"Hello all!" "Good morning!" "I'm feeling rather fragile today..."
[Jazzy music: 'The Russians Are Coming' - Val Bennett]
Brenda: Yes. It's the little things that matter.
I love shopping! And Monday's always my catalogue day, sorting everyone out. [phone rings]
It's not just the big things that are important, it's making sure
you get enough paper clips and tippex and such like.
Now that's efficiency!
I'll just see what I need.
[CRASH!]
Polly: This filters out harmful radiation,
and the chair is adjustable to prevent R.S.E. Repetitive strain injury.
These aren't luxuries, they're absolutely vital for efficiency and happiness.
And finally, in any healthy building you'd be able to open the window and let in real fresh air.
Brian: Above all, clients respect status!
They like to know they're dealing with the top man. *chuckle*
I haven't room to swing a cat here. It's pathetic!
Miss M: Basically people are the problem. [typing]
Look! Machines are loyal servants.
Quiet. Efficient. Streamlined. [typing]
No rows! No muddles! No long tea breaks!
Am I asking too much!?
Tim: There is no consensus about how an office should be organised
but you'd never guess it from the confident assertive facade of the modern office building.
While researching why the office machines in this series have become so successful,
I became increasingly intrigued how offices themselves had achieved such enormous scale and affluence.
Funding wonderful extravagances such as this voluptuous Venus.
It's not obvious though, what all these offices are actually doing.
Despite my researches, this still baffles me,
but I did discover that the history and evolution of the office is a curiously quite fascinating subject.
150 years ago, there were no office blocks, and the only office workers were Dickensian clerks.
They wrote letters and financial ledgers, but all other business was conducted by word of mouth.
There were no memos, reports, printed forms and orders.
Man: Y'all go right along there now. [hoot]
Driver: Yeah, but how about the 10:42?
Tim: Recent research in America suggests that the introduction of printed forms
stemmed from a series of fatal train crashes in the 1840s.
[CRASH!]
[scribbling noises] The forms, initially introduced to increase safety
soon spread to every aspect of the Railway company's business.
This was a period of rapid expansion in America,
and many other companies adopted the formal procedures pioneered by the railways.
New technology, the typewriter, the telephone and the filing cabinet,
surprisingly not introduced until 1892, were introduced to cope with all the new paperwork.
Putting America firmly in the lead of office practice.
A vast new workforce was also needed.
In contrast to the Dickensian clerks, the new office employees worked under a bureaucratic hierarchy.
They were generally tied to their desks, ploughing through the mountain of paper.
They weren't usually even allowed to talk during working hours.
Some of the most influential ideas about organising it all
came from a Steel foundry engineer called Frederick Winslow Taylor.
Tim: In 1900, Taylor had discovered that by adding minute amounts of
tungsten and chromium to steel made it much harder.
Cutting tools made of this steel could cut metal 5 times than had previously been possible.
[drilling]
Taylor's high speed steel has been used for drill bits ever since.
Taylor then concluded though, that the most inefficient part of drilling and practically any other process,
was not the materials or the tools, but the person doing it, the worker.
Worker: Oooh Aaaah.
Tim: Taylor was convinced there was one best way for every job.
[watch ticking] Taylor: You could be working a lot faster than this...
Look at my eyes and work twice as fast! Workman: sigh.
Tim: After training one worker to treble the amount of pig iron he could load in a day,
Taylor was forced to abandon his experiment. [men sound annoyed]
Workmen: Hey! Off with you. How dare you teach us our jobs!
Tim: His time and motions techniques remained unpopular.
But his writings on the subject became very influential.
Lenin and Hitler were among his fans.
Taylor: My theory of work is that there's no limit to which the human body
cannot be pushed, as long as the leader has a moustache.
Tim: Some scientific management disciples applied Taylor's ideas to offices,
stuggling to organise the mountain of paperwork.
James Bunker Gilbreth made extensive use of photography,
these are some of his original films.
He even repeated Taylor's experiment with the pig iron.
Gilbreth believed in analysing every movement, to find the one best way.
Here a champion typist is being trained, particularly to keep her eyes on the copy, not on the keys.
One of his favourite techniques was to tie light bulbs to his subjects.
I can show you his technique with this camera.
If I set it on a long exposure...
I can for instance collate or put together a number of bits of paper.
