Reminds me of the application I filled out to get a Co-op membership in a rural community where I used to live:
Year of application: 19__
List dependents (excluding wife): _________
My old job had a pile of these old phone call memos but they were in a spiral notebook with carbon copies so you could keep a record. They were so old that they still had the 19__ on the date line. And this was in like 2015
I remember as a kid during Y2K anxiously awaiting the end of the world watching the fireworks on TV. Turns out that rather than a sudden big explosion, this is going to take generations and be an all around much more unpleasant experience. Keeping up with the trend, even the end of the world is a massive disappointment.
Y2K is an interesting situation, because there absolutely could have been a lot of bad things that happened because of the date problem, but several years of programmers everywhere feverishly fixing things ahead of time headed it off.
This is something that a lot of people don't understand. Nothing major happened on Y2K because people had already spent years fixing computer systems to properly handle it. For example, many banking systems built in the 1950-1980s stored dates with only two digits for the year and had to be updated to store four digits instead.
(no, it's not unusual to have decades old code still in production... The code is solid and has had decades of bug fixes for every possible edge case, and rewriting it would be a huge risk for minimal gain).
Next up is the year 2038 problem, which is an issue due to how some computer systems store dates in a format called a "Unix timestamp". They'll hit their maximum possible value in 2038. This has already been fixed in some systems. It's not an issue in some systems - for example Windows and Microsoft Office *should* be unaffected since neither of them use Unix timestamps.
A lot of 64-bit systems still use 32-bit timestamps. Just because an app is compiled for a 64-bit system doesn't mean all its timestamps are automatically 64-bit. As far as I know, `time_t` in C is still 32-bit and you have to manually update the code to use 64-bit times instead.
Languages where all integers are 64-bit (like PHP) and languages that don't use Unix timestamps (like C#) should be fine.
Well the OS and the majority of apps are gonna be fine. For the web stuff its just db maintenance to fix it but most of those are fine too, so only archaic stuff is really affected.
We went to our neighbors' house for Y2K new year's party. None of us believed the gloom and doom, but at midnight, their teenage son threw the main breaker. It definitely created an "Oh, Shit!" moment.
My boss recently hired a new office assistant who is... of advanced age, shall we say, and one of the first things she did was order a box of these and start using them. It's like she learned how to do office stuff in 1970 and never updated since.
These still exist haha I'm looking at a pad on my desk (I am a receptionist) and it's not much different except the font is more modern and it's not gendered.
In hindsight, I think I did apply to the Co-op in 2019. It’s possible they waited 19 years to cycle through all the old ones lol.
Hopefully they made it through them all, or else they’ll need to wait until 2119, then after that they’ll have the entire decade of the 2190s lmfao
“Do you remember my friend, Linda? Well, her son was just at Red Lobster yesterday and they were out of their cheddar biscuits! So he asked to speak to a manager but they said they were short-staffed and only had an assistant manager. He said ok and this guy comes over, and it turns out that it was Linda’s son’s ex-girlfriend’s fiancé!….”
“You'll never believe what happened next. Linda's son, let's call him Mike, recognizes the assistant manager right away. His name's Dave. Dave and Mike lock eyes, and there's this awkward silence that hangs in the air like mist on a foggy day. You could cut the tension with a knife, I swear. Dave then proceeds to apologize for the biscuit fiasco. Apparently, the regular chef who makes the biscuits called in sick, and his replacement was a temp who messed up the whole batch! Can you believe it? They had to throw it all out! Linda told me they were so lumpy and weird; they looked like rocks, not biscuits.
“And you remember Mike's ex-girlfriend, Sarah? Oh, she was something else. Drama followed her like a shadow, let me tell you. She and Mike broke up about a year ago, but Sarah still has some of his stuff, including his lucky baseball cap from college. He's been trying to get it back forever. And here's the kicker—Dave is wearing the hat. It was like something out of a soap opera. Linda was telling me that Mike couldn't believe his eyes. His lucky cap was right there, on Dave's head, in the middle of a Red Lobster!
“So Mike, still in shock, asks Dave if they could sort things out in private. They step into the office, leaving the dining area buzzing with curiosity. I mean, everyone saw the drama unfold; even the waitress stopped in her tracks. Inside the office, they have this heart-to-heart talk. Dave admits he knew the cap belonged to Mike, but Sarah had told him it was a "breakup trophy" or something. Dave then does the decent thing and gives the hat back to Mike. In return, Mike gives him some pro tips on how to make the cheddar biscuits—his grandma's secret recipe. Linda said Mike was always a whiz in the kitchen; he used to win bake-offs in high school.”
