I do have one lovely memory of working for the Council I started with straight from school more years ago than I care to admit - I had to pass the police station and court house on my journey to and from work so was always given the post for both establishments to deliver on my way home.  One night I had a heavy bundle of court papers to deliver and the Mayor's chauffeur happened to be on his way to pick up the Mayor for an event so offered me a lift.

You should have seen my neighbours' faces when I was dropped off out of the back of a huge, shiny black, vintage,  chauffeur driven Daimler!

Viv

I have just remembered being interviewed for a secretarial job for the Regional Director of a well known insurance company and being told (by his current secretary) that I would need to collect his evening paper at 4.30 pm every day and (using the iron and ironing board tucked away in the coat cupboard) have it ironed and on his desk with a cup of Earl Grey at 5.00 pm!

They too still had a Directors' Dining Room, loos and parking spaces and, although you may think it was the 1940s, it was actually 1993!  I didn't take the job as I may have beaten him with the newspaper and that wouldn't have been good!

 J

I was reminded the other day of a story by Grandpa told me about when he was a partner in an architect's practice

They had two offices, one in Derby where he was based and one in Nottingham.

He would often leave the office in Derby at 3pm saying it was time to go to Nottingham - I am realiably informed that he never made it any further than his house just outside the city :) No one ever found out, the joys of the world pre mobiles and blackberries.

@Elizabeth; to be honest, it might be easier these days to pull the wool over the eyes of colleagues using mobiles and blackberries and virtual office facilities!

Naughty Grandpa, he sounds like he's great fun ;-)

@Susi; I was trying to be restrained amongst such august HR colleagues.  If I'm truthful, I was thinking of the iron!

Ahh, those were the days of Directors parking, whilst everyone else had to cross a dangerous lane to get from the car park to the factory. Where inuendo was seen as a form of flattery and not harrassment (as a young 18 year old, I was told that I would just have to accept this way of life, by my HR Manager!) when smoking areas were common place and going back to work after a liquid lunch a Friday was the norm. 

My first HR roll involved me 'double punching' the payroll into and ancient computer to make sure I got it right, having a centralised office printer and needing to walk 200 yards to get to it, now I cringe at the memory of all that personal data hanging around!

The best bit though was an employee who has a false leg and whenever we had a new starter, he would take it off and put it sticking out of the factory compactor to panic the new guy!, ahh such fun!!

Lynne    

Here are a few classics from 1988 - 1992:

1. Producing training OHPs using permanent fine line marker pens (choice of 4 colours - red, black, green, blue), praying that you did not make a spelling mistake or something changed only days after creating the training pack. And if conifent in the duration, frame them on cardboard surrounds (with numbers on them to keep them in order). And avoided carrying them in the rain, to avoid any hint of water damage.

2. Working in a Finance function where you could identify where someones' job (and therefore the person) sat in the organisational hierarchy, by the type of office chair they sat on (black leather chairs with arms for Dept Manager, blue chairs with arms for supervisors, blue chairs with no arms for clerical graded staff, and orange chairs with no arms for trainee / YTS / under 18 staff). Made life very simple!

3. To issue a annuity quote letter when working for a pensions firm in 1988, I had to:

• photocopy an "Annuity Quote Paper Template" and, with ball point pen, enter the figures I got from a memo returned to me from the Actuarial Dept

• get a bit of lined A4 paper and write a covering letter (long hand) in clear ball point pen

• staple both together, fill out an A5 Typing Pool covering memo and take up to the Typing Pool

• wait 1 day for Carla (who I use to buy a tin of Quality Street and 2 bottles of wine for at Xmas, in order to obtain guaranteed typing priority) to return it all nicely typed up on headed paper (or wait 3 days, if Carla was not in, as it went into the typing pool backlog instead)

• correct any mistakes in red ink and take back to Carla for amendments (done within 1 day if Carla was there, or 1-2 days if placed in the general backlog).

• place in white envelope and walk down to Reception and get them to frank it and post for me.

Sort of thing I can do now in 5 minutes on my own PC and laser printer, or get the customer to do themselves online!! 

Fond memories!!!

