When Work Was Groovy #4: Dawn of the Cube

What you see above is the genesis of that dreadful and omnipresent piece of office furniture - the cubicle. 

They came on the scene with such promise. Read old issues of Architectural Digest, and you'd think they were describing the dawn of a New Age.  An age without cloistered offices. An age of open communication.  The cubicle was the answer to the stuffiness and chaos of the "old" office.  Now the office is a place where dreams are made.

Once businesses saw how much they could save in both furniture costs and square footage, it wasn't long before this experiment became the standard. It took a couple decades before these cubes stopped being the hallowed symbol of industrial modernity, and became the butt of jokes and the symbol of all that is petty, uninspiring and dehumanizing in corporate life. [source]

In 2006, Fortune ran an article titled "Cubicles: The Great Mistake", and pop culture hasn't been any less critical with Dilbert and Office Space being prime examples. 

What's so bad about them? Personally, I think it derives from their cheapness - they weren't designed to last... thus, the employee who is stationed in one of these things also feels cheap and temporary.  

   

I can speak from personal experience. A few years ago, I was given an office, graduating from the cubicle farm, and my work environment improved exponentially.  My fellow employees still residing in the cubicle wasteland aren't exactly pleased with their surroundings.   They don't really provide much privacy and even the best ones aren't very soundproof. Worst of all is the overriding sensation that you are as disposable as your office furniture.

On top of all this negativity is the overwhelming impression of "sameness"; a complete lack of individuality.  Every cubicle is the same bland square.  Some may try to make their cubicle their own, but it's generally an exercise in futility.

Am I glamorizing the pre-cube office?  Could pre-cube offices also look uninviting and drab? Yes and yes.  But there's no denying the cube has earned this bad reputation honestly. I'm not claiming smoke filled shag carpeted 70s offices are the pinnacle in industrial design.  What I am saying is that the global shift to cube farms was not an improvement. I am in agreement with Fortune. They were a big mistake.

When Work Was Groovy #3: The Secretary

Job Voyager is a cool program that plots the popularity of a job over time. You can see the secretary position had its heyday beginning prior to the 1950's and kept climbing until 1970, when it went into free-fall off a cliff.

Our boys had come back from WWII and found women infiltrating the workforce; subsequently, Rosie the Riveter became Rosie the Stenographer. The meteoric rise of the secretary was born. Mad Men recreates this alien office world, so foreign to us today that it almost seems like it belongs on the Sci-Fi Channel (Err, umm, excuse me - Syfy Channel. Whatever). Who cares about the plot - it's just fun to watch what the office environment was like five decades ago.

Men could smoke at their desks, women had to go to a special lounge. If a woman got pregnant, she was expected to quit - no exceptions. They were expected to dress to the nine and do the bidding of the males in charge no questions asked. Changing careers to something more profitable and less demeaning was often not an option - universities preferred to accept veterans, and the number of female collegians dropped sharply.

During the heyday of the vintage secretary (now, I guess, they're called administrative assistants) they were often the object of jokes - the office secretary was the rival to the boss' wife, the sexy young tart eager to drop into her boss' lap at the snap of a finger.  Burt Bacharach's "Wives and Lovers" perfectly captures the perceptions of the times...

"Day after day,
There are girls at the office,
And men will always be men.
Don't send him off with your hair still in curlers.
You may not see him again."

Okay, and so what? Your wondering why does it matter that secretaries were treated as less than equals before the 1970's. Well, I bring it up to ask you a simple question: Is it any better today? You're probably tempted to say "yes", given the fact that many more women occupy supervisory roles and have entered professional fields undreamed of before the 1970's. This is true.

However, many women are still getting the shaft. For example: two-thirds of Wal-Mart's hourly workers are female, yet women hold only one-third of managerial positions and make up less than 15 percent of store managers. I wonder if these poor cashiers who aren't given health care or a bathroom break look at Mad Men secretaries as unfortunate. Hmmm. I doubt it.

 
Whether your opinion is that it's gotten better or worse, you have to admit it's fun to take a look at a time when men smoked at their desk, poured themselves a glass of Scotch, and told their secretary to take dictation. It's so foreign and devilishly "wrong" that you can't help but want to step back in time and live that life just for a day.

