It must be some law of nature that once we start approaching sixty we start using the phrase “Back in my day we…..” Usually spoken in a curmudgeonly, condescending manner it’s an introduction to a treatise about how things were done, undoubtedly better, back in the “olden days.” As my dad got older he said it and these days, as I enter the glide path to 60, I find myself saying it with an increasing and disturbing regularity to my own grown children. As the words form I’m thinking, “Geeze, it’s come to this, I’m crossing over into geezerdom.”
And so in honor of this rite of passage we’ll take an occasional visit back to “my day” and compare it to our present day. These will be irregular posts because as I’m constantly reminded by television ads, folks my age are, well, losing their regularity. And so for your reading enjoyment I present, Back in My Day; Office Edition. (Those who don’t enjoy it can of course jump off of this ride at the nearest period).
Back in my day: We didn’t have computers.
Today: Most modern offices have computers, which of course leads us to all of the other comparisons that are linked to the computer.
Back in my day: We generated hand written documents. They were often multi-part, separated by carbon paper between each sheet that left your hands with black smudges.
Today: The computer generates as many neat clean copies of a document that you need.
Back in my day: We put a document in the snail mail. Depending on the circumstance this could create a week long lag in business.
Today: Documents are emailed and the business lag is reduced to seconds.
Back in my day: Snail mail was replaced by the fax. Now purchase orders and other documents could be faxed and received at the destination the same day. It was printed on rolls of slick thermal paper.
Today: See email above.
Back in my day: Overseas communication was done by Telex which was generated by a large cumbersome teleprinter.
Today: See email above.
Back in my day: If you were on the road, you had to find a payphone to touch base with the office or a client and you were very often incognito.
Today: Cell phones and smart phones let you communicate with anyone from anywhere; even a quiet restaurant (see inappropriate below).
Back in my day: The guys always went into the warehouse on the first of the month to see the new picture on the pinup calendar posted above the shipping and receiving desk.
Today: Put one of those up and you get to have a meeting with the HR manager.
Back in my day: The men in the office often referred to some of the women as “sweetie”, “honey”, or some other term of, uh, endearment.
Today: See pinup calendars above.
Back in my day: It was called vacation and sick time. You accrued your vacation time and you were allowed a given number of sick days in a year and each resided on a separate ledger. So even if you weren’t sick you could take some unused sick days for “mental health” that didn’t come off your vacation time. “Yeah, uhh, I’m not feeling well, my, ahh, malaria is acting up. I *cough* probably should stay home. I should *cough* be in tomorrow *weeze*.” Click. “Yes! Now back to bed.”
Today: It’s all PTO (Paid Time Off) and if you need mental health it shaves days off of that trip to Disneyland.
Back in my day: There were three martini lunches and we would walk to John’s Grill in San Francisco for a steak sandwich and three martinis, served up and very dry please. Then we would stagger back to work and try to function.
Today: Yeah, not such a great idea even with mints and Peppermint Schnapps (Does that really do anything except get you more drunk?). In the event you can stay under the office radar there is still the unforgiving nature of an inappropriate email being launched whilst wasted.
Back in my day: Nobody used the work inappropriate.
Today: “Inappropriate” is a buzz word, a warning, and the most commonly used word in the employee handbook.
Back in my day: You could date someone in the office. Hey, that’s how I met my wife and 30 years later we’re still going strong.
Today: Inappropriate.
Back in my day: You had betting in the office.
Today: Inappropriate.
Back in my day: You brought those boxes of chocolate bars or raffle tickets that your kids (read: you) had to sell for the school/church/athletic team/band, etc, fund raiser.
Today: Inappropriate.
Today, as I email a purchase order I think back to the days of taking a hand written PO and putting it an outgoing mail tray to be sent and possibly not acknowledged for two weeks. I wonder how I managed to get through an afternoon after a medium rare steak, a baked potato and three Beefeater martinis. I still can’t get used to calling vacation, PTO. In fact I don’t think I knew what PTO even was a couple of years ago. I am getting a little tired of hearing the word inappropriate. And I do wonder how people meet other people these days. My relationships were most often made through work, including my most lasting one.
