Generation Z colleagues not taking their job seriously? Sit down and terrify them with tales of a primitive time when the working conditions were as antiquated as the haircuts:
The reliance on fax machines
You think the photocopier’s insanely large and impossible to reload? Once we had a device called the fax machine, the Satanic spawn of a cantankerous printer and a vengeful, screeching demon trapped in a landline. Everything important had to be sent over the unreliable monster including your timesheet. Sent it wrong? No money for you.
Endless paper
Where do arriving faxes go? Your in-tray. And once you’ve laboriously entered their data? Your out-tray. What about the ones that are a bit hard? Someone else’s desk. Where does this leave your working environment? As choked with paper as the scene in Harry Potter where a million letters come down the chimney.
Cubicle servitude
Hot desking is the modern hell, but being fenced in with furry corkboards was a more taunting torture. No amount of faded family photographs pinned to these barriers could replace the longing for the world outside or stop hours dreaming of the scent of grass, the feel of sunshine, the memory of any colour other than grey.
Tippex was real
Amending a form? There’s no delete in this world. Instead, open yourself up to a lifetime of substance abuse by cracking open the potent biohazard called Tipp-ex. Nearly the worst of all the white liquids, it fixed imperfectly, took too long to dry and made it look like a pigeon had shat on your suit. But combined with a photocopier made forgery easy.
No personal phone use
Not your mobile phone, they didn’t exist. The phone that sat on your desk all day, that you spent all day making calls from, was as closely monitored for personal calls as your internet is today. Make one quick call to your bank and you’d be given a verbal warning and made to pay back 45p.
Territorial stationery wars
In the bygone land of analogue, every paperclip was precious. Feeling emotionally attached to a specific stapler was normal, as was the need to label your own personal hole punch and stroke it lovingly. Until one morning you came back and it was all gone, raided and scattered across a floor’s worth of desks and you never trusted again.
Of course.
Fax machines were still unheard of when I had my first corporate job. Telex was the modern way to go. And being low man on the totem poll, I was the one who had to use it. I also remember the supply closet filled with reams of paper. And no recycling. I HATE cubicles. My last job no one had an office except the VP (other officers were in another state). It was awful. And, yes, the phones! Just thinking of all this again, I think I need a pill!
ReplyDeleteI remember faxes, but not Telex - and I vividly remember the very first computer we had in the office. It was an Amstrad PCW, with two floppy drives (one for the boot/operating system, and the other for the (ahem) wonderful range of programs you could use including LocoScript). Oh, how we cheered when the new-fangled PCs arrived, complete with Windows 3.1 (in colour!)... Jx
DeletePS Oh, yes - the phones! Luckily, like all workplaces, it was a smoking office, so one had time to light up a fag before taking a tiresome call.
When I left work I took my calculator, hole punch, and stapler with me - they all have my name on them.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I loved playing Ultimate Forger with the Tippex and photo-copier - I still use those skills today!
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And I was once put in charge of ordering stationery due to being the lone female in the office - unfortunately my first order went a bit wrong and we didn't have enough cupboards to store all the Post-It notes that arrived. I thought I was ordering 20 blocks, but instead it was 20 blocks of 100. They were still using them 5 years later when I left. Well, it probably saved them money in the long-term. And they gave the ordering job to someone else.
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"Stapler wars" were always "a thing". We never had lockers in my first few jobs, just our own desks, and inevitably someone would always nick the only decent one - hence Tipp-ex had a dual use; to add one's initials on the top in order to claim it forever! I often spend time hot-desking in our Legal department, and I have noticed that those battles over stationery still continue to this day. Jx
DeletePS I love the "stationery order mix-up" story - we all have one, I'm sure! [The girl in our office who places such orders only recently "forgot " to look at the measurements of some plastic boxes that were intended to allow us to easily move locker contents from one office to another, and we ended up with a stack of huge storage boxes that wouldn't have looked out-of-place on the shelves of Wilko (RIP).]
I knew someone in our class at school who used to paint her discoloured teeth with Tipp-ex followed with a layer of clear nail varnish.
ReplyDeleteI imagine her parents were proud. Jx
DeleteLordy, but I'm old! I remember TELEX, also sending and receiving faxes on a dedicated machine, desk phones with cords, labeling my stapler, staple remover, 3 hole puncher, scissors, pencil/pen cup, it seemed that everything on my desk was labeled! Oh, I also had a candy jar on my desk! LOL I started with PC's, then we went MAC. My last office gig I worked on a PC. Don't get me started on stationary and business cards! Ah yes, and the squabble over titles, nameplates, office doors, hell, even office location! Good times! xoxo
ReplyDeleteI worked with a chap who was so meticulous, he had his desk set up with everything "just-so" - in/out trays on the left, followed by phone, monitor, pen-holders separated into blue, black, red and one for pencils, a box for the stapler, hole punch and calculator, then the PC unit. He went on holiday for a fortnight - and as a joke, we meticulously reversed the whole set-up from left to right!
DeleteHis face on his return was a picture... 🤣🤣 Jx
No wonder someone thought a TV show about an office would work!
ReplyDeleteI worked for a dentist so the only office work was answering the 'phone, making appointments and...typing monthly accounts, on a clunky old behemoth.
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Not even a FAX?? Gosh...
DeleteI bet you had a Rolodex, though. And a huge filing cabinet or several! Jx
'I have run out of paper, Can you fax me some over from your office'
ReplyDeleteLove the Mash and perhaps the good old days were not that good.
There's certainly more room in offices these days without all that paper. Jx
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