This was a power game, and the secretary who got the other exec on the phone first, so that HER exec wasn’t waiting to talk to him, then she (and her exec) won.
My father occasionally took me and my sibs to see where he worked, usually after hours. There was an ashtray on most desks, even nonsmokers had ashtrays because the smokers would come around and chat and smoke. There were in and out boxes, and my father would say “This guy isn’t going to work here much longer, look how long this paper has been in his in box and he hasn’t acted on it” and similar comments. We didn’t go into the plant part of the workplace (his company made cardboard and corrugated fiberboard, and boxes from those materials), but I imagine that there were a lot of adult pinups in that area, as it was populated entirely by men. There was a company cafeteria, which apparently made adequate food, although my dad frequently took sack lunches. He liked my mother’s cooking, and he liked to save money. We were a one car family until quite late into the 60s.
Girls were urged to learn to type, as they were told that it was insurance in case their husbands were ever injured or killed. Shorthand was also pushed on girls, but not so hard. I was put into a typing class in the 1970s, quite against my will, and I think that there were one or two boys in that class. Girls took bookkeeping classes, boys took accounting. When I first started job hunting, the classified ads had jobs listed under Male and Female or Men and Women, and then the job subcategories. Women might apply for a manager/executive position, but they would almost always be given a typing/secretarial skills test, and told that they could be hired as a secretary or typist and then maybe a better position would open for them. Sexism and racism was rampant and legal and open.
I watched the movie “The Apartment” (1960) the other night, and from the descriptions above, it looked like a pretty accurate portrayal of big corporate office life – in this case, an insurance company.
My Pop didn’t start working in the office part of his company until 1970. But even then I remember when we’d walk over at lunch time and visit him (the plant was just 3 blocks away from our house) everybody except him was smoking. Kripes, I recall when one could smoke in the public library!! Now you can’t even smoke in a freaking bar!
I don’t recall anyone ever drinking any alcohol. I also don’t believe any women had any executive positions, not even in HR. Men wore suites with ties, but no hats. Not in 1970. Not even the real old timers wore hats.
Everyone in the company had insurance, including those in the factory. It was a union shop. My Dad was exempt from the union when he got promoted to the office. (He had worked in the factory for almost 20 years back in the day when a guy could work in a factory, be the sole bread winner, and support a family. Then, in the late 60’s he saw the writing on the wall and went to night school and got a college degree).
He could type but had a secretary for that. I remember a day when she called in sick and all night at home he bitched about having to type a 3 paragraph proposal on something.:rolleyes:
One thing I remember from the 60’s (and it may have originated in the 50’s) was a fad, or style if you will, of men going by their initials. If you watch some old TV shows and movies from that era you’ll see that. My Dads first and last initials were C.B… Everybody called him C.B., even my Ma. So much so, that when I was about 7 somebody asked me to write down my Fathers name. I wrote Cee Bee. That’s what I thought it was!:smack:
At least in NYC, smoking was still allowed/common in 1991 when I started my first after-college job. I remember my cube being between two smokers and having to sit low in my chair to avoid the constant smoke bridge above my cube. Shortly after I started, they changed the law and made people go outside to smoke.
Agreed, but I’d also point out that boys were urged to learn to type as well, as many companies believed in the “junior executive” model where promising young men started in low positions and worked their way up. My high school typing class (the school didn’t offer bookkeeping or accounting) was pretty much evenly split between boys and girls.
This reminds me of the 1988 Christmas party at Lorimar, which bore an appreciable resemblance to the one in the movie. Of course, Lorimar was a film/TV studio, then located at the old MGM property now occupied by Sony. Still, this party was mainly for the business end–IT, legal, accounting, and so forth rather than the creative end. Champagne flowed freely as a group of slightly sloshed carolers perambulated the corridors in a Santa-like sleigh prop.
I don’t think “HR” existed back then.
