What did people do at work before the internet existed?

I despised the internet when it first came out. I remember going to this summer camp that had a computer class, and they had one dial-up connection for the entire camp. So it would take an hour to load a page if it loaded at all. I used the internet in high school as little as possible - only when forced to by my "technology" high school. Then came college and high speed and e-mail and ICQ etc.

The phone was a big thing. Sometimes it would ring & it was the receptionist, just wanting to chat.

I'm not convinced less work was done pre-internet. The internet provides the most effective means of wasting time ever invented. In the 1980s you could not sit around reading a newspaper without people noticing. And you could only spend so much time talking to co-workers - assuming you actually enjoyed talking with them.

That left not much to do except work. The only thing you could do on your computer was word processing, Lotus 123 and a few basic graphics programs. There wasn't the unlimited opportunity for time-wasting we have now.

Today someone can spend all day on a PC and not accomplish a minute of productive work (I am guilty of this myself). So even though we have the tools to be much more productive today we also have endless distractions.

Used telephones, faxes, mail.

We had a stash of skin mags in the bathroom stalls, instead the 'Hub on our phones.

Before the internet, the typical office environment was relatively austere. Most workers in offices often had wooden desks, task lights, and writing blotters. Bookkeepers had a mechanical adding machine. Secretaries usually had a typewriter, a comfortable mattress, and a hook to hang her bosses clothes while he was unclothed. There was little attention paid to ergonomics and health.

Back in the 70's and 80's I was doing computer work. In the 70's we had to use punched cards for our programs. That took a lot of time, The boss was hard-line, none of this "working from home" stuff. We had computer printouts, lots of them. People didn't understand the best ways to write code as the "best practices" were still being sorted out.

And yes EVERYONE (but me it seems) smoked. My clothes smelled permanently like cigarette smoke. Many people did drink at lunch. I only did that a few times. There was more interaction between the sexes with none of this sexual harassment training although the harassment did occur. Most of it was just flirting (often instigated by women towards men) something you rarely see any longer.

Christmas parties were of two flavors: The "office" party with no spouses and things might get wild for people. The official office party with spouses was always fun. Companies didn't worry about being sued because their employees got drunk. Today, the nice Christmas parties that people used to have are as rare as hen's teeth.

If you were a runner and it got out you were considered nuts.

But we didn't have cell phones meaning that the office couldn't always easily reach you. Messages had to be relayed to you.

And we went home at night and spent quality time with the family and were ready to rock and roll again the next morning.

Daydreamed about a future where I could show the entire world what I had for breakfast and my stupid cat pix and expect to be praised for it.

Indeed. One time the law group I was with was planning to move into a building that was being newly constructed. We thus had the opportunity for some customizations. One thing we decided to do to save space was to transition from regular metal filing cabinets to a high-density mobile shelving system. Problem was, our offices would be on the 2nd floor, not on the 1st floor that was on a poured concrete foundation. So to handle the extra weight of this shelving system, the building designers had to re-engineer things and add additional steel support beams so they 2nd floor didn't collapse under the weight of our files.

This all worked great for a few years ... until the whole legal team went paperless, rendering the shelving system and all the heavy paper stored in it obsolete.

We took the secretary in the back and had fun. You could flirt with the blond and sexual harrassment was playing hard to get.

Worked!

Not sure what you do but some needs to organize, plan, contact and pay all these real workers.

The "internet" was around long, long, long before most realize. And email, Gopher, WAIS, and Usenet were a thing. I wasn't in the workforce much before then, but work was not a lot different. Phones, in general, were more the thing. Once you had your own answering machine, even moreso. Once you could call your answering machine from anywhere and get messages, that was phenomenal.

And there have always been secretaries to #.

This is true. I walked in on more than one guy "tugging his root" in the office.

During the "internet surf" time, we talked to another. Sometimes quietly to not be caught.

It was like Groundhog Day.