Personally, I spend most of my day in a cubicle, along with legions of other men and women. Most of them, I have to admit, are pretty miserable. The pay and benefits are good, but the old-time mojo is not there. There's no Scotch on my desk, no cigarettes, no sexy secretary taking dictation... just me, my computer and my cubicle. (yawn)

For those of you, men and women, who also miss the vintage mojo, here's some images of the vintage office to pep you up. Take a trip back to a time when the workplace looked like Mad Men and not The Office. Enjoy.

image source

image source

Read the book Applied Secretarial Practice on Flickr

Sorry about the "nope!", but I don't feel like having my blog flagged. :-(

image source

When Work Was Groovy #2: The Office Christmas Party

The office Christmas Party has long been a source of embarrassment, hedonism, bonding and, according to a Harvard study, thousands of pregnancies. Company Christmas parties go waaaay back - there's even records from the days of King Richard II of office parties to celebrate the holidays.... given the amount of ale on the menus, it would seem Christmas party drunkeness is a centuries old tradition!

In this post, I've pasted together some quotes and facts relating to the office Christmas party that I found interesting or amusing. I hope you enjoy reading it. Cheers!

"What I don't like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day."
- Phyllis Diller

image source: Harvey Kurtzman's hilarious magazine HELP (1961); much like MAD magazine

This article from LIFE magazine describes what Christmas parties were like in the late forties. I found it pretty revealing. Evidently, they were pretty hedonistic back then.  All the ones I've been to at my own workplace have been pretty stuffy and awkward - nothing like the ones described here.

"On one night or another just before Christmas the lights burn late in many American business houses. The occasion is the great leveler, the office Christmas party, an antidote to social formality which ranks between a few discreet cocktails and a free-for-all fight.  Then all business barriers collaps; executives unbend; the office clown finds a sympathetic audience.  This is the only time when the pretty file clerk gets kissed in public, and the homely one gets kissed at all."
- LIFE magazine, December/1948

MKULTRA, was the code name for a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence. This official U.S. government program began in the early 1950s, continuing at least through the late 1960s, and it used United States citizens as its test subjects. In one instance the CIA tested it on unwitting individuals within its own agency, the Technical Services Staff (TSS).  The punch at the annual Christmas party was spiked with LSD! One partygoer, Frank Olsen, experienced horrific hallucinations and threw himself from his tenth story room.
(source)

"We note that the office Christmas party is declining in popularity. This trend may be related to the replacement of secretarial personnel by electronic equipment."
- Kiplingers Personal Finance, January 1960


"People think office Christmas parties are fun and games, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, office parties are social minefields that will cost an estimated 2.2 million workers their jobs this holiday season alone, government studies show."
- Weekly World News

"For the afternoon of the office Christmas party is a timeless limbo of complete abandon. Aloof secretaries shed their Kelley Girl demeanor, and starch collared junior executives unwind their springs. The whole atmosphere takes on the faintest touch of a Roman orgy - and if you've ever been touched by a Roman orgy... it's really the shivers.
- Topper magazine, January 1962

A Historically Bad Office Christmas Party: The 1968 Beatles Apple Boutique Party

In 1968, The Beatles held an ill fated Christmas Party for the new Apple boutique. and, incredibly, George Harrison invited members of Hell's Angels to the shindig! He was quoted as saying, "They may look as though they are going to do you in, but are very straight and do good things, so don't fear them or uptight them.”

John and Yoko showed up dressed like Father and Mother Christmas, and acted very scrooge-like. “Complete with false white beard, John seemed altogether lacking in seasonal spirit, and made the most miserable-looking Santa I had ever seen in my life," said a fellow partygoer.  (John was doing heroine at the time.)

I hope all you readers have a good time at your office parties. Avoid public humiliation and stay safe. And if you happen to work for the CIA, take my advice and don't drink the punch.

When Work Was Groovy

I always suspected it was a lot better to work back in the sixties and early seventies than today. Don't give me that "times were tough" garbage - I was there (I was still wearing footie pajamas, but I was there). Back then, a man could work at Walgreen's selling aquarium gravel all day and still earn a living wage - now it takes three jobs and a Capital One credit card to do that.

While most of us GenXers work in a cubicle wasteland where the employees are more disposable than the printer cartridges, the Boomers were enjoying makin' some righteous bread in their new groovy job.

You think I'm making this whole thing up? Well, I finally have found proof: an actual Sears department store training film from 1969. Don't let the go-go dancing and mini-skirts fool you - this is not a skit from Laugh-In. This is for real..

I want you to picture yourself as a Sears employee as you watch this training film - so, you're probably smoking and still have beer breath from that Pabst Blue Ribbon at lunch. And as you watch Judy Carne gyrate in a bikini to the groovy tunes, just keep reminding yourself - this is what on the job training used to be like.... Enjoy. (part 2 can be found here)