How Your Job's Changed

[Bus Honeygun]

I'm normally at home most of the time, but I went into the office yesterday. There are some photos on the wall of our previous offices. We're getting kicked out of this one next year and I started getting nostalgic.

I've been in my job 23 years. When I started, it was mostly paper-based with racks of files and people whose job it was mainly to do that filing. We'd only just been given PCs with internet access. We had flexi-time but with core hours, so there was a lot of clock watching until you were allowed to leave or go to lunch. There was a lot of clock watching in general as the work was quite repetitive and dull and everyone knew what everyone else was doing. The dress code was sort of unspoken. It was pretty casual, but if a man came in wearing shorts in the summer there might be words, depending who his boss was. Twice a day, someone came around with a tea trolley, and twice a day dedicated messengers came round with piles of post. Hundreds of people worked there and you knew who most of them were after a while. Lots of gossip and intrigue, but also a big sense of community. Important union meetings would attract 50-100 people to listen to the branch officers. If it was someone's birthday or someone was leaving or getting married we'd all be in the pub for lunch. Some people would just be in the pub every lunchtime regardless.

I went in yesterday and sat on my own. There are some other people dotted around but I don't know who half of them are or what they do. I can come in when I want and leave when I want. My boss is 400 miles away and I've never met her. My computer sticks in a slot in my rucksack and is light enough to carry to and from work. I guess internet usage is monitored still, but as all my work is online and my job involves searching the internet quite often, I don't know how. I haven't heard of anyone being sacked for spending too much time on the internet in years. Bloke across from me spends all day staring at his phone. My union branch is spread across a whole region. We're not allowed to hold meetings with members on the site but it doesn't matter anyway, because they're all over the place so there's not much point. Nobody comes around with a tea trolley anymore - you won't even get a biscuit if you're an official visitor. If anyone goes to the pub at lunchtime they keep it to themselves. Last week I went out to the post office and picked up some shopping during work time. I didn't have to ask because no one would have known. Even if they did, I'm not sure they would have cared.

Any other streams of consciousness reminiscing from other lifers?

 

[ElizabethofYork]

This is very relevant to me, as I'm retiring today after 28 years in my university admin job. A lot of what you wrote about is very much the same for me.

When I first worked here, it was buzzing all the time. The offices were fully staffed, the open areas were full of people, noise, activity. Going around campus for a walk at lunchtime was very sociable. Our Forum area was staffed by tea ladies serving hot drinks, biscuits and pastries - all free!

Very different now, with most people working from home for most of the week. The offices are quiet and deserted.

The job itself has changed hugely. All the course materials used to be printed out and distributed into the students' pigeonholes. Their assessment marks and comments were also printed out and handed to the students who would queue at the offices. We had huge banks of filing cabinets filled with paper records of everything, and yes, filing papers was a job in itself.

There used to be lots of social events held throughout the year, particularly at Christmas, and there would be lots of boozing and scandal. I'm pretty sure that alcohol isn't allowed at work nowadays.

I had a walk around the buildings yesterday with another long-server, who is also leaving. It was very nostalgic, very emotional and also very enjoyable and self-indulgent.

Anyway, I'd better get on with my last day. I've got something in my eye.

 

[Bus Honeygun]

All the best for your retirement ElizabethofYork.

 

[Elpenor]

I’ve tending to stay at jobs for around five years so I can’t survey what happened over a long tenure at one place. But I can for what I do, as I’ve done the same thing for around 19 years at four different workplaces.

I began work in the computer / internet age. So emails but also a lot of post. Payroll system was archaic - a coin analysis report for ordering currency. A lot of third party payments (eg for court orders, unions etc) made by cheque, these had to be signed by two designated signatories, I had to maintain a signature panel for audit. Most information came in by post in paper format which was a big fraud risk. All payslips paper based and a huge dot matrix printout of payslips was produced and hung off a metal wrack in a locked cupboard. We sent all our data to HMRC at the end of the year electronically, and P45s went via post once a month. Maternity pay was only for 26 weeks, this increased to 39 and paternity pay came in.

Later on I worked for a huge payroll bureau, paying lots of big high street names, if you worked for a company of 500-2000 people there was a fair chance you were our client. Downstairs was a huge printing operation as we had over 1 million payslips a month to produce. As payslips became epayslips, demand shrunk, the printing was outsourced and the output team got made redundant. Everything came in via email and then printed off - most contact with clients over the phone. Towards the end of my time there monthly rather than yearly data submissions to HMRC began and pension auto-enrolment began. A lot of work was outsourced to India based colleagues though we weren’t supposed to admit that.

