I joined the Scottish Office in August 1965 as a 16 year old Clerical Assistant straight from school and was appointed to work in the Scottish Information Office (SIO) in St Andrew's House. SIO was the forerunner of the Media & Communications Directorate and comprised ex-journalists and civil servants. My job was to provide clerical support to the Official Tours Team who escorted official visitors to the UK Government around Scotland. SIO's offices occupied most of that part of SAH on the ground floor at the front entrance between the swing doors leading into the main stairwells so I could see a lot of the comings and goings that went on at the front door.
My recollections about the office environment were that at my lowly grade - equivalent now to A1 - I had very little of the comforts which senior managers enjoyed. For example, my chair had no arms - you had to be an Executive Officer to get this - and the floor was covered in linoleum rather than carpet; but I did have a small coir mat for under my feet. I did have a telephone of my own which some of my clerical colleagues didn't have as they had to share one. Thinking about telephones, you couldn't dial-out: you had to ask the switchboard operator to get the number for you.
We all looked forward to every second Friday (I think it was a Friday) when we all got issued with what I would have described then, and now, as a dish-towel. This was our personal towel that we took with us to the toilets. I can't recall now whether there were towels in the toilets (I'm sure there must have been) but looking back now, how strange it was to see staff of all grades taking their towel with them to the toilet - you certainly knew where they were headed! You had to remember to leave the towel out on a Thursday evening (assuming it was a Friday changeover) for the cleaner to swap for a new one. Thinking of cleaners, these were civil servants - mostly older ladies (everyone was older, of course, when you're 16!) - who'd been in the job for ages. They started work at 6 am (I think) and were finished by 8am - we didn't start until 830, but more of that later. The thought, then, of office cleaning being contracted out and being undertaken by youngsters straight out of school (well that's how they look to me!) was simply unthinkable. The cleaners took a pride in their job - I'm not sure we can say the same for today's youngsters.
I doubt if flexible working arrangements were on anyone's horizon. We had to start work at 830 sharp, by signing your name in the signing-in book. At 835 the EO would draw a red line and if your name appeared under that then you had to have a good reason for being late. Several late starts and you'd be up before a senior officer or maybe even Establishment Division (the old fashioned name for HR). Work finished at 5 on Mondays to Thursdays and at 430 on a Friday. The start and end times were the result of a (then recent) national negation in working hours which brought the 5½ day week down to 5 days: yes, civil servants used to work on a Saturday morning! But those who were civil servants before the reduction took effect had slightly different conditioned hours to those who joined after and they could leave 15 minutes earlier, I seem to recall.
I was lucky in my job as I could call nearly everyone by their first name as SIO was a fairly relaxed office and not managed by "real" civil servants. But elsewhere you were lucky if you could call your EO by his or her first name; you certainly couldn't call your HEO by his or her first name!
Going back to St Andrew's House again, this was a suitably impressive building then and now, with its marbled floors and wood and leather conference rooms. I recall that the 3 passenger lifts (on the right as you enter St. Andrew's House) were operated by lift attendants - the thought of the Secretary of State (then Willie Ross) having to push his own lift button…! There was a service lift (on the left as you enter the building) which was self-operated and staff weren't meant to use it. But it was right outside my door so I used it all the time.
Thinking about lift attendants - or operators might be a better word - these and their messenger and doormen colleagues were all ex-servicemen, many of whom had lost limbs or suffered injury in active service. There were certainly no women allowed in these jobs! Artificial limbs abounded it seemed to me: prosthetic arms with brown leather gloves to cover the hand and artificial legs which were always a little bit shorter than the real one - at least that's how it looked to a 16 year old.
Going back to where I worked - in view of the front door - while I could work in my room with my jacket off, protocol demanded that I had to wear my jacket if I had to cross the entrance hall in case a visitor saw me jacket-less - unthinkable!
There were two staff restaurants in St. Andrews House: the one on the top floor had waitress service while the one in the basement was self-service. You'd call the basement one a cafeteria or canteen now but then it was still a "staff restaurant"! When I joined in that summer of '65 the basement restaurant was being refurbished and they had squeezed a self-service area into the top floor restaurant. There were two entrances to the top floor restaurant, I recall: one via a flight of stairs and one via one of the lifts which went all the way to the top floor (the other two stopped at the 5th floor Ministerial suite). The trouble was, I and my fellow inductees (there were 3 of us who joined on the same day) didn't know that there were two restaurants or which entrance to use. As a result, for the first week of our induction we chose the wrong entrance and we ate in the more expensive waitress serviced area - and it was expensive! I got £5 1/- (that's five pounds 1 shilling) as my weekly wage. The 1 shilling was taken off in tax under an emergency tax code which I got back after about 10 weeks when the Inland Revenue realised I was only 16: ten bob - what a windfall! Lunch in those days, especially in the waitress serviced area, was a grand affair. Looking back now I can recall what must have been pretty senior civil servants discussing all sorts of important business - or maybe they were no different than we are now and were just passing the time away.
As a CA it was important to know key people in SAH: these were, in no particular order, the Head Messenger for your floor, the Office Keeper, the Stationery Clerk and the Typing Pool Supervisor which serviced your department. Actually, there was only one person who was important and that was the Typing Pool Supervisor. She held your career in her hands. If you wanted something typed up urgently you had to make sure she was on your side or woe betide you! (Gosh - there's a phrase I haven't heard for a long time!)
The typing pool was also where you also took your photo-copying. If you had an original on translucent paper you could use the dyeline copy machine. My typing pool also had the fax and teleprinter machines located in it. These were just amazing devices for me. Not long after I joined the fax machines were enhanced with the installation of a Mufax machine: this was an early version of what we'd recognise now as a scanner and printer - I won't bore you with the details.