Today I'll mainly be moaning about ...

[Rabbers]

The British were once famous for moaning when there was little to moan about.  Part of the nation’s charm, I always thought.  Nowadays, to judge by this thread, there may well be a few  genuine reasons for it.

3 hours ago, dutchie01 said:

I am from the telex age …

I too remember the Telex Age with more than a hint of nostalgia.  The machines were usually housed in their own rooms at the end of corridors, and when they started clicking and clattering you got the impression that something requiring immediate attention was happening somewhere in the company or with your customers.  Also, for reasons I was never able to fathom, the “telex room” was, in days when personal and social sensitivities were less acute, the place where unprofessional behaviour involving secretaries was likeliest to occur - although of course this depended on the level of discipline and sobriety characterizing the individual workplace.

[LenT]

 

31 minutes ago, Rabbers said:

I too remember the Telex Age with more than a hint of nostalgia.  The machines were usually housed in their own rooms at the end of corridors, and when they started clicking and clattering you got the impression that something requiring immediate attention was happening somewhere in the company or with your customers.  Also, for reasons I was never able to fathom, the “telex room” was, in days when personal and social sensitivities were less acute, the place where unprofessional behaviour involving secretaries was likeliest to occur - although of course this depended on the level of discipline and sobriety characterizing the individual workplace.

Which reminds me that I once worked at a London advertising agency called Horniblow, Cox-Freeman.  They too had a Telex and my moan - and constant regret - is that I never had occasion to send them a Telex.

It’s not often in Life that you get the opportunity to Telex HorniCox.

[Rabbers]

4 minutes ago, LenT said:

.It’s not often in Life that you get the opportunity to Telex HorniCox.

Surely an email to info@hornicox.com would give equal pleasure, or didn’t they survive the Telex Age?

[LenT]

13 minutes ago, Rabbers said:

Surely an email to info@hornicox.com would give equal pleasure, or didn’t they survive the Telex Age?

Sadly, no Renato.

They were bought out by one of my previous Agencies  - Benton & Bowles - and became a mere footnote in history.

[dutchie01]

1 hour ago, Rabbers said:

 the place where unprofessional behaviour involving secretaries was likeliest to occur - although of course this depended on the level of discipline and sobriety characterizing the individual workplace.

I thought that happened most in the mailroom. Remember those? Tons of post every day, envelopes for all parts of the company in and out. The place where trainees started and careers were broken before they blossomed. And if too busy there was... The Archieve! remember those? Hundreds of folders in alphabetical order?  Dark and quiet. I can go on and on better not to.

[Brian R]

Ah, I had the telex machine in my office and used it more than anyone else. The equivalent to copy/paste were numerous tapes I would feed through the machine to answer customer queries. My office looked like the BBC April fool spaghetti tree had successfully taken root!

[dutchie01]

I worked at ICI as trainee beginning eightees and they got a new computer. These were tape recorder type things the size of a closet. No idea of the memory but my mobile likely has more.

[Bluemarlin]

15 minutes ago, dutchie01 said:

I thought that happened most in the mailroom. Remember those? Tons of post every day, envelopes for all parts of the company in and out. The place where trainees started and careers were broken before they blossomed.

Many years ago, in my school holidays, I used to work in the mailroom of a large office block. It felt like the centre of the universe, as everyone from secretaries to senior directors would pop in for a chat. The manager, an amiable cockney chap, used to sit in his chair like the lord of the manor, holding court and dishing out his numerous pearls of wisdom.

[Rabbers]

Another item of archaic office technology that inspires almost as much nostalgia in me as the Telex is the Dictaphone - not, I hasten to add, the small and sleek portable types that used dinky-looking mini-cassettes but the earlier and clunkier models that worked with floppy plastic bands (?-"Dicta-Bands") and occupied most of one's desk surface.

My experience of one of these latter contraptions was brief but memorable, and involved a typing pool consisting of a small regiment of young ladies whose collective disregard for correct spelling and punctuation was only partly compensated by individual levels of comeliness well above the company average.  Among them was a spectacularly bouncy Barbara Windsor lookalike called Cynthia who, on a recent holiday in Mallorca, had enjoyed a fling with a waiter called Enrique whose subsequent letters  to her were in Spanish, thus evidencing that the basis for the relationship had been less verbal than physical.  This I immediately understood from a cursory reading of the first of what was to become a series of weekly letters she rather touchingly asked me to translate and dictate onto one of the aforementioned bands which I would then mark for delivery to her personal attention down in the typing pool.

