Annie - you made me laugh!

I remember posting press releases out to journalists, with only some of them willing to accept faxes.  And that was only 16 years ago.  I remember journalists shouting at us for emailing them (from the one computer in the office that had a communal email address).  And journalists used to attend press conferences in those days.  Oh and the lunches were very boozy if you went out with older journos, but the younger ones were always grateful if you just went for the mineral water - cos they still had an afternoon's work to do.

Now if I posted a press release to a journalist they'd think I was odd.  If I faxed it to them, the cleaners would put it in the bin a few days later.  Even when I started at the CIPD (8 years ago today) we still faxed all our press releases - and carted a fax machine up to Harrogate for the purpose.

But I've never worked in a smoking office.  Or had to do work on a manual typewriter.  (Although I have a colleague who shall remain nameless who hammers his keyboard like it was one - can't break the habit ... you can hear him on other floors!).

Loving the thread. And do read John's report that kicked it off.

Rob

My first job was an admin position using a manual typewriter, carbon paper and those funny bits of tippex paper that Gemma mentions.  The company was a food stores firm run by a family (Budgens if anyone remembers them) and lots of circulars, paperwork and other similar stuff were sent to the stores so there was always a last minute flurry with stuffing papers into pigeon holes.

As for email: during my first training role in 1994 my employer at that time was rolling out Lotus ccMail and everyone started to grapple with the concept of a message mysteriously disappearing into the ether before appearing on someone's screen.  One employee was totally unconvinced about the whole thing and told me she would still print out a copy of the message and pop it into the internal mail ...  Aaaaaaaaarrgh!

And one other thing which has changed altho' I'm deviating slightly - the nuisance factor of shops closing early on Wednesdays and NEVER being open on Sundays!  How did we cope?????  :-D

I too remember the manual typewriter, carbon paper.....and never mind the luxury of tippex and tippex paper....we had to use special typewriter erasers.  You certainly had to remember to put extra paper between your carbon paper and the paper underneath if you wanted to make a correction.

The day I left secretarial college was the day they got their first word processor....and it was a mammoth thing, with keyboard attached to the screen, but it was wonderful.  We only had a short demonstration, no time to use it.

Then in the world of work, yes the golf ball typewriter, then the daisy wheel.....then a sort of typewriter *** basic word processor, telexes sent to the telex room.  And then things got better.....no more carbon copies - photocopies instead, computers, emails, internet. No more shorthand......peeps responsible for their own correspondence (I still cringe when I see a letter incorrectly set out).   Ah the youth of today....they have it sooooo easy :)

Giving my age away - but my first job was sending & receiving  morse code messages in the RN. And this often meant copying them directly onto a typewriter. Thanks to the RN I'm a competent touh typist and still remember learrning to type to music in a class of twenty of us with 20 carriage returns clashing in unison.

Carbon paper  to duplicate and no tippex then.

Transmitters and receivers were  the size of domestic cookers and communications was often a trial and unreliable.

 The first 'mobile 'phone ' I saw was being used was in Scarborough by some guy with black curly hair and a shell suit - it must have been the size of the box they put fine whiskey in.  He was telling the other person that, "Yeh, I'm in Scarborough doing a bit of shopping".  

I probably only  dreamt you'd be able to stand in a street  one day and talk to someone else in another street, in some far off country, using something the size of a few business cards.

Ah yes, Clare....the hole in the paper.  And the brush thing at the end of those pencil erasers.   And did you have to do that thing in exams where, if the document you were typing had a table in it, you typed your horizontal lines then you had to take the paper out of the typewrite, turn it round 90 degrees, line it up correctly so you could type your vertical lines.....with no space between where the lines joined.  Cheats way (when not in exam situation) was to type the horizontal lines and then do the vertical lines with black biro and ruler :)  And as for having to retype the whole document if your boss changed his (unlikely her) mind re perhaps one sentence.....grrrr

On a serious note, guess we can all see now that the typing pool was a waste of money when peeps can do their own typing, but I guess also there was some anti-feeling at the time, doing people out of their jobs etc.  We have similar today- online banking has resulted in a reduction of workforce (can't remember when I  last spoke to someone over the counter in a bank) and as for self-checkout in the supermarkets....still a long way to go with that, but it will be the norm in the future, and people will still groan about technology doing people out of jobs.  But where would we be without technology?   Any Luddites out there?

(Steve...are you aiming for a record high of posts on a thread?  Think you might achive on this.)

Ahh... tip-pex (or should I say 'correction fluid', as Blue Peter would probably say). I used to get through a lot of that. The 'brush' used to fray and leave high ridges on application forms and the like. (I believe these have now been replaced by dabber thingimys (technically speaking).

@Sandra - that will happen in the next iteration. Definitely. I'm making the case :)

Steve 

@Nicky- I was having a similar chat with my kids re homework recently. My stories of 'going off and looking it up in a book' were completely alien to the Google generation.

I am enjoying the memories of typewriters and holes in paper- I can feel the lingering frustration! In my last job (barely 5 years ago) I used to deal with a company that had no email, an antiquated fax machine, and still wrote invoices out by hand. Going to their site was like stepping back 20 years. Sort of comforting, in an odd way!

I worked for a family run department store when I was a student and it always reminded me of Grace Brothers.

 It was the only place I have every worked which gave you a set 15 min tea break in the morning and afternoon and an hour for lunch! It was also the only place I have worked where people were refered to as Mr or Miss/Mrs whatever. This was in 2005!

What a great thread which made me smile :) 

Unfortunately I am in the camp with the correcting rubbers/Tippex, manual typewriters and I remember the typing pools too.  How things have changed ....

Started my first "real" job in 2002 so not so much of a technological impact, although I did "answer" the fax machine once or twice - full corporate greeting and all!

On a slightly different note - after moving to the Middle East in 2008 it took me AGES to get used to a Sun-Thu working week! Some of my family still haven't got used to it and will call me in the middle of the day on Sunday for a nice chat :)

Tea ladies or 'Trolley Dollys' as they were referred to in the pre-PC world - the afternoon round included cakes as well.

That was 37 years ago - and my current Company still has them (minus the cakes!).

Early in January, on Radio 4, there was a one week series of 15 minute interviews, with return visits, of public figures who had their first jobs as paper boys and paper girls. (I've tried finding a link via the BBC iPlayer, but no success on this yet. I'll post the link if there's a podcast.)

It was a fascinating piece of social history, and it was also remarkable learning of the impact that this early experience of work on all 5 people, and the development of a work ethic and feelings of independence. The interviewer also had a paper round by the way.

I often say that my first job was as a deck cadet at sea, forgetting about my 7-day a week paper round (where I earned more than a cadet, which paid about 13 pence per day to start off with! ).

My most vivid memory as a paper boy was, one summer evening, reading the South Wales Echo and seeing that the husband at one of the houses on my round had been arrested for murdering his wife! His newspaper delivery hadn't been cancelled - I wonder why!