The light's tracing the, exposing the film, so tracing the movements of my hands.
Gilbreth then showed the final picture to the employee,
to show how much wasted motion was involved.
The technique became quite fashionable ,and was widely used.
Some scientific management consultants were more extreme,
A Mr Leffingwell published photographs of the contents of office wastepaper baskets.
On the subject of pencil management, Mr Leffingwell recommended the issue of these metal extenders.
So the pencil could be used right down to the end.
The stub was then to be presented to a supervisor before issue of a replacement.
Leffingwell also recommended spot-checks to ensure that employees could
lay their hands on less frequently used bits of stationary without any delay.
[music]
The strict regimes imposed by scientific management certainly
contributed to making an office worker's life pretty wretched.
Voiceover: Follow the crowd. Get the big money, make a pile and raise a pile and that makes another pile for you.
Follow the crowd, we've reached a million, 2 million, 5 million, watch us grow.
Going up, it's new, it's automatic, it dictates records seals, sterilises, stamps and delivers in one operation without human hand.
What am I bid? What am I offered? Sold! Who's next? The people, yes.
Follow the crowd to the empire city, the wonder city, the windy city, the passion city. The people yes!
The people, perhaps?
Tim: Things started to change in the late '20s.
After a scientific management study on some girls assembling some electrical components.
[ticking] Finding no improvement in raising lighting levels.
A Mr. Elton Mayo tried consulting the workers.
Mayo: How would you like your tea breaks? How long? When? Tell me?
Woman: Well Mr. Mayo, we think that 3 20 minute tea breaks would suit us a whole lot better.
[clicking] Mayo: That's progress. Yeah, they're working faster.
Women: Bye Mr. Mayo...
However when the girls returned to their normal hours at the end of the experiment,
their output broke all records.
Mayo: It must be because I took notice of the poor critters.
[music] These experiments founded the Human Relations approach to office management.
Staff were encouraged to feel more involved.
Amongst other things, by the introduction of company leisure facilities.
Voiceover: Rest rooms, where the girls can spend their time off duty, are also provided.
[music]
For the more energetic members of the staff, there is a gymnasium with a qualified instructor.
[music]
Tim: The human relations approach, liberalising working conditions, coincided with the growing emancipation of women.
Even if men were reluctant to recognise it...
[music]
Voiceover: What is that whipcord resilience that lets the weaker sex play half the night?
Then bob up clear eyed ready for the next morning's work? [typing]
This frail creature strikes her typewriter keys about 40,000 times a day.
Shifts to capitals, and returns the carriage more than a thousand times each.
All together a few ounces at a time, she exerts more than
5 tons of pressure on her dainty fingertips in one day's work.
And any way you look at it, women's work is not, for sissies.
[different music] Tim: The human relations approach to office management,
encouraging everyone to use their initiative, didn't necessarily make the office more efficient.
Voiceover: I guess just about every office has someone like Betty.
A little short on personality maybe, but darned efficient.
Fact is, many of the procedures and filing systems were set up by Betty in the first place.
Joan: Oh Betty do you have a minute? Betty: What is it Joan?
Joan: Well I'm having an awful time checking anything in this guarantee file.
It's all alphabetical and there're millions of them.
Takes forever to find any particular one.
Betty: Well we haven't been having any trouble.
Joan: Well the way they did it at Malco, Betty, saved a lot of time:
There we broke the guarantees down by city, and then alphabetically.
That way when you wanted to check one, you could do it in a jiffy.
Seems we could save a lot of time if we do it that way here.
Betty: But Mr Barnes, she's changed the whole file around, I spent an hour just looking for one report!
She's tearing down everything I've spent years to build up!
Mr Barnes: I just didn't expect such resistance to new ideas.
[music]
Realising that the human relations approach, focussing on the psychology
of office behaviour, was a rather unpredictable business.
Many office experts returned to more practical ways of improving efficiency.
Just as the scientific management disciples had suggested,
surely efficiency must go down if the environment is
uncomfortably hot, or cold, or humid or draughty.
Today it's taken for granted that all offices are fitted with air conditioning.
The air comes out through slots in the ceiling, circulates round the office,
and then goes back up again.
The invention though that really made this a practical proposition,
and also radically changed the appearance of the office,
was the suspended ceiling.