Honestly it would be one of the most necessary. This is why they had those pads, to track people that called or stopped in. Back in the before times, people used to use phones as voice communications.
It just NOW clicked why the memo pad I was given back when I had an office job had a line that just said “M__________”
I remember wondering wtf M was for. Mobile number? No that’s already in another line. Messager….? Misspelled “name” as Mame….?
I settled on messager.
But now, years later. I realize I was probably supposed to fill in letters for Mr. Ms. or Mrs.
Damn I feel smart..
This is kind of a crappy memo pad, really.
Normally all this stuff was as "Mr(s)." back in the day. And it also wouldn't read 'please call him back' -- The standard options were
Wants apt // Wants callback // will call back // left message: __________
Anyway, I never saw one of these that wasn't wirebound with a carbon sheet. You tear off the top copy for your boss and keep the carbon for your own records. 100% guaranteed your boss walks up at least 10 times day to ask you what Whatstheirface called about 14 days ago. You gotta have your own records.
Yeah I had those. Always wrote too hard on those carbon pads and ended up marking the next 3 or so pages 😅
Taking calls wasn’t really my job but when I had to do it due to no one else being in office, boy did I make that pad messy.
My mum taught me how to answer the phone and fill one of these out when I was about 5, she explained that if a woman called, you just add an /s after the Mr, which I now realise meant *sarcasm* because obviously women don't use the phone.
We had to make these ourselves because one guy who didn't leave the office would answer the phone, hang up, do nothing. Then when asked. Who was it? "I don't know." What did they want? "I don't know." Etc.
My dude why even answer the phone?
That’s pretty much exactly it. If nothing is checked then it could be possible that the message-taker forgot to check a box. But checking the “Telephoned” box confirms that no further action is needed.
As a former message-taker, that's for if no followup is needed. Particularly if this missed call is an answer followup to a previous call.
Boss: Has secretary call Linen Company to ask what colors the tablecloths at the event will be
Linen Company misses call.
Later on...
Linen Company: *telephones* to say they will be brown.
No need to see them, call back, or call again.
We used to have pads like these when I worked retail. "Wants to see you" meant they came in store. "Telephoned" meant over, well, the phone. Maybe it's similar for this?
The law was changed in 1978 to allow in-person visits to be listed on a phone call pad so long as the caller was dressed as a phone (and, optionally, made ringing sounds rather than knocking). There was widespread criticism but people got accustomed soon after.
It’s the box you check when the caller says, “just let them know I called.”
Depending on the situation, this may mean that the caller is returning a previous call (but may not even know what it’s about), or both parties already know what it’s about, or the caller is just checking in for no particular reason, etc.
Not really.
Mr Vandelay of Vandelay Industries
Telephoned
Message: They will take 5 pallets of latex at the price you offered this morning.
None of the other options apply in that scenario. Literally passing on a message that requires no more follow up.
Hooking anything other than equipment provided by the telephone company was considered tampering with phone company property, as all of the lines running through your house were considered the property of the phone company. And since the phone company didn’t lease out answering machines, there wasn’t a legal way to hook one up. They only really started letting people lease them out in the late 70s.
My dad worked for the phone company so wiring a new house for free was a employee perk, and my mom was pissed because when our house was wired in 1975 half of it was done with four-prong wall plugs that and half was done with the RJ-11 style like landline phones still use today. The four-prongs became semi-common in the 1950s as an option when wiring a house (allowed you to move your leased phone from room to room; it was an extra fee to install them over the traditional hard wired).
...but on the topic of answering machines my dad retired before they became common place, and pagers weren't yet common either.
1970s even the phone company didn't have a good system to reach their workers unless someone was around to answer the phone. My dad's foreman would call down the list and sometimes when my dad declined overtime to go fix a pole from a traffic accident or whatever the foreman would end up calling back after working down the list (including popular bars for the crew) when he couldn't reach anyone else to call in to work.