There was a personnel department, which mostly calculated payroll and wrote paychecks, but also set a few policies about vacation time, etc.
But it wasn’t the full-blown HR we have today. I don’t think there were official policies in place for , say, disciplinary procedures, or filing a grievance against your boss. (There may have been contracts with the union that covered the factory workers, but not the office workers)
And there were , of course, zero policies regarding affirmative action.
the whole IBM Blue (dark blue suit, white shirt, tie) was allegedly a result of Thomas Watson Sr’s encounter in an elevator. Before IBM made computers, they made those card-punch and card-counting machines which eventually morphed into electronic data tabulating. The story goes that he was in an elevator with several strangers to make a business sales call. Some guy in a loud, cheap suit got off and one person said to another “who’s that guy in the cheap suit?” and the otehr fellow replied “Oh, those IBM repair guys always dress tacky.” (Not knowing the boss was standing behind them).
Watson decided the IBM image needed polishing, so the decree was that all IBM personnel, from top sales to lowly techs, wore sedate dark blue business suits when dealing with customers.
I remember talking to a Xerox repair guy’s wife; apparently Xerox took the same high road with its techs eyars ago, and she complained it was impossible to get the toner out of his white shirts when he was repairing copiers.
The Hollywood shorthand back then for “too busy to look after details” was the rumpled white dress shirt and loosened tie or open collar… as in “We’ve been here for 12 hours without air conditioning”.
Some science-oriented professional offices had a Wang, a primordial computer that could do calculations. I saw one as a kid at Valdosta State College in the Physics department office.
The summer after graduating from high school I worked as a messenger in a big accounting office on Park Avenue. Definitely air conditioned. Almost no women in accounting jobs, and everyone wore suits. Subways were cheap then, so I took them or walked - messengers didn’t ride bikes back then. I dressed well since I found that it let me use the normal elevators, not the service elevators, to make deliveries which saved a lot of time.
I also ran the Xerox machine, a monster, between runs. No PCs of course, but I did make copies of computer printouts.
Best thing - the coffee and donut lady came with her cart every morning.
I suppose people smoked - I don’t remember, but it was too common to even have noticed. And everyone seemed to leave at 5 or so - no 12 hour days, though I wasn’t there during tax season.
Do the 1970’s count? One summer, I had a job in the Jordan Marsh (Boston Dept. store-now Macy’s). I was a gopher-also cleaned offices and delivered stuff internally. The guy who was the warehouse manager was a big drinker-he had a mini bar in his office. He was usually in a state of inebriation, by late afternoon.
Everybody said that the guy was a management genius.
I remember working in the late 70’s during the transition from when there was a typing pool and plenty of secretaries, to (thanks to cost cutting but without much of an alternative) only high-level directors had secretaries, yet before computers had come up to par to fill the gap.
It was annoying. There was a big phone system with lots of capabilies that nobody but secretaries knew how to use (and of course, you couldn’t waste her time!)
Correspondence was done using the mainframe with 300-baud acoustic modems (tying up your phone). I was lucky to be working on a networking project that our building (sci research lab for a big auto company) got wired up with, but that almost nobody used, so I was always able (even after moving on to other projects) to set myself up with a ONE MEGABIT link to the mainframe! Woot! It was a big win over 300-baud and thermal paper.
Of course, the 300 baud themal paper setup was a big step up from college, where we had 110-baud teletypes, if we were lucky. (Admittedly replaced with 300-baud impact terminals while I was there, also a huge improvement in decibels alone!)
Smoking, lots of smoking. No one drank at their desk during working hours, simply wasn’t done. Two martini lunch? Yes, certainly but not always. But never at your desk during hours- perhaps after hours.
If you had an actual career, you had total health coverage pretty cheaply. And a pension. But temp or PT workers got zilch.
Suit or sportcoat & tie. Some jobs short-sleeved shorts were OK. Jacket was off most of the time. A fedora/hat might be worn to/fro work, but never at work.