This conceals all the air conditioning ducting,
er, the sprinkler system,
the lighting, and er, acoustic tiles to keep the noise levels down.
Its origins are obscure but by 1950 there was a complete kit of parts to suspend everything by these threaded rods.
Air conditioning might never have caught on in a temperate country like Britain,
except that developers realised it could be economically rather attractive.
Previously, offices had had to be designed in complicated irregular shapes
so that no desk was too far from a window, both for air and light.
With air conditioning, developers for the first time, could design deep space.
So buildings could be put up in simple rectangular blocks,
that were cheaper to build, and provided more area to let.
[music]
This sort of new look office was presented as being glamorous and efficient.
Voiceover: Those who dream in design are always contributing to our ways of work.
Working situations benefit from a new kind of layout.
Bright, open and inviting.
The modern designer creates beauty through simplicity,
bringing to active business a look of casualness, a look of luxury.
Combining to crate a new look to American efficiency.
[music]
Tim: German designers went further, in the '50's reaction against Fascism,
The Schnell brothers, who ran an office furniture business,
started proposing Burolandschaft or office landscaping.
The office was to be fully carpeted, a revolution in itself,
with the desks arranged randomly to break down traditional office hierarchy.
Shnell1: And vott we need now is some plants! Schnell2: ...some trees perhaps?
And ve have Burolandschaft. Both: Ja Ja!
Voiceover: At Beecham house, the flora and fauna mix freely in the atmosphere of an English garden.
Typists type, executives do whatever executives do. And everyone's more than happy.
What better setting for an English rose?
Perhaps some enterprising gardener will develop a new flower to mark this breakthrough.
He could call it floribunda secretaria.
Tim: Despite all these changes in the appearance of the office, it's efficiency still left much to be desired.
The swinging 60s accelerated the liberalisation of office regime.
Creating new distractions.
Voiceover: What makes the ideal shorthand typist?
Presentable, but not so glamorous that the big executive's mind goes round like a satellite.
Or yet so plain that he envies his colleagues who are away with Asian flu?
You sir, in the audience, are you an executive?
If so, have you ever wondered why your ears burn in the girls' tea break?
Girl: Mr Keanes is the best boss I ever had.
Girl2: I wish they were all like him. Girl3: All I can say is I'm sorry for his wife.
Tim: Some companies reputedly started adding bromide tablets to the water.
to suppress their employees' libido.
Meanwhile, the office organisation experts had started to put their faith in systems.
Analysing things like communication, and er, decision making,
On a practical level though, they noted that the basic office equipment
the filing cabinet, the typewriter and the telephone,
had remained basically unchanged since 1900.
By 1970, whereas each factory worker operated an average £12,000 worth of plant and machinery,
each office worker only had an average of a £1000 worth of equipment.
The key to improving office efficiency, many experts decided, was automation.
Man: Jan!? Jan: Well Dennis, I sure am thankful for new technology.
With this equipment, I can do just about anything with a few simple commands.
My work area is organised, allowing me to move about freely.
And to top it off, I can be comfortable all day, thanks to proper lighting and temperature.
We sure have come a long way!
Man: Thank you Jan. [music]
Voiceover: To most people, this would appear to be an ultra modern office.
Working with sophisticated, up to date, equipment.
But we now realise that this type of office is just
an old fashioned system, dressed up with new hardware.
We know that it's rapidly becoming obsolete.
Tim: It was felt that until all the new machines were linked together,
with all the information processed electronically,
efficiency couldn't improve.
Woman: We're in a race to keep up with the machines, and we're losing!
The new office, just imagine, an office with no stacks and files of paper.
It's not futuristic, and it's not far away.
Now changes like this can be difficult, but they're also pretty exciting.
And we're all going to be a part of it, as the new office evolves. [music]
Tim: That video was made 14 years ago, and in many ways this *is* the office of the future.
These cool white surroundings, where everything looks efficient and nothing is dirty.
Every element carefully designed.
The scientific management disciples would feel proud to see it.
Their dreams come true.
[quiet office noise] Tim: They would have approved of information technology,
with all the information formally and logically entered into networks of computers.
The new office buildings have lighting that doesn't reflect in the computer screens,
extra cooling to remove the computers' heat,
And false floors to conceal the wires connecting them together.