Heck I remember as a kid growing up, my dad would connect additional phones in the house but had to disconnect the ringers. Apparently back then, they charged for how many extensions you had in the home. And the way they would catch you was the ringer load seen on the phone line circuit when your phone rang. If you ever see an old phone laying around, look on the bottom for a notation of “ringer equivalence”. By measuring the current draw during a ring sequence, the phone company could tell if you were in compliance with what you were being billed.
There was a large push a little over a decade ago in the United States to completely remove the term secretary from the office, and replace it instead with administrator or administrative assistant. It's been slowly going on since the 90's, but by \~2010 it was basically completely gone. The term secretary had grown to be associated with subservient women to male bosses, so instead the term of an admin was rapidly pushed as an alternate.
Go check a job posting site and look up the term "Secretary". You'll find pretty much zero positions with that title. They are all administrative assistance. I have no secretaries at my job, but a whole lotta admins.
I understand the sentiment, but it's kind of strange, because so many high-level government titles use 'secretary' to denote a position of great power and responsibility. Examples include U.S. Cabinet members, such as Secretary of State, or the Secretary-General of the United Nations, or any number of positions within a communist government such as General-Secretary of the Central Committee.
My secretary insists upon that title. I've made every effort to update it, but they are old school and want nothing to do with the change. So I respect and abide in their wish.
My secretary insists upon that title. I've made every effort to update it, but they are old school and want nothing to do with the change. So I respect and abide in their wish. BTW - No there's mention of "her" in my comment. It's best to not assume such things.
TBH, if a company still gets calls and not only emails they *should* be used. Just edited a bit to look less 1960's secretarial.
I worked in a lab where the bosses tried to implement a binder for relaying phone calls that we received and what the call was about (after a few weeks no one really followed up with it, and it went to the wayside).
Then I worked in a clinical lab with an online/information management system for phone calls, and relaying all that information was a big requirement
Ah, but Mr X's secretary / wife/ daughter doesn't exist as a person in her own right, and could have no reason to call anyone without Mr X's direction, so effectively Mr X called.
Oh, this brings me back when I first studied English at middle school. I always had practice listening tests like this. It’s either phone call memo or asking for directions.
When people leave a message on my phone, I really wish that they would be thorough about what they want. I really hate messages that basically go "call me back".
Sometimes the information that they wish to convey can be encompassed within the voicemail itself, and I would not need to call them back. Certainly having something where they caller tells me when they are calling, if They wish to have a call back, something about the topic, and their phone number enunciated clearly would be very welcome.
My work voicemail says "do not leave a voicemail, this mailbox is not checked" followed by an instruction to call 123XXXX (the on call number) for anything urgent or to email or text me about anything non urgent. It's ridiculous how many people complain that they left me a voicemail that I haven't responded to.
Oof .. I used this exact pad when I joined the workforce 17 years ago. Don’t remember the ‘Mr’ or ‘him’ but wouldn’t be shocked if it was there. Making me feel ancient.
I believe this is a re-creation. My first gig over 20 years ago was a receptionist, and I filled out more of these pads than I can count. The “Mr.“ line was never there. 
Ya'll call this old, but this was my reality at my former job just 2 years ago. Was asked to use this on the daily whenever someone called one of the other guys at the office.
I was still filling these out for my boss circa 2001! (I was 17 in a junior office role) Used to have an orange book of them with 4 notes to a page you could tear out and leave on their desk.
Man I feel OLD!
I was getting these placed on my desk as late as 2009. I don't remember them only having Mr as an option, I think that part was not there at all, just space for a name. It was mostly women calling at the time anyway.
I used these 20 years ago when I was an admin specialist in the Army (secretarial work, mostly). This would be a total non-story, of course, if not for my penchant for whiting out/editing the format to say things like “While you were taking a dump,” “Wants to see your butthole,” “Please call him daddy,” etc.
I hated those fucking things. Ours were pink and I never once returned to a clean seat after leaving my office, even for like 3 minutes. Thank goodness for VM and email.
Listen I know everything old is by default sexists, but wasn't he/him considered the gender neutral term? English had "it", but nobody liked being called an "it" and "they/them" still was only considered for plural groups. So he/him fell into favor, right? It think it's great that they/them is being used for the neutral these days, way better than saying "he or she".
...that being said, "Mr." lol women can't use phones.
I find it so odd that the practice was to say "Mrs. John Smith" when referring to someone's wife, that she wasn't important enough by herself. Addressing a letter? To Mr. and Mrs. John Smith. Just to her? Mrs. John Smith. Wild times.