While unremittingly cringeworthy in style and content, the letters nevertheless provided amounts of mildly titillating adult entertainment of a quality sufficient to secure my best efforts as translator and editor.  While ironing out the many asperities in Enrique's prose and where possible toning down some of his more outlandish flights of erotic fancy, I also cultivated and developed a deepish baritone combined with a breathlessness of delivery that I deemed appropriate to Enrique's intentions.  In short, I thought I did Enrique proud.

All this diligence on my part paid off handsomely in terms of the speed and efficiency of the service my departmental colleagues and I now received from the typing pool, but my greatest reward came at the company Xmas party when, much as I struggled with my conscience, I was unable to resist a slightly tipsy but fully functioning Cynthia's treatment of me as an Enrique substitute.

Sadly, Enrique's letters became less and less frequent and then finally ceased altogether.  Not that this appeared to upset Cynthia, who remained as perky as ever.  The last time we spoke she said her next holiday was going to be in Greece.

 

 

[First_Lexus]

On 7/13/2023 at 6:59 PM, dutchie01 said:

I thought that happened most in the mailroom. Remember those? Tons of post every day, envelopes for all parts of the company in and out. The place where trainees started and careers were broken before they blossomed. And if too busy there was... The Archieve! remember those? Hundreds of folders in alphabetical order?  Dark and quiet. I can go on and on better not to.

After graduating, my first real job for a big company in Central London (actually on a rota with the other most junior staff) was to go into the print room on the second floor and sort all of the batch printing that had run overnight on a printer that was the size of a small country! Each invoice would have to be detached from the next (by hand) and folded so that the address fitted the envelope window. They all then went to the post room which was managed by a fierce older lady who terrified pretty much everybody! The task took most of the morning and was boring as nobody else had any reason to go into that room until the following morning. You just prayed that the printer hadn’t run out of paper, or ink, or got jammed overnight. If it had, you had to fix it, restart it, then wait for it to finish. If that meant you were there until 20.00 or later at night then so be it…

I stayed with that company for fifteen years. It taught me almost everything I know today for my career. I saw the third floor typing pool disappear, internal mail vanish along with the fax machine, the introduction of desk top computers, and a general decline in standards that seemed to come with all that ‘progress.’

When I started everybody was addressed by surname, never Christian name. Male staff had to wear suits and ties (always) and more senior male staff wore waistcoats to donate rank. The staff restaurant was silver service, and senior managers had their own seats. Even if they were away, nobody could sit in a seat not their own!

Smoking at desks was commonplace. Alcohol in the office at the end of the day (or for any occasion really at pretty much any time after 14.00) was also common, provided by the company on trollies with cakes and snacks. Different times.

Gradually the dress code relaxed, alcohol and smoking in the office disappeared, and the workforce shrank. Those left had to do more and more. The building that held about 3000 staff when I started had only 1000 when I finally left. It’s now being turned into luxury flats.

My moan is that I don’t like getting old. I know well that I’m seeing the past through rose-tinted spectacles, but the tinting isn’t that strong. Things really did seem better then, to me anyway.

 

 

[Lmafudd]

Apologies if I repeat anything from an earlier post but I just cannot read all those here as I have a life! 

I have just 'retired' - technically a year early according to our Government but actually I feel it should be far less than 66! I spent the entire 49.5 years of my working life (yes, I left school at 15) in the Printing Industry. I saw it completely transformed from a highly-skilled, creative and high paying industry into a button-pushing low skilled trade with pay just about as low as it could go. People say that AI and computers will make our lives better and in some way I am sure it will but unfortunately I do not believe that the 'average' person will ever realise what they have lost to gain so little.

[First_Lexus]

2 hours ago, Lmafudd said:

I spent the entire 49.5 years of my working life (yes, I left school at 15) in the Printing Industry.

^^ If you haven’t already done so, Brenda Dean’s autobiography ‘Hot Mettle’ is a good read on the printing industry. Clearly she has a particular view, but in general terms it’s hard not to agree with your points above. Many industries are the same - this is the first time in human history that technological advances have / will lead to fewer jobs rather than more jobs.