The next job was a sort of internal shared services role in the European HQ. Again all work via email, and then printed off. Rarely used the phone. Paid very well, corporate, but a grey and dull workplace. I was 10 years too late for the tea and cake trollies. Nice onsite restaurant. The company was gradually shrinking in size as the overseas owners decided Britain was no longer the place for the European HQ which they owned and were trying to sell. left in 2019, and in 2022 my team got made redundant and their jobs were moved to India. Apparently that didn’t go well. Would have been nice to have had the payout I suppose but I couldn’t have stayed there any longer than I did.

My current role has all the work sent via email and most communication by teams. Nothing is printed the work is all stored on network drives. I see my locally based colleagues once a week in the office, though it depends who is in on the day I go in. I’ve not seen my colleagues based on another site all year as there is zero budget for any form of non essential travel. It suits me now but probably wouldn’t have done when I was younger. I am probably better at what I do and certainly better off financially for having worked elsewhere, but also wish I’d worked here my entire career, but that’s the past.

The idea of paying anyone by cheque or printing a paper payslip except for someone leaving now would be ridiculous

Most places I have worked as had a no booze at work policy (social care organisation, my current employer too) and usually been in a business park that people drive to so very few drinking opportunities. Possibly why I’ve not made many work friends. Must be different working in a city centre where you commute by public transport and having a pint on a Thursday or Friday could be a regular thing. Seems my current job used to have bars at all the sites, tea trolleys, that sort of thing but the culture seems to have changed at the end of the 90s.

 

[Winot]

Interesting thread - was talking about this at the weekend. Have been in my profession (niche legal) for 31 years and at present firm for 25 years.

The focus above is more on the social aspect, and there has been a similar shift in my world, although my place is small and was never that sociable.

What I was saying at the weekend though is that despite the technological advances you'd expect (docs on internet instead of having to visit the vaults of the British Library), the nub of the job hasn't changed - I still charge an hourly rate to understand stuff and give advice.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Been doing the same job for >30 years now, different companies, but the change has been organic in so much as I have taken clients with me as I've moved along.

The actual work itself has changed beyond all recognition; used to have voluminous books called Air ABCs, they listed every single IATA operated flight in the world. You could use them to locate the flights that are needed, then call the airline to book the space, hand-write the ticket out and so on. Then along came the GDS, basically the computer systems used by the airlines that we could now access to book flights and tickets would be printed on a printer, then they turned in to carboard tickets. All the time we were agents of the airline, earning a fixed commission on tickets, 9% international, 7.5% domestic. We had a great relationship with the airlines, BA or BMI would give us tickets for all staff + partners to somewhere in Europe (business class) each year to go on a Christmas party, the hotel rooms would be comp'd too. If I ever bought an eco ticket my BA rep would upgrade it, if it were a free ticket they'd sort lounge access. BA produced a brochure of incredible deals for us called Breakaways, flights + 2 nights in Hong Kong for £79, one I did was business class to Washington, 3 nights at the Willard (5* hotel next door to the White House), Concorde back to London, all for £550. I used to do something quite specialised with American Airlines, the head of UK sales would pluck a figure out of his arse if I wanted a ticket, used to go to see a client in New York, then on to Denver for some skiing, business class all the way, he'd say, "Does £200 sound OK? "Was a good time to be a travel agent.

Then in 2000 British Airways changed everything.

They introduced e-tickets, which of course we all use now and you no longer need to be sent a paper ticket or collect a ticket on departure. But the main thing was they scrapped commission. They told us we were no longer their agents but would be the agents of the passengers, we shat ourselves, why would our punters pay us a fee to issue tickets for them? We eventually came up with a scale of fees and wrote to the finance bods of each customer to explain the new situation. We did not hear back from a single one of them, they totally ignored it, could not care less about the fees, they'd just pay whatever we charged. So now all our fares were net fares and we had to add fees, a set amount per flight, but if we had a special deal with an airline on a route we could add a little more. I had been selling net-fare tickets on American Airlines for years, with the explicit role of getting as much as I could for them, but still having to find two passengers a day to fly to New York. I was good at it, very good, I could assess how much someone was willing to pay for a ticket within seconds of speaking to them, this new change was a piece of piss for me, not so easy for other who were used to quote the ticket price and nothing else. Most people still can't manage it. Business boomed.

