A thread of old-fashioned office procedures no longer used

[bhaexpress]

Hold on, can you explain yourself. Who have I lied about? I'm lost.

That crap about me saying something about Hitler, with a small mind like yours I can understand how you forgot. Still seeing as you took a 'difficult' degree I suppose memory isn't important to you.

 

[bhaexpress]

I remember compiling Cobol programs on a Cromemco "micro" with twin 8" floppy drives. No other drives. Verbatim floppies used to become see-though if you used them too much.

Yes they used to leave their oxide on the read heads as did tapes. What about disk packs ?

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Stationary monitors who you used to have to ask if you wanted something out of the ordinary, like a bigger envelope. The conversation would go something like this:
'Could I have a brown envelope big enough to post this in please?'
'Ah you mean an EV(L)209'
'Well if you say so, I just call it a brown envelope big enough to post this in'
'What do you want it for?'
'I want to post this out in it'
''That would probably fit in an EV(L) 207, as we are getting short on EV(L)209s'
'Please can I just have an envelope'
'Sign in the 3 places marked with a cross'

Although this was in the civil service at an office overpopulated with dunderheads, so this may be just a personal experience.

Nope, that was exactly the same experience I had (at the Paymaster General's Office in Crawley). It was my first ever job since leaving school and I just couldn't get my head round how they were actually deadly serious about that stuff. In the end I just took to writing more and more sarky/flowery requests for stationery and ran screaming out the door after about 11 months. It was like a very slow form of death. You could feel the life-force draining out of you.

 

[Fungus]

What about disk packs ?

You mean like the disk packs on Burroughs mini computers, that suddenly went "weeeeeeeeee" and lost all your data?

 

[Lankyseagull]

As I work in an Architect's office, the following:

Drawing in pen and ink on tracing paper.
Correcting mistakes by carefully scratching out with a Wilkinson Sword razor blade.
Drawing boards, paralell motions, set squares, circle templates, lettering stencils.
Transtext for applying specification notes to drawings.
Letraset lettering and symbols.
Plan chests for keeping tracing paper negatives in, flat so that they didn't get damaged.
The dye-line printing machine that used an ammonia solution that made you nauseous if using it for prolonged periods of time.
Planning Officers that you were able to pick up the phone to speak to about applications.
Builders who actually respect what Architects do and not see them as a necessary evil.
Realistic timescales to get drawing packages completed.
Simple Building Regulations!

I think that's enough for now........

 

[Gwylan]

A slight diversion this but how many journos remember working in the days of typewriters, galleys and hot metal?

When I started working, using PCs and electronic page make-up was a form of science fiction. Gradually, we all went over to PCs or Macs and started using Quark Xpress but I still remember being a freelance sub in the mid-90s and going into a new office to discover that pages were still made up by hand. I had to dust off my depth scale and lay out galleys again - it was like being young once more.

The postscript is that the company eventually went down the Xpress route - sad, it was fun while it lasted.

 

[Tristram Fourmile]

Nat West bank in the 80's used to keep a log book for sending faxes. You had to write down the destination number and get it signed off by one of the numerous mid level branch managers before sending the fax.

Nat West also had a special old fashioned data telephone on a high shelf that no one was allowed to touch or you'd cause the network connection to the data centre to crash. If it rang you had no idea what to do.

Answering the phone to customers who always wanted to speak to the manager. It was a balancing act to try and get why they wanted the manager out of them in case it was an old pal or golf buddy. Manager of Haywards Heath branch in 1986 was the biggest c@nt I ever met and terrified me. He had a false leg, made it even worse.....

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Nat West bank in the 80's used to keep a log book for sending faxes. You had to write down the destination number and get it signed off by one of the numerous mid level branch managers before sending the fax.

Speaking of banks, when you wanted to take some foreign currency out of the country, as you do, the banks had to make a note of the amount you'd ordered in the back of your passport.

 

[Tristram Fourmile]

Speaking of banks, when you wanted to take some foreign currency out of the country, as you do, the banks had to make a note of the amount you'd ordered in the back of your passport.