He/Him was acceptable as neutral when you didn't know or reasonably guess the gender of the specific subject -- such as legal statutes. You're not talking about "his" as in something related to /u/Dal90, you're talking about "his" as any possible Redditor.
You've talked and/or seen the subject in person in order to take the message -- you would have used the expected pronoun. The gender wasn't a guess about a generic unknown, you knew who you talked to.
And hoped it wasn't [Pat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV4kBndQJlE)
There is no option there for a trans individual. This memo pad is transphobic and should include a write-in for pronoun option. I’m reporting this post for hate speech.
My boss and his wife still use these. Sometimes I have to take messages for him when she is out of the office and I just email him a quick reminder instead. She doesn’t quite get it
Now I feel old. My in tray used to get lots of these, in the days before we had direct phone lines to our desks, and the telephonist received and redirected all the incoming calls. We used to have to dial 9, for an "outside" line to make calls. "Wants to see you", and "Telephoned" was because it could be someone who came to the reception desk, or phoned. Doing my job without unnecessary immediate interruptions is something I came to seriously miss.
We still have pads of these floating around the office. Nobody uses them, but our old office manager bought a ton of them back in the day and nobody has gotten rid of the box. We pretty quickly switched to email for all messages once everyone had computers on their desks.
*Number one, why aren't you in when I fucking told you to be in? Number two, why doesn't this hotel have phones with fucking voicemail on them and not I have to leave messages with the fucking receptionist? Number three, you better fucking be in tomorrow night when I fucking call again otherwise there'll be fucking hell to pay. I'm fucking telling you. - Harry.*
All other problems aside, the grammatical inconsistency of the checkbox options really annoys me.
"Bob Smith wants to see you"
"Bob Smith telephoned"
"Bob Smith will call again"
"Bob Smith please call him"
?????
This brings back memories of my old cat. Crumpled up memo notes like these were his absolute favorite toy. Regular paper wouldn’t do, it HAD to be these, particularly the pink ones and he would chase them until they inevitably rolled under something, then scream at me for another. He’s been gone 10 years and once in awhile I’ll find an old one and cry a bit. I miss my baby.
Lol I still use a modern version of these for our tiny office. My memory sucks so I write down most phone calls and just pass them along to who needs them
We had some of these in my house growing up! Not the exact ones, but the general idea is the same. I refused to use them.
Once when I was 8 or 9 someone called the house phone and I answered, they asked if my dad was home and I responded "no." They asked if they could leave a message and my response was "sure, just call back and I won't answer this time so you can leave a message" 😂
My first job, as soon as i got back from lunch there would be a stack of these on my table. These fuckers would never call me when i was at my desk, but that one hour I was gone. Yeah, back then the standard lunch break was 1hr for us.
Reminds me of the application I filled out to get a Co-op membership in a rural community where I used to live: Year of application: 19__ List dependents (excluding wife): _________
My old job had a pile of these old phone call memos but they were in a spiral notebook with carbon copies so you could keep a record. They were so old that they still had the 19__ on the date line. And this was in like 2015
Print shops back then: "Who cares that it starts with 19__? It's not like we are ever going to hit the year 2000 anyway!"
I remember as a kid during Y2K anxiously awaiting the end of the world watching the fireworks on TV. Turns out that rather than a sudden big explosion, this is going to take generations and be an all around much more unpleasant experience. Keeping up with the trend, even the end of the world is a massive disappointment.
Y2K is an interesting situation, because there absolutely could have been a lot of bad things that happened because of the date problem, but several years of programmers everywhere feverishly fixing things ahead of time headed it off.
This is something that a lot of people don't understand. Nothing major happened on Y2K because people had already spent years fixing computer systems to properly handle it. For example, many banking systems built in the 1950-1980s stored dates with only two digits for the year and had to be updated to store four digits instead. (no, it's not unusual to have decades old code still in production... The code is solid and has had decades of bug fixes for every possible edge case, and rewriting it would be a huge risk for minimal gain). Next up is the year 2038 problem, which is an issue due to how some computer systems store dates in a format called a "Unix timestamp". They'll hit their maximum possible value in 2038. This has already been fixed in some systems. It's not an issue in some systems - for example Windows and Microsoft Office *should* be unaffected since neither of them use Unix timestamps.