We still get some goodies from airlines, but nothing at all like we used to, we get FAM trips, which at my level are very nice indeed, always business class and top rooms at the very best hotels, all expenses paid and very boozy with some interesting experiences, but they are essentially short breaks with a bunch of strangers.

Then the internet took off and low-cost carriers came roaring along, again they are just net-fares really, I quote you what's on the the EasyJet website with fifty quid bunged on and you pay me for it. Nowadays the GDS is internet based and I can work from anywhere on a laptop, even over the Atlantic on a flight and no one knows I'm not in my office in Covent Garden. Totally and utterly different to the 80s and 90s, in ways we could not possibly envision back then.

On a human level, the office of the 80s and 90s, all but one of us smoked, at our desks (poor fucking Keri, sat there in the fog, must have been beyond awful for her), ashtrays never emptied, just a mountain of butts in each one. Staff dos like bowling nights or Chinese meals were a monthly thing, all paid for by the company and very boozy. Lots of infidelity going on too and plenty of goss about all that. We seemed to speak to each other a lot more and knew each other's lives much more intimately than these days, maybe cos during quiet times we had no internet to stare at.

The airlines have now come up with something which if it goes through will kill my industry, it won't take full effect for at east another 10 years by which time I'm through anyway, but it spells very bad news for anyone who needs to travel regularly on complex itineraries.

 

[marty21]

I've been in similar jobs since 95 (Social Housing ) When I started, we had paper files , which tbf , were better than current records which are spread across several databases.

The sort of stuff we deal with hasn't changed that much, collecting rent (not currently part of my job) letting flats (don't do as much) dealing with neighbour disputes (big part of my job) dealing with relationship breakdowns , Domestic Violence, disability issues , deaths of tenants, moving folk , repair issues , estate issues , general ASB , Child protection , issues connected with mental health , aging , crime , drugs , alcohol, etc.

What I'll look forward to when I eventually retire (still a few years away) is not having the personal life dramas of multiple people swirling around in my head.

 

[marty21]

My first full-time job was in olden times (1983) in a high st bank , you could smoke anywhere apart from behind the counter dealing with customers (didn't look professional )

In the 90s when I first worked in Local Government, drinking was almost expected , the Town Hall had a bar , run by NALGO/Unison , which offered cheap booze & was open all day
We also had smoking rooms for our union negotiated smoking breaks , 15 mins in the morning/afternoon.

At Housing Associations in the 90s , sometimes , we'd go for a couple of pints at lunchtime, then say fuck it, and not bother going back (luckily my boss was usually there)

 

[Puddy_Tat]

hmm.

i started working in 1986, so never fully experienced the 'pre computer' era - although a couple of jobs after that were small places where there wasn't a computer in the place, or where there was maybe one or two per office not one per desk.

everything on paper, and yards and yards of filing.

i must have been one of the last people to learn to use a telex machine, and remember fax machines being new and exciting.

yes, people smoking in the office. yuk.

and 'page 3' pictures on the wall next to desks being acceptable. yuk again. and racism / sexism / homophobia being far more overt and blatant. first job i had was a firm that had one place in kennington and another in whitechapel. and not a single non-white person on the staff (in 1986)

and lunchtime boozing. couple of my local authority jobs had NALGO bars on or near the premises, so a pint with lunch was fairly standard, a second pint on fridays not unknown. and for that matter bus company i worked at in 1990-ish had a social club with bar that was open lunch times (it was head office / works site not an operational depot, so didn't have bus drivers going there lunch time. or hardly anyone else - i didn't bother often.)

only ever worked at one place with a tea lady / tea trolley service (stoke on trent town hall, which was a bit of a time warp in 1989/90)

had a couple of jobs where i got paid cash weekly. and luncheon vouchers (15p a day's worth - it was some odd thing that that much was tax free, but the amount of 15p a day hadn't been increased for a very long time) another place (small firm) i got paid by cheque which was a pain in the tail as i had to get to the bank and pay it in on a saturday morning.

 

[marty21]

I worked for a Housing Co-op from 2008-9 & got paid weekly by cheque , I quite liked going to the bank on a Friday lunchtime to pay it in

 

[Cloo]

My working life started nearly 25 years ago, I'm now on my 6th job (though two jobs have made 18 years of that).

When I started (publishing) people still weren't reliably using email, even if they had an address - we published a lot of academics. Proofs to editors and proofreader were still sent in hard copy, but towards end of my first job we'd started sending authors proofs in pdf format, and I had to send people an explanation of how to download adobe. We even had one couple who were quite eminent in their field who still typed things on a typewriter.

