved.
3.No HR no nothing.Just a sadistic manager.

Anyone else have memories?

What's the significance of the wine/beer being the last stop before the till?

Ooh you reminded me of the internal mail. You could pop something into an envelope and send it (via a person with a little trolley) to anyone else in the company even if they were in a different town. I don't know how they got to the other offices once they were outside the range of the trolley!

Us youngsters were always sending each other stupid things - a friend of mine asked a guy out via internal mail 😂

University lecturer at my first tutorial starting off with, ‘Your essay was fine - I’ve given you a B. Now, how’s your sex life?’

This was late 60s, though. He was around 25, with a mid Atlantic accent, and evidently fancied himself rotten.

First trainee management job. Earns £6250 a year. At an away weekend with all the other trainees who were all male found out they were all getting £500 a year more than me as they were men!

I soon stopped that.

God yes, remember this! People smoking in meetings. Going for a drink in the pub at lunchtime. Drinks in the office on Friday afternoon. Dress Down Fridays were a big deal, as pre-Covid everyone was expected to be really smart…

In my first office job you could smoke at your desk after 5.30pm. This was 1994. I remember the packaging buyer pulling out a crystal ashtray from his top drawer, with cigarettes and a lighter. 🤣

I my second role, people keeping a bottle of gin in the desk drawer and having a G&T at the desk whilst working late.

Not having a pass or a code for the shared office printer, printing your CV for a new job application at work and running down the office to hover over the printer, or getting a friend to stand by and guard the printouts.

Those green and white striped reports churning off a huge printer in a special room from 6am on a Monday with sales info. Sorting and cutting them with a big ruler for the different teams to enter into a spreadsheet. Not even Excel, I think it wad Lotus123. 😅

Getting paper memos in your pigeonhole at work, in a brown envelope you had to write the next person's name on and pass it on.

School staff not allowed piercings; tattoos needing to be covered.

Half our staff where work now (still a school) are covered in tattoos plus a couple of members of staff have multiple facial piercings.

Backing your work up onto a floppy disc.
Worked for a high street bank (remember them?!) - Counting cash by hand, not a note counter; actually providing a service (then sales would follow); reconciling 3000+ cheques per day with head office, then sorting them into alphabetical order by payee name (some branches would have thousands more to deal with).
Having to wear a uniform that was a pencil skirt for women and a naice blouse all with the company logo on. (Not practical if you're trying to manoeuvre a trolley with thousands of bags of coinage or shove the safe door shut). Managers didn't have to wear them.

Christ.
On another thread yesterday someone said you actively have to go looking for trans related shit on here as it is rarely randomly inserted into non-related topics. It is not rare. Here you go.

Saturday girl in a hairdressers at 14...cash in hand, but also the manager smoked like a chimney, she would smoke around people that had colour and perming chemicals on their hair. They'd get a lovely new hairdo and then go out stinking of smoke!!

Mad to think that was even a thing....!

I started in the late 90s. Drinking at lunch and sometimes on an empty stomuch was acceptable.

Family members calling in via the office phone.

Smoking rooms.

Oh yes I had at least a couple of cash in hand jobs as a teen too.

Oh and the carbon paper card machine device and franking machine. GDPR wasn't really a thing that anyone cared much about!

Smoking in the offices. I used to have to collect the post and walking in the huge membership office which was all open plan used to make my eyes water. Team of about 20 in there and most smoked. Felt sorry for the ones that didn't 🤢

I worked at a double glazingtelesales office in the 90s as a teen… the stories are pretty wild…

1. we all chain smoked at our desk
2. there was a morning shift and then a shift between 3 and 7, between the shifts we would spend the whole time in the pub, or the park, if it was the park everyone would smoke weed or sometimes do mdma
3. we often did poppers at our desk
4. there was a large lady and everyone called her Janet the planet to her face
5. the sales manager and his number 2 were shagging the area sales manager, they used to all tell us what they got up to.. it was pretty grim
6. the chief sales director who didn’t come into the sales office much would randomly come in and shout and scream at us, he would often take away our chairs and you could only get them back if you made an appointment
7. it was actually quite fun and you could make quite a bit of money as a teen doing it in holidays and after school and weekends
8. most of us were 16 who worked there but there were a few older people, like Janet.
9. the experience has been surprisingly useful to me in my career as ai can handle anything, know what not to do and my skin is extremely thick from having people scream at me when I tried to cal them and ask if they had double glazing, and I can deal with any type of boss.

Janet the Planet is diabolical 🤣

In ‘94 I got a job with Hong Kong Shanghai Bank (HSBC now) and I had to have a medical before starting which involved an HIV test (if it was positive your offer was withdrawn!)

Being weighed at my interview when I became cabin crew. Not even in private, infront of everyone attending the recruitment day.

In my first permanent job after university in 1999 I was known as "the blonde" behind my back and apparently a group of senior men took bets on who was going to shag me.

I did come in at the tail end of the Friday lunchtime tradition of going to the pub for a 'swift half'. I heard stories from the men of drinking three pints, then returning to work to write up important reports.

The married boss worked his way round the office women, trying it on and it was my turn when a group of us were out for a birthday drinks and he put his hand on my thigh. Funny thing was that another man had done same just minutes before - they were both sitting either side of me and I often wondered what would have happened if they had done that the same time and their hands touched!!!

Chefs putting floury handprints on the waitresses bottoms.

They couldn’t get away with it today but nowhere near as bad an experience as the NHS workers being groped as described above.

Mine would be too outing as one event ended up with someone being jailed!

At 17 I got a pair of fake boobs in the secret Santa. Circa '95.

I worked for a window company in 2006 and we were all smoking in a corner of the office, no windows open.

I got told by a male boss I should consider wearing make up to appear more professional. I was an education project worker, so not even a sales / management / banking / customer service type role.