Non-motoring > I miss secretaries! Miscellaneous
Thread Author: zippy Replies: 16
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New Thu 15 Jul 21 20:30 
 I miss secretaries! - zippy
Today has been one of those admin days.

I needed to send out some formal facility letters. Took me most of the day to do 5. They need to be spot on. Colleagues have similar output rates.

We used to have a team secretary who would do these for us. Just dictate "send a facility letter to XYZ, please, change these details, add these details etc" and it would be done. I used to get 15 done in a day like that and felt better for it.

It's the same with booking appointments. Takes anything from 10 minutes to an hour to book an appointment now.

Previously I would give the secretary my diary and she would book the appointments for me. She knew not to schedule me in London on a Friday afternoon etc.

I miss those days.
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New Thu 15 Jul 21 20:56 
 I miss secretaries! - smokie
I think I've spoken before here about being involved in the introduction of Office Automation to Coal Board HQ in London, and how suddenly we had senior staff (and I mean very senior) single finger typing letters etc when there were whole typing pools crammed full of ladies who were much quicker and considerably cheaper.

Not meaning the ladies were cheap, just they were able to produce letters for considerably less cost than a Director General :-)
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New Thu 15 Jul 21 22:39 
 I miss secretaries! - R.P.
What happened to the secretaries ?
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New Thu 15 Jul 21 23:26 
 I miss secretaries! - zippy
Most went to general admin roles, credit control, sales admin. Some to credit, some junior management. Others took the redundancy on offer and had babies.

But, since the introduction of IT, we have been able to do a lot of other work a lot more quickly - I guestimate that we are handling 10 to 20 times the volume with only 2 x the staff numbers.

I just reckon it could be more enjoyable and even more efficient if we brought back some of those more basic roles for people that wanted them.
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New Fri 16 Jul 21 00:10 
 I miss secretaries! - henry k
>> how suddenly we had senior staff (and I mean very senior) single finger typing letters etc.

When my two were quite young, we had a BBC model B and SWMBO had been a senior secretary I decided that it would be advantageous if they both learned to type properly so that is what happened.
It has certainly helped them a lot over the years.
I was the only one in the househols with poor keyboard skills.
I worked with teletype operators. Now they were really fast on a keyboard all day.
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New Fri 16 Jul 21 01:18 
 I miss secretaries! - zippy
>>a BBC model B

Mum did some extra hours and got us the best she could afford which was a ZX81.

Made sure our kids had every educational opportunity we could afford.

Feels like a Monty Python sketch.
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New Fri 16 Jul 21 08:12 
 I miss secretaries! - commerdriver
The fastest i ever saw on a keyboard were some of the data entry girls (all girls that I knew anyway), back in the 70s when I started.
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New Fri 16 Jul 21 08:37 
 I miss secretaries! - martin aston
I am now retired but in the latter years of work all secretarial support disappeared as did most junior people. It meant I did everything from my “proper” job of negotiating very large contracts and deals to doing piddly contracts, filing and admin.
Not only was it inefficient for me but it restricted the conveyor belt of rising talent who traditionally were raised in-house. There was a lot more external recruitment and consultants in later years.
Most of us also worked from home latterly. Again not great for anyone trying to learn the ropes.
Having said all that, the few young people we had coming through were exceptionally bright and their skills on spreadsheets and the like put mine to shame.
Times change, us oldies just need to get used to it.
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New Fri 16 Jul 21 09:21 
 I miss secretaries! - Falkirk Bairn
I was lucky in that we had a PC in the house from 1985 onwards. my 3 boys were 8 yr old twins & 12 - over time they acquired a good deal of PC knowledge. Off to University they were miles ahead of most of their pals - this stood them in good stead then and more importantly now.

My knowledge is still OK, that is if you measure my knowledge against the 1995 standards - anything after 1995 is at best cloudy.

However, occasionally my sons have PC issues and an old head can come to the rescue with recalling "problems solved" many years ago.
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New Fri 16 Jul 21 13:30 
 I miss secretaries! - Robin O'Reliant
Come on now, you lot just want to work in an office surrounded by young girls in short skirts.
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New Fri 16 Jul 21 16:38 
 I miss secretaries! - tyrednemotional
>> Come on now, you lot just want to work in an office surrounded by young
>> girls in short skirts.
>>

I did holiday work, and then started my career in a centralised accounts office that had a large Data Input Centre attached.

Somewhere around 100 girls/women between the ages of 16 and mid-twenties.

We used to draw lots at the end of day as to who was going to take the data down to be punched (to paper tape). You really, really didn't want to be the one who had to do that.

The best you could hope for is retreating rapidly with a red face and your ears burning - it got much worse than that, especially at Christmas.
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New Fri 16 Jul 21 18:14 
 I miss secretaries! - Robin O'Reliant
>> The best you could hope for is retreating rapidly with a red face and your
>> ears burning - it got much worse than that, especially at Christmas.
>>

Been there. I worked in a factory with a department staffed by women, mostly mid twenties all the way to retirement age. No male under thirty would willingly venture in, and teenage boys used to tremble at the thought of it. Women can be much worse than men.
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 16 Jul 21 at 19:37
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New Fri 16 Jul 21 19:23 
 I miss secretaries! - No FM2R

>> Been there. I worked in a factory with a department staffed by women, mostly mid
>> twenties all the way to retirement age. No male under thirty would willingly venture in,
>> and teenage boys used to tremble at the thought of it. Women can be much
>> worse than men.

I agree. Female factory workers are about the scariest thing I have ever encountered.
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New Fri 16 Jul 21 16:14 
 I miss secretaries! - Zero
>> The fastest i ever saw on a keyboard were some of the data entry girls
>> (all girls that I knew anyway), back in the 70s when I started.

I have a typing speed of about 40 WPM, using two fingers and thumb on my right hand, and two fingers on my left hand - my pinkies first hitting a keyboard professionally in 1973

The girls in the Pru in Holborn, who's keyboards I was tinkering with, were in the 80-120 WPM territory.
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New Fri 16 Jul 21 17:44 
 I miss secretaries! - Kevin
>The girls in the Pru in Holborn, who's keyboards I was tinkering with,..

Well, I thought I'd heard it all but that is a new one on me!
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New Fri 16 Jul 21 19:16 
 I miss secretaries! - bathtub tom
I worked in telephone exchanges. An apprentice challenge at Christmas was to run a loop of the manual board. The supervisors were worse!
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New Fri 16 Jul 21 19:28 
 I miss secretaries! - No FM2R
>>We used to have a team secretary who would do these for us.

Obviously I have no idea of your teams/environments.

However, in my experience team secretaries/admin are a facility which is abused, causes reduced responsibility and facilitates rule breaking. They are usually not valued, treated unfairly, have no career path, no scope for development and are just used for the crap work that nobody else can be a***d to do.

I would always remove them. Always.

Secretaries/PAs for individuals are a different matter; have different r&r and are thus dealt with differently.
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