For those of you who worked in an office in 1960's - 1980's

[Choccyhobnob]

The childhood memories thread reminded me of something I have wondered for years!

I work in an office and have done for the last 12 years. I have never known a time before emails and photocopiers.

My question is this - what did you actually do? I just can't imagine how office life worked back then and I'm really interested!

Thank you for indulging my perhaps naïve questions!

I worked in the civil service mid -80s. What was the machine that printed stuff out on ticker tape but almost in Braille? Was it a telex? It made a very loud clunking sound?

To estimate the number of unemployed we would put all the record cards in a filing drawer and push them back as far as they would go. Then count them and do the same to the other drawers but estimate whether they looked more or less and by how much! All guess work.
The retail price index was some little clerical assistants going to the local supermarkets and noting down the price of a set number of essential purchases. We never went to a cafe and made up the prices. The rate of inflation was worked out using this.

Was multimate a pc package, ringing a bell

Laughing at some of the memories this is bringing back.

I trained as an accountant. We were so excited when our department of 30 people was given 4 "portable" Macintoshes to take out to client sites. Portable? - they must have been at least 3 ft cube and so heavy. We werent allowed to take a taxi so had to drag them to the tube.

@Jasmine, if it's RPG/400 and not RPG/4000 you mean, then yes! Wikipedia: "RPG/400 was effectively RPG III running on AS/400."

In those days, to be able to type up documents and presentations, you had to know how many spaces there were across a page, and so work out how many spaces to put in so that you could start in the middle of the page. Or if you wanted to do a table, you had to count all the characters that you were going to need to type, to be able to work out how wide your table was going to be/how wide your columns were going to be

I loved doing that.

In those days, to be able to type up documents and presentations, you had to know how many spaces there were across a page, and so work out how many spaces to put in so that you could start in the middle of the page

You missed a trick there. You set a tab to the centre of the page, move your carriage to the centre and then count backwards doing one back space for every two characters/spaces. So if you wanted to centre the title "word heading", you'd go to the centre and then six back spaces (as "word heading" is 12 characters/spaces).

Everything you typed had to be to a set pattern, e.g. if doing a block form address you would type the county - full stop - six spaces and then the post code! Two line spaces between 'Dear Sir' and the Subject line, and six line spaces between 'Yours faithfully' and the name of the sender (underlined!). Once learnt, never forgotten - I still do it!!

Ah yes, @Kazzyhoward - I'd forgotten about the tab stops!

It's interesting how you've said about things taking longer because they weren't WYSIWYG - we're all being encouraged to use LaTeX now, which isn't.

I really liked using microfiche at university, it hurt my eyes much less than hours on a computer (and the lovely librarian who looked after the microfiche collection used to give me toffees! I don't think many people went down there).

I worked in a reception at a college and was jack of all trades as far as secretarial work was concerned. I was trained as a Senior Secretary so was proficient in shorthand typing but was required to do audio typing as well (which I'd never been trained for!) so learnt that as I worked. I deputised for both the Principal's and V-Ps secretaries as well as typing lecture notes onto lithograph paper. I was also in charge of sending the post. I had to stand in for my colleague, who manned the switchboard, so when 2 of them were off at the same time I had my work cut out! I loved that job

I remember centring something by going to the middle and back spacing half the characters to be typed!
You can also tell when someone's been "properly" trained because they put two spaces after a full stop although I suspect a lot of people do that now because it puts the full stop in for you but maybe this is where the idea came from

DP worked for the Civil Service in the 1970s. Apparently as well as a daily tea trolley, featuring free tea and cakes/biscuits, every day after lunch a trolley would come round with soap and flannels for people to have a post-lunch freshen up.

Triple entry book keeping - a civil service speciality that is luckily long gone

Alpha - YES! RPG 400/as400. I was unemployed at the time and the local job centre were offering training in it for free, they said it paid tons once you were all trained up. Something happened, I can't remember but I never made it for training. Since then, I've always wondered how life may have turned out if only I had training in RPG400 . It sounded so unique, so out there!...and you've shattered that dream , thank you .

Davros - I had forgotten about the centring by counting back. Goodness it was all so tedious!

The double space after a full stop - hahahahaha I got cross with my daughter today when I saw her homework on the laptop. There were NO spaces.
"Two spaces,..you put two spaces! How many times do I have to tell you?"

Mum I was a temp kitchen hand in one job and as part of my duties I was the tea trolley lady :) Never, in any job, have I felt so appreciated

Jasmine, I can tell a story from my old workplace, some few years ago now, but not too many. I heard this on the grapevine. The group still went on programming whatever serious administrative program it was they were programming in the RPG IV language (through a tool initially called Synon/2) and people who knew it were pretty scarce but this big industry had machines running on it still, and just had to have the work done. One day I heard they'd find someone they could hire, he'd learned the language at a young age, ages and ages ago, like you could have done. Now, he was nearly 60 and after a long career doing something completely difference, he had found himself now to be a long-term unemployed, as easily can happen at that age. He hadn't worked with the tool for years and years, but still knew the grips, of course, much in the same way you do when once learning to ride a bicycle for instance. They hired him on the spot. Not only did he get a new job at nearly 60, but also he found he was the youngest member on the team And I think there was some good money in it, too.

^different ... argh.

alpha & jasmine my DH used MUMPS very briefly about 40 years ago and still has agencies contacting him about jobs. Ditto COBOL.

He's been retired for 2 years.

One major high-street bank still has some parts of its system written in COBOL.

Alpha - My sides are hurting with laughter that's a fab story. One can't help but wonder, what was this serious administrative program?
And the lucky old guy who saved them in the end!. That's really made my day.

FineSally - Not you too! I used to work on the NHS patient system (Exeter) yrs ago which was developed in MUMPS! I wonder wether the NHS still use It? anyways...many happy memories of it, and it was good pay too! Exeter administrators were quite well respected in those days

This thread should be nominated for classics.

@JasmineOill - read the whole thread - it was nominated, and has been moved to, Classics some time ago!

I had some lovely temp jobs during holidays when I was a student - the temp agency was a fancy Knightsbridge outfit and their clients were all terribly naice. There was the gentleman who required a cup of lapsang souchong at specified intervals during the day and not much more - he wore tweed in town. The ad agency who had me in for three weeks on a holiday cover during which time I must have answered the phone about four times and done virtually nothing else (I do wonder whether the people I was covering for ever got found out?). The PR agency who supplied free cigarettes for meetings (they had tobacco company clients and their staff needed to be seen smoking the right brand during meetings) - we were actively encouraged to smoke.

Nobody's mentioned the DX - weird lawyer only courier service. In fact couriers - god how much cash used to be spent on couriers! that's a business that has died since email meant you could scan over entire colour plans / presentations etc.

The DX still exists. Apparently it's. cheaper than Royal Mail.

BIWI - that's great I obviously missed some pages.