Only the other day I listened to a radio article about sign writing. It’s a dying art, as things can now be screen printed (or similar) by machine and applied as transfers. Quicker, cheaper, but a skilled trade will be lost. Who cares? People just seem to want things more quickly, more cheaply…but what is the overall impact of the loss of all these skills? Is being a Deliveroo or amazon driver a skill? Maybe it is, but not as I see it.

As you say, “…we’ll never know how much we’ve lost to gain so little.”

 

[MartinH]

👆 Hot mona page, this!

[dutchie01]

7 hours ago, First_Lexus said:

After graduating, my first real job for a big company in Central London (actually on a rota with the other most junior staff) was to go into the print room on the second floor and sort all of the batch printing that had run overnight on a printer that was the size of a small country! Each invoice would have to be detached from the next (by hand) and folded so that the address fitted the envelope window. They all then went to the post room which was managed by a fierce older lady who terrified pretty much everybody! The task took most of the morning and was boring as nobody else had any reason to go into that room until the following morning. You just prayed that the printer hadn’t run out of paper, or ink, or got jammed overnight. If it had, you had to fix it, restart it, then wait for it to finish. If that meant you were there until 20.00 or later at night then so be it…

I stayed with that company for fifteen years. It taught me almost everything I know today for my career. I saw the third floor typing pool disappear, internal mail vanish along with the fax machine, the introduction of desk top computers, and a general decline in standards that seemed to come with all that ‘progress.’

When I started everybody was addressed by surname, never Christian name. Male staff had to wear suits and ties (always) and more senior male staff wore waistcoats to donate rank. The staff restaurant was silver service, and senior managers had their own seats. Even if they were away, nobody could sit in a seat not their own!

Smoking at desks was commonplace. Alcohol in the office at the end of the day (or for any occasion really at pretty much any time after 14.00) was also common, provided by the company on trollies with cakes and snacks. Different times.

Gradually the dress code relaxed, alcohol and smoking in the office disappeared, and the workforce shrank. Those left had to do more and more. The building that held about 3000 staff when I started had only 1000 when I finally left. It’s now being turned into luxury flats.

My moan is that I don’t like getting old. I know well that I’m seeing the past through rose-tinted spectacles, but the tinting isn’t that strong. Things really did seem better then, to me anyway.

 

 

You are so right Ed. I think internet changed everything. It opened up markets countries. Everything was suddenly available for everyone leading to totally disturbed markets with increased competition. Why print something yourself while you can get it cheaper from a printer in Poland? Just upload your files and 4 days later you have it. Why from Poland as China is half the price? Why China if India is cheaper. Anyway you get the picture. Back in the Good Old Days ( not so sure about that...) there was much more time and profits were higher. Back at ICI we had a restaurant ( not a canteen!) with cooks, waiters and as you say a strict hierarchy in seating as i quickly found out. And 2 Jaguars with chauffeurs to collect people from the airport. ( i remember a lot of unrest as once the rear window just fell out on the highway.)  And the jobs long forgotten, Personal Assistants, Typists, Secretaries, Mailroom,( remember tube mail?)  Copyroom, Coffee/tea ladies doing the rounds. When we had customers visiting us we went to the board restaurant and as you say at lunch wine, brandy, champagne no problem. Also i was a trainee for six months until they placed me at a certain position. In later jobs as well they took at least three months to bring me up to speed. Now? Hi nice to meet you we are busy here is you laptop get on with it. Correspondence another thing. Strict rules, no mistakes allowed, not one, and every letter( not mail) was checked. And now? do wat jou want averyboddy simply doesnot ccare. I can go on for hours but i do see a comparable trend in todays automotive industry. The traditional manufacturers will face an enormous challenge and i do not expect all to survive. It is a race to the bottom lead by new start ups going full EV like Tesla and the Chinese. They could well wipe out the market in the next decade as they will always be able to produce cheaper than VW, Toyota, GM. Its like the Polish/Chinese printers. VW did already ring the alarmbell this week literally declaring their roof is on fire. Nothing we can do about it i guess but we did experience the old days in full !

