# What was life like in a 1960s office? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 17, 2013, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-a-1960s-office/653132 "2013-03-17T00:12:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-a-1960s-office/653132/41 "2013-03-19T20:46:11Z")
> [@chargerrich](#): > > Watch [Mad Men](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_men) 😃 As we have shown, Mad Men is only partially a correct representation, heavily modified for entertainment value. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-a-1960s-office/653132/42 "2013-03-19T20:51:30Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Even at the high tech Silicon Valley firm I worked for, smoking at one’s desk (cubicle, so no contained air) was allowed as late as 1987. I think they started segregating smoking in a section of the cafeteria after that, and then soon it was outside or not at all. I worked for a small-town-Ohio newspaper in 1988-89, and the folks in the newsroom smoked like chimneys. My contact lenses would get crudded up in a matter of days. > [@kunilou](#): > > …My high school typing class (the school didn’t offer bookkeeping or accounting) was pretty much evenly split between boys and girls. Likewise mine in NE Ohio, early 1980s. > [@DrDeth](#): > > In other words, _exactly like today_. The more things change the more they stay the same. Bull. Things are a lot different than they were then - not perfect, by any means, but quite a bit better for women and minorities in the workplace. If anything, major employers these days are sometimes _over_sensitive in trying to avoid discrimination lawsuits. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-a-1960s-office/653132/43 "2013-03-19T21:36:57Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > The summer after graduating from high school I worked as a messenger in a big accounting office on Park Avenue. Definitely air conditioned. You were lucky. A lot of offices were in buildings built before or just after World War II and didn’t have air conditioning. My company’s NYC office building was built in 1909, and the air conditioning system was so bad that employees kept prying the windows (which were supposed to be sealed shut) open in summer. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-a-1960s-office/653132/44 "2013-03-19T22:49:41Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > If you had an actual career, you had total health coverage pretty cheaply. _And a pension._ But temp or PT workers got zilch. > . When my Dad retired from the army in 1969 he sighned an actual employment contract with a company for 7 years [I found a copy of his first contract, mrAru found subsequent ones] delineating his salary, bonus plan, medical \, use of a company car, retirement plan and so forth. There were also clauses about actions that would get him terminated [‘morals clauses’] and other odds and ends. I would love to go back to the paternalistic age when people tended to get jobs and stay until retirement, and there was some sort of loyalty going from the employer back to the employee. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-a-1960s-office/653132.md?page=2)