cover your boobs with snowpake and other office stories

[malumbu]

This was a cheeky promotional the typing correction fluid company gave to typing pools 30 to 40 years ago. Tryping pools were a sort of old school word processor/PC.

I want to refer to this in a talk I am going about the changing office. Sadly the only hit in Google was to a social networking site discussing 'models' in a Milton Keynes brothel. There is an intersting parallel to the Sarf London song that Palace and AFC Wimbledon sing about the 'local ladies'.

Anyway miles of track here. Anyone got brief anecdotes about office life in the mid 70s to say mid 90s. No sexist stuff as that is no use for my audience and they were dark days then.

[GSJ57]

I remember that advert!

I could tell you hundreds of anecdotes, but unfortunately they would all be sexist! Our days (at a record company in the mid seventies) were spent seeing who could do out do each other in actress/bishop jokes. There were no barriers either - the directors would joke with the secretaries and vice versa.

I was the telex operator for our company and I was trying to explain to my kids a while back about the ticker tape we used. We had a teleprinter that was a forerunner to a fax machine. Also, the day that all the secretaries got golfball IBM typewriters was very exciting!

[Marmora Man]

The Ministry of Defence in the early 80s rationalised its typing services by establishing an off site "typing pool" in the Midlands. All letters and papers were written in longhand, couriered to the pool, typed, couriered back to the originator in Whitehall, corrected, couriered back to the Midlands, retyped and recouriered back to Whitehall. To avoid too much recycling of work up to two, minor, typos per page were permitted along with a further two snowpaked corrections using biro.

Bear in mind much of this paperwork was classified and required various levels of security controls and supervision. It could take two weeks to compose and post a response to a simple query or report from a ship's Commanding Officer. Delays were endemic and complicated issues would involve months of laborious correspondence. The introduction of computers in the late 80s changed the culture dramatically - tho watching senior officers two fingered pecking and their subsequent confusion with pre GUI computer interface was amusing.

[womanofdulwich]

In 1982 at The Dept of Environment we dictated our letters to the typing pool by the telephone- we dialed different numbers to rewind the tape/playback- it was awful. The letters came back 4 days letter. If there was a mistake and it was urgent we went to the lower ground floor and there was a very quiet room with about 10 women all wired up with earphones to machines typing our letters- You were not allowed to speak to them - you just put your amended letter in a big in tray with "urgent" written on it.

It looked joyless.

[Annette Curtain]

Maybe ask the guys at the carpet shop, or Hamptons International.

I'm sure they're brimming with ripping anecdotes.

[maxxi]

Didn't most hilarious 1970s office anecdotes (that didn't involve a sexist or racist element or a 'Terry-Scott-Style-Situation' concerning dinner with the boss) revolve around forgetting to insert carbons in the typewriter?*

*The under 30s can google this term.

[malumbu]

Thanks for your stories ladies and gents. Apart from Ms Curtan, miaowww.

I'd be interested to hear of non-typing pool stuff - the one about telephone dictating I'd forgotten all about!

Now there were faxes that if you left out in the sun would fade.

Security being a paper pass with no picture of you, or before that just being recognised by the doorman (it always was a man).

Carpet and coal allowances (that really does predate me)

Not using Christian names for your seniors, and having to book meetings with them (if you could get through their secretary, who would do her (and yes it was always a her) best to prevent this happening as she would guard the bosses diary with her life

Hard toilet paper (urggh)

Brown water in one place I worked (supposedly from a well)

Bakelite telephones, already thirty years out of date

Not being allowed post-it pads as we might nick them

It was most exciting when we could do our own photocopying on paper that was, well, the same as normal paper rather than shiny. Back to Terry Scott it was of course an urban myth that we photocopied our backsides or other private areas. A mate and I once photocopied the side of our faces which showed every blackhead and pore. We filed them in the secure safe. I am sure that they are now in the national archives.

Finally something that stopped in the 90s, coming home from the office stinking of fags. And something that stopped in the naughties coming back from lunch, occasionally, stinking of beer (although the fags from the pub hid the smell of alcohol).

Happy days. Well sometimes

[the-e-dealer]

Urban Myth that bums and breasts photocopied? No its not it happened.

[Annette Curtain]

What didn't you like my one ?