Joni Evans | 10/02/2009 9:15 am

What Do You Remember About Offices Back When ...???

Remember when our office desks held typewriters, typewriter ribbon, Wite-Out, carbon paper, in-and-out boxes, Scotch Tape, staplers, paper clips, clocks, adding machines, address books, calculators and ashtrays? I recently wrote about these fossils in The New York Times. Now I am wondering: What do you remember about offices back when … ???

Read more about: Down Memory Lane, Offices

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When I walked into my managers office in 1986, her office looked like a time warp. Rolodex, typewriter (which she still used even though she had a computer), file cabinets with paper falling out, and a 12" ash tray on her desk with cigarette butts falling out of it! And this was in a hospital.

By Linda Myers on 10/02/2009 4:38 pm

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I worked in the Classified Dept at Ohio’s largest newspaper (The Plain Dealer) for 21 and a half years. When I started all of our ads were done on the typewriter. I remember being in the middle of a very long ad being dictated to me over the phone and having to have the customer wait while I changed my typewriter ribbon. Also in order to determine the length of the ad (lines) the paper was divided in the middle and we used to have to sit and count the "lines" by going back and forth on the paper.

In those days the vast majority smoked. I remember them giving us "smokeless" ashtrays which didn’t work…….there were 80 sales reps in one giant room under a huge cloud of smoke much of the time.

I also remember accidentally starting a fire in my garbage can while taking an ad (due to a cigarette butt)….I fanned the smoke around me but didn’t stop typing that darned ad til the phone call was finished! One always had to heed the "deadlines"!!!

By caren gittleman on 10/02/2009 4:44 pm

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Hi, Caren, I had the same experiences working for a local Tennessee newspaper in the classified dept. I can’t believe you lasted 20 plus years!!! That was a very hard job, trying to meet the deadlines for the larger commercial ads. I quit one day after a terrible day without any break from the phones at all. I thought I was going to die, lol.

I went to nursing school thinking I would have an easier job….how dumb was that?

By Dab-a- do on 10/02/2009 6:29 pm

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Actually Dab you are not dumb at all! You are highly marketable which I am not!

Yes the newspaper classifieds were hard (my specialty there was recruitment advertising)……I was alot younger and loved the fast pace. Fridays were our busiest day, just as you mentioned never a break from the phones. I started there in 1980 and only left in 2001 because I met now-husband online who lived in Michigan. Moved here and after having had one job for over 20 years I have had NINE jobs since 2001 and have been unemployed since 2007. I think your switch to nursing was far from dumb, it was brilliant!

By caren gittleman on 10/02/2009 8:11 pm

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Caren,

While you were working at the PD, I was working for a trade magazine publisher in Akron. We had ashtrays that looked like rubber tires (we were the Rubber City, after all). Depending on which way the wind was blowing, we smelled rubber, which made me sick or toasting oats, which made me hungry. (Quaker Oats was just down the street.) The rest of the editorial staff had standard typewriters, but somehow I had an IBM Selectric! Our copy was set on Linotype (hot lead) machines and our camera ready layouts were done by paste up…either waxed or rubber cement (loved that smell). There was no spell-check; we used carbon paper; made thermofax copies; typed stencils for the mimeograph and I don’t think the fax machine had been invented…or at least was not in common use. Making a long distance call was a big deal, so we kept phone logs. As I write this, I realize it was like we were "Little Publisher on the Prairie!"

By Lee Harrison on 10/02/2009 7:36 pm

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Lee I love it!!! OMG I remember where the Quaker Oats plant was!!! Didn’t they put some shopping center there years ago? Also I am so glad you mentioned the rubber cement glue pots lol…….we went through em like crazy! Cheap high!! lol

By caren gittleman on 10/02/2009 8:04 pm

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Caren,

You’re right…it’s called Quaker Square and there are still a few shops and restaurants there. They made the silos into a hotel—so the rooms were half round. Believe it or not…it’s now owned by U of Akron and part of it is a dorm! It still operates as a hotel too. Hubby and I were there Wednesday night for a fund raiser/awards thing and it was fun to see all the students mixed with the shirt and tie crowd;-)

I still keep rubber cement in my desk. I use it every few years…and the smell takes me back 40 years;-)

By Lee Harrison on 10/02/2009 8:54 pm

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Oh Lee you are soooo funny!!!!!! Bronze that bottle of rubber cement!

Quaker Square!! Yes, how stupid that I couldn’t think of the name!

Very cool that the college kids are staying there now as well………I am a Kent State grad, not far from U of Akron…….unfortunately I am in Michigan now

By caren gittleman on 10/02/2009 9:52 pm

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All of "you" took me back - back, back to my summer job after h.s. graduation - ad desk at a major newspaper. Yes, we had all of that, (late 50s), so it seems the office techno boom leveled out until the 70s, when Wang came on the scene (computer with the CPU on the floor in a big box) and the office temperature had to be zero! Back that summer, my most outstanding memories were stretching my commissions to earn more for college in September, and the damned Playtex girdle that either rolled down to our ankles when we made a ‘pit stop,’ or if we cut out the crotch to make our ‘trips’ quicker to get back to work, they rolled up to our necks.

By Signing On on 10/03/2009 7:43 am

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lol!!!

By caren gittleman on 10/03/2009 10:53 am

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When I got my first teaching job, there were those old memo duplicating machines. They always had to be refilled with that messy, stinky ink. On one inservice day, several teachers and I were at a Mexican restaurant for lunch. The lovely waitress smiled and said, " You’re all teachers, aren’t you?" We were amazed at her cleverness until we all realized that each of us had that ink on our hands and arms. A teacher’s badge and a dead give away.

By Maggie W on 10/02/2009 5:34 pm

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Memories Maggie! I was with the group of women who turned that drum to print out the first copy of Our Body Ourselves in Boston! We all fretted about making our investments back, and all of those first copies were gone within that week! The first publication date on the books, now, is totally incorrect!

By Signing On on 10/03/2009 7:46 am

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That was a "Mimeograph Machine," Maggie! How well I remember putting that ‘wrap’ on the drum, and churing out those copies. I always thought, "I won’t ever have to do this again, once I’m in college!" I didn’t!

By Signing On on 10/03/2009 7:48 am

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Have you ever thought about how many jobs disappeared thanks to computer technology?

By Karen R on 10/02/2009 5:42 pm

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Actually I think computers lead us to waste more paper than we used to. It’s so easy to fix a typo, you are expected to print a new copy at each stage of an editing or approval process… in the past, a few pen-and-ink corrections were preferable to wasting time endlessly re-typing a document. You can see this when looking at historical files or archives.

By Lila Kuh on 10/02/2009 6:00 pm