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?

Being interviewed for an internal new role and being asked when I was going to start family.

Working in a shop at age 14 earning £1.50
per hour.

I worked in an office in the west end, very young training in a professional role. Being asked by
my boss at interview when I was going to start a family…Dear god. And as you can imagine women could only wear skirts or dresses.,fax machines used all the time with one mobile phone shared between the team of ten people. Common to be drinking at lunchtime.
Bitchy women in the typing pool and in professional roles sneering at all the women in the office about their appearance or clothes, misogynistic men running the office, working all hours- presenteeism was a thing. You can guess there was no HR dept. It was wild.

Stilettoes-before my time, but I'm told women did usually wear them.
Ties.
More time spent on work than moaning.
HR involvement being very rare.
Happy people laughing.
Meeting the man/woman you'll marry, and getting a massive group of friends.
Watching a quiz show in the break/sharing newspapers/magazines.
People being relaxed, friendly and efficient.
People being less snappy/mean.
Smoking.
A no trainer rule.

Oh god yeah. Drinking at lunchtime. I had one too many gins came back and was sick in the desk (honest truth(.
My boss said everyones allowed one mistake toy just had yours - I'd been there 2 months!
😶

Oh god yeah. Drinking at lunchtime. I had one too many gins came back and was sick on the desk (honest truth)
My boss said everyones allowed one mistake you just had yours - I'd been there 2 months!
😶
Gotta love the old days x

When you didn't trust the other party so you'd call them and make them stand by fax machine while you sent it.

Omg
X

Messengers in our company who would take paperwork across to different offices in the town or deliver within the same building.
Always lovely guys with good banter.

Can't imagine there's such a role anymore which is a shame x

Lotis123 I'd forgotten that.
And yes the internal mail envelopes just cross the name off and write the next one on.
Simple times. I miss them.
😀

Men talking to your breasts.
Oh yes. 🙄

Drinking at lunchtime and the mid morning and mid afternoon tea trolley!

Going to the pub at lunchtimes and not going back to the office (definitely on a Friday).
Switching from Telex to fax machines.

I worked in a bar and we were allowed to smoked behind the bar while serving!

A written memo that contained information we all needed to know. You received it, read it, ticked off your name and then passed it to someone else to read. In the days before email. Oh how I wish it was still like this!!

i remember having a smoking room at work. Where all the good gossip was to be heard.

not being allowed to wear trousers.

being asked in an interview, when I planned to start a family!

Fax machines.

People being allowed 'smoking breaks' inside a dedicated room.

Men calling women 'names of endearment'.

Men squeezing behind you if you were in the photocopier room which was the size of a box room.

'Wolf-whistling'.

Team meetings in the pub.

Everyone having their own printer on their desk.

A 20 minute screen break every hour.

People dressed very smart.

At one job I worked at we had to greet the boss with 'Good Morning/Afternoon Mr Thompson ONLY if he spoke to you first. On my first day, one of the women took me to one side and said "As you are a young woman, Mr Thompson may ask you if you are wearing tights or stockings, don't take it personally".
If 'Mr Thompson' wanted a drink, he would phone whoever he wanted to (always a female), to go into his office and pour him a drink from the drinks cabinet in his office.
'Mr Thompson' also used to slap your bottom. Honestly, it was like 'The Benny Hill Show' there!

Internal Mail.

Confidential Waste - bagged up and left in the reception area for a truck to collect it days later.

Having a Tea/Coffee trolley round. The 'tea lady' used to save the best biscuits for you if you were nice to her.

That’s interesting - it obviously varied widely from organisation to organisation

When i started work there were women on term time only contracts.
We had team competitions in the team meeting as a bit of fun.

A youngish lad came into work at weekends to write dodgy books and got caught and sacked - saved them on the work network.

Other staff came in at weekends and stole peoples headsets.

Our boss was really mean and made 2 people quit. 1 had to go to the union and i moved dept.

The AFOWC- Air Force Officers’ Wives Club was not yet the AFOSC - Air Force Officers Spouses Club

Dress blues uniform was a skirt with midi-heel pumps..until 2020 when trousers were finally allowed.

Oh, and it was illegal to be gay or bi

Late 80’s early 90’s worked for a high street catalogue company and we weren’t allowed to wear trousers. One manager used to send you up a ladder to get stock from the top shelf while he stood at the bottom holding the ladder!
One man pushed a brush shaft between my legs and then sniffed it, the manager just laughed.

No smoking in our 90s offices

we did have full suits.

one copy of computer manuals for the entire office and they took up many shelves. We had an in-house library. There was at least 3 feet of shelf space for every programming language we used. If we didn’t know how to do something or didn’t know the exact syntax for something we had to walk down to the library and figure it out.

filing cabinets. I had a part-time students admin job at university processing graduate student applications. My job was to collect all the mail with the various pieces of paper that came in for each applicant. We needed transcripts and letters of recommendation. International applicants had additional requirements. Every person had their own folder. It was a labor intensive process. I would call people who were missing documents.

going to the library or the courts to do research. I can’t remember the last time I had to physically look up precedent
or articles.

Even in the early 00s I worked in an office that relied on pigeon holes and written/printed/faxed memos as a way of communicating!

Smoking room at my part time job in a supermarket was rank. Even though it was a brand new building, the ceiling in that room was already yellow a month or two in.

Also, some of these 90s things were still going strong in the NHS finance department I joined in 2012 - a tea trolley, fax and internal mail all still happening!

Smoking in the office.

In the 1980s I worked in a busy library where people had to pay fines for overdue books. We were supposed to give out ticket receipts but no one ever waited for them. That meant the cash was up every night. We kept the excess in a tin called "Staff fund" and used it to buy drinks in the pub on Saturday lunch time. No one ever had to pay for their own drinks, tea or coffee.

We often found very strange things left in books presumably as bookmarks. Condoms were quite common. So were bank notes. I once found a fried egg in a book.

Another time a man peed in the corner behind some shelves and a rather shocked reader came to tell me. The man was gone by then so I just called the janitor to clean it up. There would be a whole witch hunt now.