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!

Around 1987 the multinational my dad worked for decided to get rid of most secretaries, forcing the 99% male execs to do their own typing. To prepare them they were given a typing tuition game (Mavis Beacon?) and a large Collins dictionary each, which my dad found quite insulting. They kept one secretary per 20 execs and apparently she was happy to work mostly for my dad as he didn't harass her.

Couple years later I worked for a computer firm. We had internal instant messaging and could apply for an email address which we only did when we realised we could then post on Usenet forums. Loads of printing, which involved us students going down to the print room every hour or so and picking up all the printouts, all of which had your ID printed large on a sheet before and after your printing so you knew what belonged to whom. We had terminals which could access up to four mainframes at once - if you needed another window to another mainframe or to use a Unix machine you had to have another terminal. I had three in my cubicle.

Everyone ate in the cheap canteen where half the food was excellent and half terrible, and then most people went to the clubhouse for an hour. The bar was open but drinking at lunch was frowned on except on Fridays.

Worked in labs after that, with on-site subsidised bars (supermarket prices!) and dangerous kit. Around 1997 they stopped opening at lunchtime which was good for the pubs nearby. We also all had coffee breaks in the morning and tea break in the afternoon, about 20 minutes each.

I worked in a high st bank branch from 87-89 and recall the following;

Microfiche
Tea run to bakers shop every morning
Answering the phone, it rang incessantly
Filing cheques and statements
Post run
Franking machine
Tidying the stationary cupboard
Smoking in the office away from public view
Typist who has a hair style like Madge from Neighbours
Filing important docs in the fire safe
Eating lunch in kitchen along with all the smokers

Not long after I left, a computer system was brought in which did away with loads of my tasks (but not the tea run!)

Lots and lots of filing. Everything was on paper. Absolute;y everything. No emails - all letters, memos, minutes of meetings. Lots of typing up dictated letters. ots of feeding blue waxy carbon paper into the typewriter behind the paper to make an extra copy. And more filing.

I'm starting a new job with Flexitime soon! Can't wait.

I worked in IT (or ADP, Automated Data Processing as it was known) in the Civil Service in the 80s. IBM mainframes with dumb terminals and green screens. We used to have to check all the batch work had run overnight by looking at foot thick piles of green lined printer paper.

Program changes would be made by writing the code on special coding sheets, sending them to the typing pool and then you would get a deck of punch cards back for the operators to load in.

The smoking was incredible now I think back. It was just tough if you were sat next to someone who chain smoked. People were certainly beginning to complain about it and eventually we had a smoking room set aside. It was a hotbed of scandal. There were quite a few affairs started between people in that room.

Filing! We would spend hours filing memos and documents and minutes. Every team would have a set of files on different projects. At least you could look back and find memos on who'd said what instead of things being hidden in people's email inboxes.
I found a box of treasury tags in my drawer just this week.

And then there was the shocking sexism...having a meeting/appraisal with HR and being told that if i wanted to progress within the company, i should wear make-up, get a short (more male) hairstyle and she suggested what type of skirt i should wear, if i recall it was a tight fitting one ending just on/above the knee. And oh...the groping in the stationary cupboards...wouldn't dream of reporting it...you'd lose your job!

When I started my articles (training) in 1975 the firm only had one female partner but of course the intakes of trainees were more or less 50/50. A young woman in my batch was summoned in her first week to the presence of the only woman partner and severely rebuked because since she had been offered her articles she had had her ears pierced.

There's only one profession where that is appropriate, my dear, and it's not the one we practice here!

She told the young woman to let her hair grow to cover it up. What she would have said about my present trainee who has her nose and her tragus pierced I just can't imagine.

I remember business travel flight tickets which were handwritten on flimsy paper.
And huge index card holders on desks for phone numbers.
And learning all the function keys for operating our Wang word processor. I still prefer to use many of the keyboard shortcuts learned in days of yore to the mouse.

As a young lawyer in the early 1980s, I remember how exciting it was when we got our first computer for legal research. It had an actual telephone modem that sat in a cradle and made all sorts of noises as it hooked up to the data bases. It was clunky and not particularly user friendly, but I loved working with it.