And Jan the lady who worked solely on the Foreign Till, would only ever do the one job, and would serve customers whilst smoking a fag. Obviously more call for your currency pre Euro days, but it still didnt warrant her doing naff all else when no one wanted Turkish Lira or Pesetas in November, and the local Fine Fare was banking its weekend cheque takings consisting of over 1000 cheques first thing on a Monday morning.

 

[Rambo]

Sticking a stamp on a letter

I always found sticking them on the envelope was far more productive.

 

[WATFORD zero]

As a very young engineering apprentice in the mid 70s, i seem to remember the middle aged women on the production having a few lively procedures. They never trained us for that at School road

 

[crasher]

A slight diversion this but how many journos remember working in the days of typewriters, galleys and hot metal?

When I started working, using PCs and electronic page make-up was a form of science fiction. Gradually, we all went over to PCs or Macs and started using Quark Xpress but I still remember being a freelance sub in the mid-90s and going into a new office to discover that pages were still made up by hand. I had to dust off my depth scale and lay out galleys again - it was like being young once more.

The postscript is that the company eventually went down the Xpress route - sad, it was fun while it lasted.

That was a bit before my time but when I was a trainee reporter we got taken to see the last working hot metal paper in the country - the Winchester "whatever it was". A room full of linotype operators - like a working museum.

At my first paper we were bang up to the minute with little Tandy computers - we had to queue up to use the modem when we wanted to file.

 

[Hiney]

Speaking of banks, when you wanted to take some foreign currency out of the country, as you do, the banks had to make a note of the amount you'd ordered in the back of your passport.

Banks were right up there with meaningless and obscure office procedures.

I worked for HSBC (Midland Bank as it was then) in the 70s and we had to make sure our tills balanced to the EXACT PENNY at the end of the day. You had to keep your till under lock and key and if it didn't balance, you had to stay behind with the Accountant, Accountant's Assistant or Assistant Accountant until it was found. It was a long time before they twigged that it often cost more in overtime than the amount of the actual till difference. No wonder Midland Bank went down the shitter in the early 80s.

The Stationery Room was another throwback.................................

The memories. Petrina Summerfield, where are you now?

 

[Poyetry In Motion]

When I started work at the Alliance and Leicester,Hove Park in 1987 they still used internal memos called 'Ping Pongs'. Long before the days of email of course

 

[Norman Potting]

Someone I know who works in recruitment had a strip-o-gram for a leaving do. The company set up a spoof interview and the stripper played the part of a job applicant......

The only time I was the "victim" of one of these she was about 5' in all dimensions and dressed as a traffic warden, later a Basque (why is an item of underwear named after a region of Spain). I still occasionally wake up screaming at the memory.

 

[Cian]

Company cars. Must be long gone by now.

We still have them in work for certain staff (including me) but they're creaking and so heavily branded that I've got my own car.

Faxes

Used heavily every day in work, but seeing as the sector we supply only saw the back of the telex a few years ago...

Multi part proformas - white for the customer, pink for accounts, yellow for sales and blue for the files! Happy days!

Still use those too...


Sometimes its hard to think its actually an IT firm.

 

[Goldstone Rapper]

When was the heyday of Dymo tape?

 

[Cian]

When was the heyday of Dymo tape?

Still in use in every IT department in the country for labelling patch panels and network ports. Its not embossed and doesn't cut your fingers anymore though.

 

[severnside gull]

some years ago I worked for Brighton Council and one of my jobs was keeping the ledgers apportioning officers' time to capital building projects. Not only were there no computers but we only had one comptometer (a hand cranked calculator the size of a phone directory......................... it was also before battery or solar powered pocket calculators) and of course as office junior I didn't get access to it. So the ledger was tallied using mental arithmetic, pencilling in the numbers before double checking then inking them in. Only then did the senior clerk check my workings by machine. Hard to believe that 1970 was so "dark ages" technologically speaking.


I can still add up a page of 60+ numbers and decimals faster in my head than my kids can on a calculator

 

[Fungus]

Nat West bank in the 80's used to keep a log book for sending faxes. You had to write down the destination number and get it signed off by one of the numerous mid level branch managers before sending the fax.

At GRIP in the late 70's, there was a great bloke called Reg, and his full-time job was to operate the Xerox machine, and get everyone to sign his chart when they wanted a copy.