These quite simple requirements, persuaded many companies that their offices were obsolete.
Resulting in the lavish office building boom of the '80s.
However, creating elegant palatial effects like these is enormously expensive and complicated.
In addition to the control room, there's an entire hidden floor full of machinery.
In here there are vast cold water tanks, half a million gallons in here
and another million at the back there, for the sprinkler system.
And then there're all the pipes for the air conditioning system, er, a sort of workshop.
And the next, this is where the electricity comes into the building, the switch gear room.
Separate water tank and heater for the restaurant water.
The water softener over there, pumps for the cold water, it's all rather like a ship really.
[pump noise] Dispensers to add chemicals to the air conditioning water over there.
Series of pumps for the hot water for the radiators. Large pumps for the air conditioning water there.
This tank pressurises some of the hot water. The boilers themselves are over there.
This is the boiler control panel.
Even the roof is quite busy, with er, control panels for some of the air conditioning,
ducts and fans to suck air into the building and other ones to take the stale air out.
Then there are temperature sensors and other weather detectors.
Emergency extractor fans to suck smoke out of the atrium, in case of fire.
And a whole battery of machinery over here for the air conditioning system.
Pumps in there, cooling towers here, all enclosed now to stop the legionnaire's bugs getting out.
And er, a series of water chillers over here, to keep the computer rooms especially cold.
Simply keeping the building maintained needs a small army of people.
However, even if all this expense is justified,
the value of the information technology itself is unproven.
In the last 20 years, the number of office workers has almost trebled.
However, research has failed to find any significant increases in office productivity.
Perhaps because it's almost impossible to measure.
There's still a lot of paper about, an estimated thousand billion sheets a year in America alone.
And so many office activities remain largely unaffected by technology, because they depend on people.
Talking to colleagues, telephoning, reading and writing things, going to meetings, even thinking.
Though not so obvious as it used to be, the traditional office hierarchy still exists.
The conflict between the need to control what the staff do,
and the need to motivate them by allowing them freedom still remains.
Perhaps all this high technology is really no closer to creating the perfect office,
than the scientific management techniques of the 1920s.
I suspect the efficiency of an office is really more dependent on the
personalities of the people who work there, and how well they all get on with each other.
Possibly just as important as all the technology is the annual attempt to foster better working relationships: The office party.
Terry: Make your head explode. Brilliant!
Miss M: Ooooh. Gorgeous! Ooooh! You tiger!
[80s music]
Joan: Have a savoury Mr Jones? I won't be eating any of these, I'm allergic to pilchards.
[balloon expanding] Brenda: heh heh heh Big one!
Brian: Plutonia Personnel want me of course, heard of them? Polly: No!
Brian: Ahh, the innocence of fresh faced youth. Polly: You know what Brian? You're pathetic!
Brian: Oh Brenda, a word in your ear... This is your last chance to pull my cracker before I move to pastures new.
Brenda: *giggle* Brian! *giggle* Oooh!
Polly: I lie there thinking about pollution and global warming and dolphins
and I can't get a wink of sleep, can you?
Terry: Yeah, no bother.
Joan: Just slip them off, and I'll pop them on the radiator... [unzips] Mr Jones: Oooh, are you sure?
Brian: You and I, we know what we want and we go for it eh?
Miss M: Alright Big Boy, come to my office in two minutes, I'll be ready!
Brian: *dirty chortle*
Brian: Oh. Uuum. Errr. I say, Jonesy, the boss wants you in her office, pronto!
Mr Jones: Oh?
Miss M: Hell...oh. Oh! Mr Jones!
[smashing glass] [fire alarm rings]
Brenda: Oh. Oooh! What's happening?
Mr Jones: Oh, what did I do wrong?
Brenda: Bruce! Bruce: You're safe with me Brenda!
Everyone must leave immediately! Brenda: (dreamily) Bruce!
Terry: I've got a solar panel in my flat, d'ya wanna see it?
Joan: I've never knitted trousers before, that'll be quite a challenge.
Brenda: Oh yes Bruce I will, just name the day. [Jazzy music: 'Take 5' - Dave Brubeck]
Brian: Better buy the wife some flowers... [Jazzy music: 'Take 5' - Dave Brubeck]
Miss M: Christmas! What a waste of resources! [Jazzy music: 'Take 5' - Dave Brubeck]