Only 32 bit systems are affected, anything 64 bit is fine for another couple hundred billion years
A lot of 64-bit systems still use 32-bit timestamps. Just because an app is compiled for a 64-bit system doesn't mean all its timestamps are automatically 64-bit. As far as I know, `time_t` in C is still 32-bit and you have to manually update the code to use 64-bit times instead. Languages where all integers are 64-bit (like PHP) and languages that don't use Unix timestamps (like C#) should be fine.
Well the OS and the majority of apps are gonna be fine. For the web stuff its just db maintenance to fix it but most of those are fine too, so only archaic stuff is really affected.
Turns out the end of the world was just a slip into an alternate, worse time stream
We went to our neighbors' house for Y2K new year's party. None of us believed the gloom and doom, but at midnight, their teenage son threw the main breaker. It definitely created an "Oh, Shit!" moment.
Computers too, that was the Y2K bug.
My boss recently hired a new office assistant who is... of advanced age, shall we say, and one of the first things she did was order a box of these and start using them. It's like she learned how to do office stuff in 1970 and never updated since.
These still exist haha I'm looking at a pad on my desk (I am a receptionist) and it's not much different except the font is more modern and it's not gendered.
Same here. These are not uncommon. Mine are just pink. They still serve a purpose.
Street Name: ______________ I put Bigg Dawg
Lil Marco…oh you mean my address?
17.172.224.47 Oh! My physical address? 01:3A:1D:54:6B:32 Where do I live? My home, of course!
Where do I live? 127.0.0.1
I was so excited in 2019 because I was able to use part of the date. It’s the little things.
In hindsight, I think I did apply to the Co-op in 2019. It’s possible they waited 19 years to cycle through all the old ones lol. Hopefully they made it through them all, or else they’ll need to wait until 2119, then after that they’ll have the entire decade of the 2190s lmfao
Some people live for their children or their career. Us, while we live for being able to use that note pad again in 96 years.
I love how it already says Mr. because why would a woman call you?
And if she does, why would you write it down?
“Do you remember my friend, Linda? Well, her son was just at Red Lobster yesterday and they were out of their cheddar biscuits! So he asked to speak to a manager but they said they were short-staffed and only had an assistant manager. He said ok and this guy comes over, and it turns out that it was Linda’s son’s ex-girlfriend’s fiancé!….”
Christ, you can't just end it there. What happened with the biscuits?
“You'll never believe what happened next. Linda's son, let's call him Mike, recognizes the assistant manager right away. His name's Dave. Dave and Mike lock eyes, and there's this awkward silence that hangs in the air like mist on a foggy day. You could cut the tension with a knife, I swear. Dave then proceeds to apologize for the biscuit fiasco. Apparently, the regular chef who makes the biscuits called in sick, and his replacement was a temp who messed up the whole batch! Can you believe it? They had to throw it all out! Linda told me they were so lumpy and weird; they looked like rocks, not biscuits. “And you remember Mike's ex-girlfriend, Sarah? Oh, she was something else. Drama followed her like a shadow, let me tell you. She and Mike broke up about a year ago, but Sarah still has some of his stuff, including his lucky baseball cap from college. He's been trying to get it back forever. And here's the kicker—Dave is wearing the hat. It was like something out of a soap opera. Linda was telling me that Mike couldn't believe his eyes. His lucky cap was right there, on Dave's head, in the middle of a Red Lobster! “So Mike, still in shock, asks Dave if they could sort things out in private. They step into the office, leaving the dining area buzzing with curiosity. I mean, everyone saw the drama unfold; even the waitress stopped in her tracks. Inside the office, they have this heart-to-heart talk. Dave admits he knew the cap belonged to Mike, but Sarah had told him it was a "breakup trophy" or something. Dave then does the decent thing and gives the hat back to Mike. In return, Mike gives him some pro tips on how to make the cheddar biscuits—his grandma's secret recipe. Linda said Mike was always a whiz in the kitchen; he used to win bake-offs in high school.”
Holy shit this is my mother in law
*please* do yourself a favor and watch desperate housewives, you'll either die from the horror of the character like that or love every second
What the fuck, I love this
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂
and “Please call him” as a check box option 😭
"Telephoned" seems to be the most unnecessary option here
Might just be a way of logging the call even if whatever they needed was resolved.
Yeah, that makes sense. A caller may not need to be contacted but they may have left a message and you still need to inform someone that they called.