By my second job in 2003, people pretty reliably did everything by email.

Everyone was in every day 9-5 until my third job around 2004 where we started to see some people work a bit flexibly, in terms of some people needing or preferring to work 10-6, for example. I requested and went 3 days a week for 2 years after my oldest was born then went full time but one day from home (in my case at my parents' house so they could keep an eye on Robin), as remote desktop access was starting to be a thing in 2010.

My next job (started 2013) my whole team were actually only all in the office two days a week, everyone worked 1-3 days a week at home because we were from around the country and they were very relaxed about it. I WFH on Mondays, and usually a few more days during the school holiday. There were attempts to get people to use Yammer/Slack/Teams as a means of intra-office chat but they didn't pick up.

Office attendence did not pick up at all after COVID, and I don't think ever has since, which was one reason I started looking for another job as I do like to get out of the house. It's partly because during lockdown they hired people from all over the country so many teams were nowhere near one another.

By my job before this one, Teams pretty normalised as a way of intra-office chat and had replaced email for brief info exchanges; office was pretty busy because a) it was actually genuinely a really nice place to work and b) was in the West End, so handy if you needed to buy stuff at lunchtime or go out afterwards.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

When I started (publishing) people still weren't reliably using email,

i came close to crashing employer's e-mail system some time ago.

e-mail was relatively new and a lot of organisations still didn't have it, so the e-mail system had a feature where you could write an e-mail, but it would come out the other end as a fax.

one day (as i was about to go on leave for a few days) i sent a 'fax by e-mail' some time in the afternoon, and didn't notice that i didn't get a confirmation message that it had been delivered.

i put my 'out of office' up and buggered off.

at about 3am, the e-mail system gave up trying to send this fax (for whatever reason their line wasn't connected or something) and sent me an e-mail saying it hadn't been able to deliver it.

my e-mail account sent an 'out of office' e-mail.

the e-mail system sent me an e-mail saying 'this isn't a fax, wtf?'

my e-mail account sent an 'out of office' e-mail.

and so on.

i think the number of times this happened was in to 5 figures by the time someone found out and did something to stop it.

 

[Sue]

i came close to crashing employer's e-mail system some time ago.

e-mail was relatively new and a lot of organisations still didn't have it, so the e-mail system had a feature where you could write an e-mail, but it would come out the other end as a fax.

one day (as i was about to go on leave for a few days) i sent a 'fax by e-mail' some time in the afternoon, and didn't notice that i didn't get a confirmation message that it had been delivered.

i put my 'out of office' up and buggered off.

at about 3am, the e-mail system gave up trying to send this fax (for whatever reason their line wasn't connected or something) and sent me an e-mail saying it hadn't been able to deliver it.

my e-mail account sent an 'out of office' e-mail.

the e-mail system sent me an e-mail saying 'this isn't a fax, wtf?'

my e-mail account sent an 'out of office' e-mail.

and so on.

i think the number of times this happened was in to 5 figures by the time someone found out and did something to stop it.

A fax...? I'd explain what they are for the kids except...there aren't any round these parts.

My first job, we used to have to fax things to clients. It was always at 5pm and there'd always be some problem or other.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

A fax...? I'd explain what they are for the kids except...there aren't any round these parts.

in a previous job (maybe about 6 years ago) we got an instruction to de-clutter the office basement (it had reached the limit of the law of physics that says that crud expands to fill the space available) and found one smallish cupboard that had belonged to a now retired colleague that had just been bunged down there when he retired.

it appeared he had been hoarding carbon paper.

we had to explain the function of carbon paper to the youngest member of the team...

 

[Sue]

in a previous job (maybe about 6 years ago) we got an instruction to de-clutter the office basement (it had reached the limit of the law of physics that says that crud expands to fill the space available) and found one smallish cupboard that had belonged to a now retired colleague that had just been bunged down there when he retired.

it appeared he had been hoarding carbon paper.

we had to explain the function of carbon paper to the youngest member of the team...

Hah, I had a similar discussion about printer paper....

 

[8ball]

I got made redundant earlier this year after 24 years at a company and I endorse this thread.

 

[Sue]

I got made redundant earlier this year after 24 years at a company and I endorse this thread.

Hope you got a decent pay off at least.

 

[8ball]

Hope you got a decent pay off at least.

Well, the legal minimum, but it’s kept the wolf from the door during my various surgeries and recovery periods.