Wow Steve, this thread you started must be some kind of record in terms of community participation! Just noticed it was up to 3,000 reads and 82 posts!

I've just thought of another memory - I was asked to drive the company car to a training event in Henley on Thames c 1995/96. This invovled a fairly long drive across country. The only trouble was that the company car in question was a Renault 5 turbo - more akin to a rally car (!) and I was a young, inexperienced driver, used to driving a Fiesta with a small engine. This was pre mobile phones and I gamely set off. Everytime I put my foot down I went flying off like a racing driver. It's a wonder I got there and back in one piece, but no-one ever questioned the suitability of the car or whether I'd be able to drive it!

Johanna - I will never again look at you in the same light. 

Oh, and I'll drive..

Ha! Just call me 'The Stig' ;)

I stick to train travel to commute to work these days...

When our typing pool got computers for the first time in the early 90's I remember -

used to using footpedals, one of the ladies telling me her mouse was too short to reach the floor;

having to stop someone painting their screen with snowpake;

another person telling me the cursor was going in the wrong direction (because she had positioned the mouse back to front);

when I asked another to point at a place on the screen with her mouse, she lifted it off the desk and pointed it at the screen.

So much fun and laughs looking back...

My first job was with the Inland Revenue in 1972 for £10 per week. We got told to stop talking unless it was about work by our supervisor.

Moved to IBM in 1978 where at my first review my manager asked me my long term aspirations. I told him I'd like to work in Personnel. "You'll never get a job there", he told me. Maybe I should have listened but a year later I had a new manager who had worked in Personnel. At my review he asked for my long term aspirations with the company. "To work in Quality", I said. "Never thought about working in Personnel? I think you would be good at it", he replied. So I ended up working in HR.

I remember reading an announcement at work about the invention of email and thinking wow, science fiction come to life. 

We used to get away from work at 15.06 on a Friday. Not 15.05 or 15.10 but 15.06. Then someone invented the long hours culture and it was treason to leave before 18.08. ;-)  

Okay this was in the mid-80s at a public library. Manually typing personal information into the paper library cards. Having to check the micro-fiche (spelling?) when trying to find who checked out books which were over due. So when checking out books, it was really important to keep the due date cards in numerical order. Also when faxes came through on the old fax paper, telling people that the paper was only good for a few months before it basically turned funny colors.

I was there when the library went on line and had to barcode every single book in the library.

My first bit of work experience was in the mid 90s where I helped out in the Personnel department of the local hospital.  AlI I remember being allowed to do was a lot of photocopying (which, as a 15 year old, was very boring) and filing which I found confusing because everyone's file was stored by department and job title, which of course I didn't know.

My first paid work was before that working as a part-time waitress at a local hotel for £2 an hour at the tender age of 14.  One of my most horrendous early experiences was being asked to sweep up a dead mouse in the kitchen (I refused and nearly cried!) and also being reminded by my boss that if anyone asked how old I was when working on the bar, "You're 19, aren't you Gemma!"  I also had a ridiculous experience of working in a cafe where the owner made me wash up cling film to re-use (really!) One of the valuable things I learned in both jobs is that if you are nice to people and smile, they will give you more money :)  If only it was that simple as a grown-up!

I've loved hearing everyone else's memories!

Gemma

Reading Stephanie's comments took me back to my WRAC days when I, too, used stencils (showing my age here), correcting them was a bit of a nightmare but I enjoyed the challenge and quite got the hang of it.  Using the stencil duplicating machines (think they were called mimeograph machines) could be a bit of a messy job and often the copies were very poor quality. 

I guess you could say my first ' job' was at the age of 10 when I delivered newspapers.  It was really my brother's paper round but I used to help him out - for a fee of course!  Eventually, my bother got bored and left me to do the whole round alone!!!  Some of the customers were quite interesting characters.  I recall one who would be standing on his doorstep waiting for his newspaper each evening.  He would check the time on his watch and I would get a good ticking off if I was late.  Another used to get her children to tell me she was out when I called to collect the paper money. I would stand my ground and insist they ask her to come to the door to pay up but usually it took a visit from my mother to get a result!