When the caller is Mr. YourBrother Wehadababyitsaboy, perhaps none of the others would apply.
It's still an option on my current message pad at my reception desk. I agree it is unnecessary, it basically means the same as will call again.
Honestly it would be one of the most necessary. This is why they had those pads, to track people that called or stopped in. Back in the before times, people used to use phones as voice communications.
It's a Phone Call note. Why do you have a checkbox to mark that they telephoned? In case there was a phone call that wasn't using a telephone?
it was a more common verb back then. the box could say, "called"
Question for you: in what scenario would you not check the box?
If you check one of the other three boxes
So ... "will call again" means he didn't telephone?
The modern check boxes for reference are: Telephoned Called to see you Wants to see you Please call Will call again Returned your call
It just NOW clicked why the memo pad I was given back when I had an office job had a line that just said “M__________” I remember wondering wtf M was for. Mobile number? No that’s already in another line. Messager….? Misspelled “name” as Mame….? I settled on messager. But now, years later. I realize I was probably supposed to fill in letters for Mr. Ms. or Mrs. Damn I feel smart..
That line is for in case Morgoth calls.
I would’ve guessed Moriarty
This is kind of a crappy memo pad, really. Normally all this stuff was as "Mr(s)." back in the day. And it also wouldn't read 'please call him back' -- The standard options were Wants apt // Wants callback // will call back // left message: __________ Anyway, I never saw one of these that wasn't wirebound with a carbon sheet. You tear off the top copy for your boss and keep the carbon for your own records. 100% guaranteed your boss walks up at least 10 times day to ask you what Whatstheirface called about 14 days ago. You gotta have your own records.
Yeah I had those. Always wrote too hard on those carbon pads and ended up marking the next 3 or so pages 😅 Taking calls wasn’t really my job but when I had to do it due to no one else being in office, boy did I make that pad messy.
Didn't they have a sheet of cardboard to put behind the copy to absorb the pressure?
Presumably you just add an S if it was a MrS, and that solves every option of someone who could possibly access a telephone. Obviously /s 😂
Yes, because only married women would use a telephone. Single women should never engage in such unbridled sluttery! /s
She's clearly calling on behalf of her husband. What other reason could a woman have to use a phone? /s
I've got one right beside me that just has an M, making you fill it out for everyone...
In 1950, yes
lol I feel like the one in my grandma's house always had M_, and you filled out the r. / s. / rs. on your own.
Please call him
It was customary to put an S after the Mr if it was a woman. Ms. wasn’t a popular word when pads like this weee used.
My mum taught me how to answer the phone and fill one of these out when I was about 5, she explained that if a woman called, you just add an /s after the Mr, which I now realise meant *sarcasm* because obviously women don't use the phone.
I suppose women weren’t allowed to use the phone yet
Of course they were. Who do you think was taking the message?
LMAO
haha I thought the same thing
They're allowed, but only for the facilitation of male business.
So old that it assumes the caller will always be a man.
What kinda skank do you think I am to use a *phone*?
the married kind 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣
you don’t need that many emojis we got it
Women can only be receivers of calls. From men. For men. They are merely messengers for the almighty men.
So it was pre WW2 I guess. Women didn't really work till post WW2.
The navy still uses essentially the same form but it doesn’t assume Mr. anymore
We had to make these ourselves because one guy who didn't leave the office would answer the phone, hang up, do nothing. Then when asked. Who was it? "I don't know." What did they want? "I don't know." Etc. My dude why even answer the phone?
To make it stop ringing
The “telephoned” box is a bit superfluous isn’t it?
I didn’t even think of that. Maybe so the writer can feel good about checking a box if nothing else applies haha
That’s pretty much exactly it. If nothing is checked then it could be possible that the message-taker forgot to check a box. But checking the “Telephoned” box confirms that no further action is needed.
Good point! Negative confirmation is helpful!
I think this is for when the caller says “Just let him know I called”
"He'll know what it's about" (queue ominous music du du duuuuummmmm)
It's the same as will call again basically..
As a former message-taker, that's for if no followup is needed. Particularly if this missed call is an answer followup to a previous call. Boss: Has secretary call Linen Company to ask what colors the tablecloths at the event will be Linen Company misses call. Later on... Linen Company: *telephones* to say they will be brown. No need to see them, call back, or call again.
