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?

I joined a school as a young teacher. After a few weeks one of the other teachers asked me if Mr H had groped me in the art cupboard yet.
Apparently it was seen as a rite of passage for any new teachers. WTF?
He'd have got a paintbrush in a certain place if he'd tried that with me.

My last work place (6 years ago) still has a stand alone fax machine and my current one has dedicated fax lines connected to the printer/scanner as banks still like to communicate with solicitors in this way.

Turning up for work hungover and going to the medical centre to have a sleep in one of the beds. Then waking up for dinner, straight to the pub for a couple of hours, back to work for an hour and then back to the pub. Miss those good old days

I started working in the latish 90s. Men still had topless calendars by their desks. (These were professionals, not mechanics). Working lunches involved wine.

We had a large lady liked to dress in yellow she was called Canary Wharf! Different times ..

Started work early 90s was a different world.
A trolley came round with tea and coffee, pub lunches with booze happened a lot.
No emails waiting for you when you arrived at work.
Paper folders and typing pool did all the typing.
Much preferred it to now 😟

No email so if a someone had to get a message there and then I had to walk down three floors to fax it.
Never saw a bloke in the office without a shirt and tie.
The hierarchy was insane, you didn’t speak to the senior partners unless you were spoken to.
If it was raining then smoke break was taken in the toilets.

Not being able to join the employer pension scheme because I was part time.

Reading about all these places where people were smoking at work and thought 'surely it had been banned by then, I don't recall working anywhere where people smoked indoors in the 90s' - and then googled to find it was only banned in 2007!

I started working in the early 90s, first in a Saturday job with a large high street retailer, then in various office jobs after I graduated.

Physical pay packets you collected from the cash office via the little window

Proper staff canteens and staff toilets that weren't shared with shoppers

Dial up modem when you needed to send emails

I remember putting forward a business case for buying a couple of word processors with memories in one place

No one had a desktop computer in my first proper job

Women not being allowed to wear trousers

Boss rejecting a male interview candidate for having long hair and telling everyone he'd done so

Internal mail - intra office mail was sent overnight via DX. You dropped the bags off at the local DX office and collected what was delivered to the locker next morning. The advantage over Royal Mail was guaranteed next day delivery by something like 7am and it was cheaper

Needing a chit signed by your manager to get anything from the stationery store in a big HQ office building

A separate smoking section of the canteen in one place, complete with extraction. Everything in there was yellow with nicotine and the union rep used to hold meetings in there

Having a dedicated typist or secretary who would type everything apart from your emails for you

Lotus Notes and Word Perfect

Needing training to do things in software programs as nothing was straightforward or intuitive

Sending text messages being novel

So much has changed - a lot of formality has gone

We had a British woman start work. Her surname was Polish and non of the staff could pronounce her surname so someone made one up!
Everyone called her by this made up name!

Groping was still going on in the early 2000s. When I was doing my training contract at a London law firm the head partner used to give (unrequested) neck and shoulder massages to the secretaries and junior lawyers (only female ones). On one occasion he said "you always back away from me when I come into your office" and actually seemed offended!

At a client event we hosted one of the clients groped the bum of young female lawyer. She complained to the boss and HR but was told to "laugh it off" as couldn't risk upsetting the important client.

Senior staff would still smoke at their desks after hours. People would smoke in the corridors at the High Court, literally come out of the courtroom and light up.

Friday lunchtime drinking with no one going back to the office afterwards. The secretaries would bring the post into the wine bar for the partners to sign off.

I was aged 14 & had a weekend washing up job in a pub/restaurant. We had a very sweary chef who used to shout lots and he used to smoke in the corner of the kitchen & have a pint of John Smiths on the go. Luckily it didn't phase me as it matched my homelife, it would definitely not be tolerated now!

I remember doing work experience in a Solicitors in 1992. At quarter to five an order came through to fax some documents and the staff were instructed to get them posted out as it would be easier and they'd arrive by 9am the following day.

Mind boggling through today's eyes!

Page 3 posters on the walls.
Smoking in the office.
Fax machines.
Insisting female staff must wear skirts and not trousers.

In my last job that I left 2 years ago, some clients still faxed us their orders 😂 it was utterly bizarre.

Driving to work over the limit. Whiskey in office morning coffee. Pub at lunch time. Whiskey in afternoon coffee. Home for a bath and a G & T then out on the piss with mates. Rinse and repeat. Probably not technically sober for five years straight.

I was paid less than my male colleagues

Smoking in the staff room

Wages given in a brown envelope with a hand written pay slip

Broadcast sexual comments daily

Smoking in the office and with the various groups of vulnerable people we worked with - homelessness sector.

Working 20 hour walking shifts because of staff not turning up to work.

No safety measures for staff so being assaulted, sworn at etc etc was par for the job. Equally, limited understanding or policies about boundaries resulted in friendships and in some cases relationships between staff and residents.

Staff were all politicised. We knew and read about current affairs. We went on marches. We were a young team, Britpop rode the charts and we were going to resolve our city’s homelessness problems. We were totally passionate about our jobs.

Paperwork! Lots of phone calls - no emails. Rent accounting / budgets etc all handwritten - pen and calculator only.

Paging the on call manager.

Staff playing tricks on one another. Lots of humour, lots of it would have you cancelled now. Staff relied on each other and became v close. I think that changed a lot when workplaces introduced hot-desking and WFH.

It was exhausting, emotional and dangerous at times but i loved it and miss those days.

I worked at Morrisons in 2004 and we had a smoke room inside the canteen. It was a clear perspex shed in the middle of the room 😅

Xmas bonus in a brown envelope.

Young people who actually came to work and got on with their job.

These days there's always someone under 30 who isn't in as they're 'overwhelmed' or whatever...

Smoking, drinking on lunch breaks, sexual harassment, inc crude comments, seen as incapable due to looks, ie hired for what I look like, (and yes I proved that wrong) , exc from team evening events as they went to lap dancing bars, which was charged back to the company.

it was a different world back then

Bring on post duty (West End bank). I had a brain fart one afternoon and franked about 50 regular letters with top expensive whatever the postage was at the time.

Bring on post duty (West End bank). I had a brain fart one afternoon and franked about 50 regular letters with top expensive whatever the postage was at the time.