[First_Lexus]

10 minutes ago, dutchie01 said:

Nothing we can do about it i guess but we did experience the old days in full !

^^ That’s a great point. I certainly WON’T be moaning about having experienced some good times. I feel sorry for youngsters today - they’ll never have that joy! 🙂

[LenT]

48 minutes ago, dutchie01 said:

Back at ICI we had a restaurant ( not a canteen!) with cooks, waiters and as you say a strict hierarchy in seating as i quickly found out.

This comment did remind me of an event that perhaps marked a significant period of social change.

One of our clients was a major international company which decided to ‘democratise’ its catering at its UK HQ.  So apart from the odd Board Meeting, everyone - but everyone - would now eat at the new Canteen run by outside caterers.

A few days after its official opening, those present were impressed to see the CEO join the food queue with his close associates and gather various plates on his tray, before joining them at a table.

I should add that he was an affable, well-liked individual anyway so this appearance was well received.

At the end of his meal he rose and left his table, but was stopped in his tracks by a shout of “Oi, you!”.  He turned to see a large woman, who was running the Catering line, pointing at him. 

“Yes, you!” she continued.  “Tray!!”.

A hush fell over the many witnesses to this drama, as a colleague whispered to him that he was supposed to clear his plates back on to the tray and return it to a central location.  It only needed the rustle of tumbleweed to counterpoint the silence.

Who would blink first?  But then the CEO - with a mumbled apology  - dutifully assembled his tray and delivered it to the waiting rack.

Of course, this social experiment ultimately became the norm.  And he would occasionally make an appearance to show his approval.  

Sadly, I never got to experience the Canteen.  As their Advertising Agency, it seems we were expected to take them out to one of the many local fine-eating pubs whenever we visited.

Democratisation clearly had its limits!

[dutchie01]

1 hour ago, LenT said:

  

Sadly, I never got to experience the Canteen.  As their Advertising Agency, it seems we were expected to take them out to one of the many local fine-eating pubs whenever we visited.

Democratisation clearly had its limits!

Socialism at its finest!

[Rabbers]

15 hours ago, LenT said:

This comment did remind me of an event that perhaps marked a significant period of social change......... But then the CEO - with a mumbled apology  - dutifully assembled his tray and delivered it to the waiting rack.

Of course, this social experiment ultimately became the norm.  And he would occasionally make an appearance to show his approval.  

Sadly, I never got to experience the Canteen.  As their Advertising Agency, it seems we were expected to take them out to one of the many local fine-eating pubs whenever we visited.

Democratisation clearly had its limits!

I am reminded of a company which, to my intense disappointment at the time, didn't offer me a job.  This was in the early eighties, and the job was as a member of a small London-based team working directly for the Chairman and CEO of a highly profitable pharmaceuticals/medical supplies company and tasked with monitoring the performances of its overseas subsidiaries.  This the team did from a magnificent Georgian building located between the Strand and the Embankment that otherwise served for board meetings and as occasional offices for senior managers.  The property, containing superb period furnishings and art, enjoyed sweeping views over the Thames, and was permanently staffed by a butler, a housekeeper, and a cook.  

My sixth and last interview for the job took the form of a dinner with the Chairman and four of the directors, and although I thought it had gone well when I returned to my room at the nearby Savoy, where the company had put me up, it obviously could have gone better.   Since no explanations were forthcoming about my failure to get the job, I was obliged to console my bruised ego with the thought that I might have kept the port decanter for too long or maybe passed it along in the wrong direction.

Anyway, I strongly suspect that the sort of conspicuously self-indulgent management style I witnessed no longer exists or has become very rare, more's the pity, partly because of probable objections from shareholders but mainly because top managers these days seem to strive to appear democratic, shunning pinstripes in favour of rolled-up shirtsleeves.  The directors of the aforementioned company appear, in retrospect, to have been among the last representatives of a breed that hid a steely-eyed attention to the bottom line behind a languid elegance of demeanour which stated that opulent fringe benefits were not a subject for debate but something to be taken for granted as long as the business prospered.