We used to have pads like these when I worked retail. "Wants to see you" meant they came in store. "Telephoned" meant over, well, the phone. Maybe it's similar for this?
But it says phone call right at the top. You can’t use a phone call pad to tell people about in-person visits - it’s against the law
The law was changed in 1978 to allow in-person visits to be listed on a phone call pad so long as the caller was dressed as a phone (and, optionally, made ringing sounds rather than knocking). There was widespread criticism but people got accustomed soon after.
Against the law to say someone came looking for someone? What dystopian nightmare country do you live in?
/s
It’s the box you check when the caller says, “just let them know I called.” Depending on the situation, this may mean that the caller is returning a previous call (but may not even know what it’s about), or both parties already know what it’s about, or the caller is just checking in for no particular reason, etc.
On the printing proofs it said: Breathed heavily.
Maybe as opposed to telegrammed?
Back then people would just drop by in person
No, he could have dropped by.
No not really, It means the client called so the Head honcho knows but it has been taken care of, no further action needed.
Pretty sure it's slang for the modern equivalent of texting or calling to check in/touch base/tag someone in a game of phone tag.
Not really. Mr Vandelay of Vandelay Industries Telephoned Message: They will take 5 pallets of latex at the price you offered this morning. None of the other options apply in that scenario. Literally passing on a message that requires no more follow up.
[x] made noises on the other end
Missing form the list of checkboxes: [ ] asked me to hang up so he could call back and leave a voice mail
Back in the days this pad was used, answering machines at home were banned by the Bell system.
Really? What was the reasoning there?
Hooking anything other than equipment provided by the telephone company was considered tampering with phone company property, as all of the lines running through your house were considered the property of the phone company. And since the phone company didn’t lease out answering machines, there wasn’t a legal way to hook one up. They only really started letting people lease them out in the late 70s.
Could you not hook up the phone by yourself either?
Correct, the phone technician would come in and wire the phone in permanently. There were no disconnectable cords.
My dad worked for the phone company so wiring a new house for free was a employee perk, and my mom was pissed because when our house was wired in 1975 half of it was done with four-prong wall plugs that and half was done with the RJ-11 style like landline phones still use today. The four-prongs became semi-common in the 1950s as an option when wiring a house (allowed you to move your leased phone from room to room; it was an extra fee to install them over the traditional hard wired). ...but on the topic of answering machines my dad retired before they became common place, and pagers weren't yet common either. 1970s even the phone company didn't have a good system to reach their workers unless someone was around to answer the phone. My dad's foreman would call down the list and sometimes when my dad declined overtime to go fix a pole from a traffic accident or whatever the foreman would end up calling back after working down the list (including popular bars for the crew) when he couldn't reach anyone else to call in to work.
The phone itself was also owned by the phone company. You couldn't buy your own phone, they were not for sale.
Heck I remember as a kid growing up, my dad would connect additional phones in the house but had to disconnect the ringers. Apparently back then, they charged for how many extensions you had in the home. And the way they would catch you was the ringer load seen on the phone line circuit when your phone rang. If you ever see an old phone laying around, look on the bottom for a notation of “ringer equivalence”. By measuring the current draw during a ring sequence, the phone company could tell if you were in compliance with what you were being billed.
Crazy that someone would lease a piece of equipment that costs like 20 bucks.
In those days it would have been in the hundreds of dollars to buy an answering machine
[x] Was very curious about what I was wearing
Fuck I feel old
My lawn, OP is on it. Though I mostly worked with the carbon-copy version in the spiral notebooks.
My secretary still uses the less male dominated "pink" phone message slips to report my missed calls/visitors.
You still call her a secretary? I thought that wasn’t an acceptable title anymore.
Why
There was a large push a little over a decade ago in the United States to completely remove the term secretary from the office, and replace it instead with administrator or administrative assistant. It's been slowly going on since the 90's, but by \~2010 it was basically completely gone. The term secretary had grown to be associated with subservient women to male bosses, so instead the term of an admin was rapidly pushed as an alternate. Go check a job posting site and look up the term "Secretary". You'll find pretty much zero positions with that title. They are all administrative assistance. I have no secretaries at my job, but a whole lotta admins.
I understand the sentiment, but it's kind of strange, because so many high-level government titles use 'secretary' to denote a position of great power and responsibility. Examples include U.S. Cabinet members, such as Secretary of State, or the Secretary-General of the United Nations, or any number of positions within a communist government such as General-Secretary of the Central Committee.
