People who worked before the 1970's?

Question

For anyone that worked back before the 1970's can you give me some infomation about your job and what it was like such as conditions and how many hours you worked per week. what sort of technology did you use at your work. also how do you think work has changed since then to today. Answers would be appriciated I would really like to hear your stories thanks. Can you also say where you worked?

Answer 1

Wow. Ozmaniac above must be about my vintage. I started work at at 15 at the end of 1963 on 8 pound & tuppence, but after a few months went into another job with a  massive wage increase to 9 pound three shillings, in the public service. I was working in the Treasury Building in Brisbane (now the Treasury Casino) when the very first mainframe computer was delivered to Queensland to the Treasury Dept in 1965.

Workplaces were somewhat different, and Ozmaniac outlines well. We too had our comptometrists, and marvelled when electronic adding machines appeared. Also, everyone smoked and offices were generally a haze of smoke. A large office usually had the clerks, typists etc lined up in desks with the 'boss' sitting up the front, similar to a class room.

Unlike Ozmaniac, quite a few of us in our office were able to manage to slip away by sticking a few files under the arm and pretending to go off down hallways to another department, whilst slipping off to the Treasury Hotel across the road for a quickie (even at the age of 16-17 when legal age was 21).

Most workplaces of the 60s were dominated by the Vietnam War. Senior staff and bosses were always urging the youth to 'get over there and stop the yellow hordes' and 'be a man & do your duty' etc. This was exacerbated by government pro-war propaganda.

Answer 2

I started work at the age of 15 in 1962. I earned 6 pounds 17 and 6 pence per week ($13.75 pw/$27.50 per fortnight) and took home 13 pounds 3 shillings ($26.30) per fortnight. We worked a 40 hour week with 2 weeks annual leave and (I think) 5 sick days.

You asked for technology info. before the 70s - here comes some you probably weren't expecting.

My first job was as a comptometriste for a large cigarette and tobacco wholesaler in Melbourne. A comptometer was a mechanical or electro/mechanical adding machine and using it was a highly skilled occupation as, in addition to using it for addition, we also performed complex calculations (division, square root etc) by a process of very rapid repeat addition and negative addition. For straight addition and simple multiplication, they were incredibly fast in the hands of an expert operator and because of their speed, were still the technology of choice for quite some time after electronic calculators became available. There were about 30 girls in the office and our job was to 'check' invoices that had been hand written and calculated by (all male) travellers working from cigarette order and delivery vans on the road. We were expected to know all prices by heart and had our pay 'docked' if we made more than a certain number of errors per week, or if we didn't process a minimum number of invoices.

Work was very different from how it is now. We worked very hard indeed and were not allowed to talk in the office. Telephone calls were forbidden except in the most dire emergency and went through many hands before they got to the intended recipient. Supervisors and managers were called Mr X and Miss Y and they had nothing to do with the ordinary staff. In my office, we were forbidden to wear trousers, short skirts or anything in any way tight or revealing. We had to ask if we needed to leave the office for any reason and it wasn't at all uncommon for permission to be refused, even if you were dying to go to the toilet or whatever. It was very unusual for any women to continue working after marriage and was virtually unheard of for mothers to work.

In late 1964, I was fortunate enough to get Australia's best job for a calculator operator when I started work as a demonstrator for the Australian distributor for Friden, an American supplier of automatic mechanical calculators. Shortly after that, Friden released the first transistorised short keyboard electronic calculator, the Friden 130 and the modern age of calculation (and computing) had begun. I also demonstrated Flexowriters which were the first word processors and Friden's very early programmable electronic accounting machines. These were the forerunners of mini computers.

I could go on and on, but it must be getting boring by now. You're welcome to email me if you want any more info. or have any particular questions.

Answer 3

I started in 1967 as an apprentice.  I think I spent my first 3 months using a broom as my "working technology", keeping the place clean.

I did give that up within a year, and went into office work.  Pen and paper, and a calculator (I think).  I remember having to talk to ships captains over the phone, and having to keep saying "over" after my side of the conversation.

I think in about 1970 we got one of those new fangled instant coffee machines in the office, wow, were we advanced. It was an American company (In Britain) so only the best!

Office work was 9 to 5, but very strict conditions in comparison to today, very little free use of company telephones etc.  And you rarely stole pens or paper clips from your work place!

The good old days ?  Sometimes I think that, but when I delve into my memory, they were not that good in comparison.