How the City has changed

We were having a discussion yesterday about how few Japanese Banks are left in the City. It reminded me of my very first day at work in the big city of London. In those days more than half the staff were Japanese and the cockney lady I was to be working with soon took me around to meet everyone. I felt like a giant, towering over every single one of the Japanese staff who bowed and smiled and bowed some more whilst having great difficulty pronouncing my name. My first day was also the first day of the new year and promptly at 11am we were all invited for drinks in the director's offices to celebrate. Afterwards we all went across the road to the pub. Excellent. My drinking career had began.

Back then people used to smoke at their desks and each ashtray was jammed full of cigarette butts. There were few computers which were linked to a huge main computer that filled a freezing cold room and was cared for by a man named Dennis. Everything had to be entered into the computer twice so that any typing errors could be picked up and all the computer reports were on thick reams of green lined paper that often got jammed in the printer. All the books were balanced manually in thick ledgers and people communicated by telephone, fax, telex or (perish the thought) by post. The hours were 9 to 5 and we had punch cards to sign in and out. There was always a queue at 5.14 as people waited for the clock to turn 5:15 because overtime was paid for each 15 minutes of extra time.

You didn't need a degree to get a job. Instead you started by making the teas and if you showed any initiative you would be able to work your way up, learning all aspects of the business along the way. In the peak of the eighties, most lunchtimes were spent in the pub being wooed by "loadsamoney" traders who thought nothing of buying champagne all round. These were the same guys who had started out making teas and shining shoes for their predecessors. Big bonuses, big mortgage subsidies, interest free season ticket loans, pension plans, offices parties........I'm feeling a bit nostalgic tonight.