And yes, yes to the keyboard commands for word processing in the pre-mouse days. I hated the mouse when first learning it, just as I hate every new version of Word.

Slightly off topic, but we got Luncheon Vouchers.

Oh treasury tags ..I love them, short long, medium, with little rubber spacers without ... happy days.

Simple question that I am probably an idiot not to know, but why was the early computer made as paper green and white bands?

Was it just our NHS office or did you all have you names written on card and sellotaped to the end of your pen, pencil, ruler.and on top of your hole punch and stapler?
(Maybe we works for a very anal manager)

Oh yes I remember when our office got a computer. Only one mind you and our boss had it. We were in awe. And he didn't have a clue how to use it

After several reports suggesting it, we have moved this thread over to MN Classics now.

why was the early computer made as paper green and white bands?

Partly to make it more readable, I always assumed, especially since I've had to read through output on paper like that which wasn't lined at all.

My first office job (2004) was in an office where everyone smoked at their desk. On my first day I was shown my desk, the photocopier and asked to select an ashtray from the kitchen.
They were astounded I diddnt smoke.
I always wonder how the smoking ban hit them, was only 2 years later.

Started in 1957. I took letters down in shorthand. Typed on a big imperial typewriter. Used correction fluid if you made a mistake. Answered the phone, did some filing. A couple of years later took rents in cash, marked them down in a book and typed survey reports while answering the telephone.

Oh treasury tags ..I love them, short long, medium, with little rubber spacers without ... happy days.

We still have them in this house! They're great little things.

Did they even have correction fluid in 1957?

The first time I came across it was in 1977.

I had luncheon vouchers in my first job in 1982!

Used a manual typewriter to type letters. Mistakes had to be tippexed and used carbon paper to make copies during typing.

Lots and lots of filing. Lots of telephone calls. Walking from one dept to another searching for things.

Hospital records were a nightmare to work in pre computer. I think offices were more social though because lack of email meant talking to your colleagues more.

Cigarette breaks were fun too. We used to have smoking rooms or just smoke in the office.

Been thinking about this thread whilst fighting the masses in Tesco.

I may be very naïve but I cannot remember anyone going off with stress back then.
Or long term sick. I suppose there must have been though.

I remember a colleague who once told about the early days, when he was a computer programmer and there were only three compilations a day, morning, midday, and evening. They typed out the program lines on punch cards. He hurried with his little box of cards to be in time for the lunch compilation, but tripped and fell and all the cards were spread out at random on the floor. (It would be the equivalent for a programmer to have a random number generator reshuffle all the coded lines inside a program). He then spent days or at least hours trying to recapitulate and sort his program lines/cards.... This was the most awful memory he had out of a thirty year (or more) career as a programmer, he told us.

Eastmids
I may be very naïve but I cannot remember anyone going off with stress back then. Or long term sick. I suppose there must have been though.

Employment rights were much weaker.
They were just fired.

or got the doctor to write something else on the sick note.

Rumor had it, that one man at the office I worked in (early 90s) had been signed off for two weeks after his wife died suddenly. He had young kids to care for and the 3 days' leave he was given didn't cover what time he needed.

Then, a couple of years later he applied for a promotion, having been a consistent reliable employee ever since. He got turned down because his mental health problems would make him unable to take the pressure of the job!

I knew him/the company well enough to think this was probably true, but obviously never saw the HR files. So, I can't say for sure that it was true, but this kind of story was very normal.

I keep coming back to this thread, because I have a real nostalgia for the way work used to be. Jobs were way more physical before IT took over - even clerical jobs. Lots of wandering around, filing, looking for stuff, going to the post office etc. It's no surprise that the obesity epidemic took off at the same time as jobs became almost entirely sedentary.

I long for an 'old style' job like the ones I used to have. I miss sitting on a stool in a smoky kiosk, reading a novel while waiting for the next customer. I miss pricing up tins of beans with a gun. I miss folding, cutting and sticking paper, and going on errands, and doing the 'ring round' for orders in the morning.

I miss easy work