[steve2006]

I remember this, you were the guy who used the fish knife to spread butter on your bread roll. Did you not hear the tutting and notice the rolling eyes at the time, even the butler gave a discrete cough into his glove. 😀 

[Rabbers]

5 minutes ago, steve2006 said:

I remember this, you were the guy who used the fish knife to spread butter on your bread roll. Did you not hear the tutting and notice the rolling eyes at the time, even the butler gave a discrete cough into his glove. 😀 

Actually, Steve, now you mention it …

[First_Lexus]

2 hours ago, steve2006 said:

I remember this, you were the guy who used the fish knife to spread butter on your bread roll. Did you not hear the tutting and notice the rolling eyes at the time, even the butler gave a discrete cough into his glove. 😀 

I can only think of this sketch…😆

 

[Phil xxkr]

11 hours ago, Rabbers said:

I am reminded of a company which, to my intense disappointment at the time, didn't offer me a job.  This was in the early eighties, and the job was as a member of a small London-based team working directly for the Chairman and CEO of a highly profitable pharmaceuticals/medical supplies company and tasked with monitoring the performances of its overseas subsidiaries.  This the team did from a magnificent Georgian building located between the Strand and the Embankment that otherwise served for board meetings and as occasional offices for senior managers.  The property, containing superb period furnishings and art, enjoyed sweeping views over the Thames, and was permanently staffed by a butler, a housekeeper, and a cook.  

My sixth and last interview for the job took the form of a dinner with the Chairman and four of the directors, and although I thought it had gone well when I returned to my room at the nearby Savoy, where the company had put me up, it obviously could have gone better.   Since no explanations were forthcoming about my failure to get the job, I was obliged to console my bruised ego with the thought that I might have kept the port decanter for too long or maybe passed it along in the wrong direction.

Anyway, I strongly suspect that the sort of conspicuously self-indulgent management style I witnessed no longer exists or has become very rare, more's the pity, partly because of probable objections from shareholders but mainly because top managers these days seem to strive to appear democratic, shunning pinstripes in favour of rolled-up shirtsleeves.  The directors of the aforementioned company appear, in retrospect, to have been among the last representatives of a breed that hid a steely-eyed attention to the bottom line behind a languid elegance of demeanour which stated that opulent fringe benefits were not a subject for debate but something to be taken for granted as long as the business prospered.

Hear hear! Although I suspect your Achilles heel was having a too wider command of the English language. 😎

[Rabbers]

17 hours ago, Phil xxkr said:

Hear hear! Although I suspect your Achilles heel was having a too wider command of the English language. 😎

I don’t think so, Phil, though I know what you mean.  The Englishmen of whom I spoke were not the sort who would upset themselves about not having a monopoly of their own language. 
 

In my experience the French are far more sensitive on the subject.  As Duff Cooper observed on looking back at his years as the British Ambassador to France, he never met any French person who admitted their French was worse than his. 
 

As regards English-speaking Italians, the late Gianni Agnelli, the Chairman of Fiat, deserves a mention.  So good was his English that he thought it best to cultivate a slight Italian inflection in order to avoid embarrassing his interlocutors, even though these tended, by his own admission, to be  mainly Americans.   In this, he apparently followed the advice of his friend Henry  Kissinger who, it is said, needlessly affects a German accent.

[Phil xxkr]

17 hours ago, Rabbers said:

I don’t think so, Phil, though I know what you mean.  The Englishmen of whom I spoke were not the sort who would upset themselves about not having a monopoly of their own language. 
 

In my experience the French are far more sensitive on the subject.  As Duff Cooper observed on looking back at his years as the British Ambassador to France, he never met any French person who admitted their French was worse than his. 
 

As regards English-speaking Italians, the late Gianni Agnelli, the Chairman of Fiat, deserves a mention.  So good was his English that he thought it best to cultivate a slight Italian inflection in order to avoid embarrassing his interlocutors, even though these tended, by his own admission, to be  mainly Americans.   In this, he apparently followed the advice of his friend Henry  Kissinger who, it is said, needlessly affects a German accent.

😅.

"One of the best temporary cures for pride and affectation is seasickness; a man who wants to vomit never puts on airs. - Josh Billings, 😎

[Lmafudd]

Today I will be moaning about the fact that my UX is the first car, that I have owned, where one cannot leave the wipers off the windscreen when cleaning! The bonnet prevents them from levering up and away!

Used to be one of the first things I did when car cleaning.