The office: then and now

The revolution in office life has been so rapid and so vast that we often forget what life was like in those pre-revolutionary workplaces. Here are some comparisons which help show how much changes in office technology have revolutionized office life:

THEN: Employees wasted time gossiping around the water cooler
NOW: Employees waste time gossiping around the Xerox machine

THEN: Copying business correspondence required messy and finicky carbon paper
NOW: Copying business correspondence requires messy and expensive toner cartridges

THEN: Employees wasted time gossiping around the water cooler
NOW: Employees waste time gossiping by e-mail

THEN: Little information available for reports
NOW: A report on the price of coffee in the staff room incorporates 37 pie charts and a review of the literature

THEN: Employees wasted time gossiping around the water cooler
NOW: Employees waste time experimenting with their screen savers

THEN: The office resounded to the clacking of typewriters
NOW: The office resounds to the oaths of employees who have just jammed the copier or deleted computer files by mistake

THEN: Employees wasted time gossiping around the water cooler
NOW: Employees waste time playing solitaire in Windows

THEN: Reports could only be produced in limited quantities
NOW: Everybody makes 100 copies of everything

THEN: Employees wasted time gossiping around the water cooler
NOW: Employees waste time tweeting what they had for lunch.

As you can see, office life has changed drastically over the last quarter of a century! Change is the one constant of modern society, and we can expect the office of 2043 to be as different from the office of 2013 as the office of 2013 is from the office of 1983!

Gosh, isn't modern society exciting!

The Office: Then and Now © John FitzGerald, 1997, 2000