Old People...want your story

[write-stuff]

Note to youngsters: We may be in different cars, but we're all on the same train.

 

[Ghery]

Well, let's see, I'm pretty old (53), but we have had email since the early/mid 90's, so we would email back and forth and agree on a time/place. If urgent, we picked up the phone. Before that, we just picked up the phone. Of course cell phones weren't all that common back then, so you often got voicemail. It just took longer to get it coordinated.

I've got 10 years on you, including when I started using e-mail. At Tandem Computers we had an in-house e-mail system that was already in place when I started in October 1983. It was early 1990s before e-mail between companies started being usable.

Death by PowerPoint

A common complaint when I worked for Intel.

Scheduling meetings using Outlook is very simple, until you have a significant number of people you want to include, all of whom are busy. Finding a common available time can be a challenge.

BTW, how do you leave time to get something done? Simple, book the time in your Outlook calendar. You look like you are already in a meeting to someone trying to schedule another one.

 

[flyingriki]

Couldn't say it better!

Ah, yes.... the good old days!

Sure we had meetings back then, a lot fewer than today. Back before all the electronic gizmos, we had to do this thing called "personal interaction". Generally one would go visit the other person and have an actual face-to-face conversation. Bit of small talk, some trading of family news, even in some cases light up a cigar!! More often than not, the question/issue was resolved on the spot and a meeting wasn't even necessary - yes, I know - unbelievable! This process weeded out a lot of fluff and reduced the problem to its real issue. The amount of information that is traded via body language, tone of voice and subtleties of language is amazing. On those occasions when it was mutually agreed that a meeting was truly necessary, a quick note on a calendar was easy. Believe that chain of command was a bit more important in those days. Get the right person in charge to do the schedule and everyone else fell in line. Secretaries (do they still have them anymore?) were indeed instrumental in getting things done.

Of course this was before the time of right-sizing, downsizing, empowerment and the ability of being "on" 24/7 was considered an enviable trait. No doubt there were times of pretty intense, concentrated effort, but there was - IMHO - a greater team effort to focus on what was important and not lose sight of the goal.

Now-a-days, it is so easy to just cruise through calendars, pick an open spot and transfer your crisis to someone else by the mere push of a button. An appreciable number of my e-mails are just that. I'm really sorry you (the global you, not personal) have a problem, it just isn't mine, and by the way, an open spot on my calendar doesn't mean I'm just sitting around, surfing POA and waiting to help you out, I might really be working on doing my job!

I'm sorry to hear your life is ruled by the Outlook calendar. There are indeed other ways to accomplish things.

And yes, we did have pens! My old (still working) fountain pen has an honored place on my desk!

Gary

 

[Old Geek]

I always liked those envelopes. I was down in the bowels of the building. Whenever I got an envelope like that I'd look at the names and work backward to see who had it before me. Kind of like "6 degrees of company president".

We went further than that. We had two large facilities, one in Berkeley, the other in Dallas (imagine that working). Every morning a Fedex pouch would come in from Dallas and every afternoon one would go out. The interoffice memo envelopes would move across the country in a day.