What was it like going to work in the 60s, 70s and 80s?

[sunnysideup]

I remember a few thing from the 70s. As a female we had to wear skirts or dresses, and in the late 70s some companies allowed ladies' trousers. It was a BIG deal.

I remember showing respect by calling everyone in management Mr, Mrs or Dr. I recall, being aghast, in the mid 80's when a younger colleagues called our physician VP by her first name--everyone else called her Dr.

The HR representative submitted the health insurance claims for us. Can you imagine that today with all the HIPAA stuff?? LOL...

I had someone actually tell me that they paid men more because they were the breadwinners. I was a scientist doing the same #$% work! Arghhh...

People stayed with their companies much longer. Companies treated people better. (At least the ones at which I worked did.) People didn't complain nearly as much as they do today.

 

[Walt34]

People stayed with their companies much longer. Companies treated people better. (At least the ones at which I worked did.) People didn't complain nearly as much as they do today.

There is that. Very early on I worked with a few who had lived through the 1930's Depression (although they were very young at that time) and even though they worked 12-hour shifts six days a week when they started they felt lucky to have a job then. They knew a lot of people who didn't.

So if the 1930's are your frame of reference then there wasn't much to complain about in 1974.

 

[ABQ2015]

I entered the workforce in the 80's, after PC's but before email, and just remember the big yellow intra-departmental mail envelopes with about 50 boxes of "to/from" printed on the front. To send a memo, you'd handwrite it on a company memo pad, or print it out using your word processor, stick it in the envelope, seal it with the attached string, write the destination office number on the next open box on the front, and put it in your "out" box. Then a mail guy would come by and take everything from your out box and put anything incoming to your in-box.

When you got something in your in-box, you'd read the memo and save the envelope, scribbling out the last entry so you could reuse it.

We still use those big yellow envelopes, including attached string, in my federal government office to send correspondence within our complex and to HQ in DC and other field offices. And the in and out boxes and the daily mail pick up. And it was this way in 1985 when I first started working there.