What did people do in offices before PC's

[asterix]

I have to admit to working in an office before even calculators were widely used! One of the managers bought one with an LED, just basic functions and it cost £40 in the 70's. I was on about £1.5k a year then.

Before computers people used to talk and perhaps read newspapers if they could get away with it. When they introduced PCs I went to get a degree in computers and get a better job. Unfortunately it wasn't a much better job, I just got more money.

 

[Over The Hill]

My first job in 1976 was in a bank and all I did was add up piles of cheques on a mechanical adding machine all day and then add up the total for the piles.
Someone else was in a different room adding up all the payments out and at the end of the day we took one from the other and phoned up the Bank of England to get them to either take or give us the balance.
It was usually something like 7 million quid and we just read out the number and they said OK!
I got bored and left after a year of doing that.

 

[Globalti]

My first office job was in about 1980 in a place in Covent Garden editing computer cards for the National Travel Survey. Thousands of drivers had been given log books where they were supposed to record every journey they made by car for three months, the whole lot was then put on cards, which we had to run through the computer in huge batches editing them to get clean trips. Since some drivers had messed up so badly we ended up inventing all sorts of trips for them to make everything fit - sometimes we'd send them off to John O'Groats for a couple of days to sort out the mileage and timings.

All this was done in flourescent lighting, squinting at the tiny slots in the cards. For the first three days I had a splitting headache until I got used to the light. A ghastly job altogether.

 

[ComedyPilot]

Typewriters and kalamazoo binders. I kid you not.

 

[Kirstie]

In my first office job in 1987 we had one office computer which sat on a table all on its own away from everyone else. My job was to answer letters of complaint written to a tour operator. We looked up passenger details on the computer and filed everything according to booking reference, in paper cabinets. We dictated our letters which got sent to the typing pool.

Eventually the whole thing was computerised and we got to write our own letters at the PCs which were at our desks. They had us sitting in a cube farm, and the work was so depressing I eventually left. Nobody spoke to each other, there was no interaction, and the pressure to produce things quickly made it soul destroyingly difficult cos you couldn't get all the information you needed to answer the complaints properly.

 

[palinurus]

I spent more time in the lab for sure. Actually there wasn't an office area. I wrote my reports in the lab, on paper, and handed them to a woman (it was always a woman) who would type them. Then they'd come back and I'd make some corrections, and so on. Those reports would go back and forth. I'd have to draw the diagrams myself, plot graphs and copy them so I could staple them to the back. If I took some photographs I'd have to put the film in the post.

I communicated with suppliers by fax. I wrote the faxes in the lab too.

I'm not sure how jokes travelled before email but people used to fax rude cartoons etc. They'd be passsed around.

There was one lab where you could smoke when I started, so I'd always make sure I had something to do over there.

Today I've spent most of the afternoon trying to do some stupid diagram using powerpoint. I'm generally more productive than that. Still haven't finished it so I'll be in early tomorrow.

 

[PaulB]

Are we more efficient since the introduction and widespread use of computers than previously or are we less efficient? Let's have a heated debate!

 

[mr_cellophane]

Are we more efficient since the introduction and widespread use of computers than previously or are we less efficient? Let's have a heated debate!

Less efficient - people now want more information which does nothing to improve efficiency.