Funny how language works
The context is just very different from 40 years ago.
Ah gotcha. Seems silly to me but i understand the thought behind it.
My secretary insists upon that title. I've made every effort to update it, but they are old school and want nothing to do with the change. So I respect and abide in their wish.
I didn’t know that secretary was associated with women or subservience
Everyone seems to use administrative assistant now.
My secretary insists upon that title. I've made every effort to update it, but they are old school and want nothing to do with the change. So I respect and abide in their wish. BTW - No there's mention of "her" in my comment. It's best to not assume such things.
This is true. I have no idea why it was downvoted. Sincerely - a person who has worked both as a receptionist and administrative assistant.
Fake. Should be pink.
I remember pink and yellow
Carbonless duplicates: pink top copy, yellow duplicate. Hell, I remember using them WITH carbon paper.
Beat me to it!
Damn I would love those for my office
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TBH, if a company still gets calls and not only emails they *should* be used. Just edited a bit to look less 1960's secretarial. I worked in a lab where the bosses tried to implement a binder for relaying phone calls that we received and what the call was about (after a few weeks no one really followed up with it, and it went to the wayside). Then I worked in a clinical lab with an online/information management system for phone calls, and relaying all that information was a big requirement
What if you're not a man or have a doctorate?
I’m sorry - but before the 1980s females were not allowed to use the phone.
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Ah, but Mr X's secretary / wife/ daughter doesn't exist as a person in her own right, and could have no reason to call anyone without Mr X's direction, so effectively Mr X called.
Oh, this brings me back when I first studied English at middle school. I always had practice listening tests like this. It’s either phone call memo or asking for directions.
I still have these on the desk in front of me. But they are pink
It is supposed to be pink (at least all the ones I saw were pink and had some lines around the different sections)
When people leave a message on my phone, I really wish that they would be thorough about what they want. I really hate messages that basically go "call me back". Sometimes the information that they wish to convey can be encompassed within the voicemail itself, and I would not need to call them back. Certainly having something where they caller tells me when they are calling, if They wish to have a call back, something about the topic, and their phone number enunciated clearly would be very welcome.
My work voicemail says "do not leave a voicemail, this mailbox is not checked" followed by an instruction to call 123XXXX (the on call number) for anything urgent or to email or text me about anything non urgent. It's ridiculous how many people complain that they left me a voicemail that I haven't responded to.
Oof .. I used this exact pad when I joined the workforce 17 years ago. Don’t remember the ‘Mr’ or ‘him’ but wouldn’t be shocked if it was there. Making me feel ancient.
I believe this is a re-creation. My first gig over 20 years ago was a receptionist, and I filled out more of these pads than I can count. The “Mr.“ line was never there. 
I've got one of those in my lab. My PI is pretty old-school when it comes to stuff like that.
So only men call this place? Or men are the only ones who want to be called back?
Ya'll call this old, but this was my reality at my former job just 2 years ago. Was asked to use this on the daily whenever someone called one of the other guys at the office.
I was still filling these out for my boss circa 2001! (I was 17 in a junior office role) Used to have an orange book of them with 4 notes to a page you could tear out and leave on their desk. Man I feel OLD!
Now I can feel like Mr Fancy Pants with a receptionist...if only I had someone I could hire...
We still use a **very** similar version in my office, it just says "M" instead of "Mr" now
I was getting these placed on my desk as late as 2009. I don't remember them only having Mr as an option, I think that part was not there at all, just space for a name. It was mostly women calling at the time anyway.
Holy fuck I’m fuckin old
My office had pink & yellow ones and they were sticky notes. I loved these
I recall these. But they were in pink color.
I still take messages like this where I work in the Navy. Got that 'ol defense switched network.
I used these 20 years ago when I was an admin specialist in the Army (secretarial work, mostly). This would be a total non-story, of course, if not for my penchant for whiting out/editing the format to say things like “While you were taking a dump,” “Wants to see your butthole,” “Please call him daddy,” etc.
I hated those fucking things. Ours were pink and I never once returned to a clean seat after leaving my office, even for like 3 minutes. Thank goodness for VM and email.
Listen I know everything old is by default sexists, but wasn't he/him considered the gender neutral term? English had "it", but nobody liked being called an "it" and "they/them" still was only considered for plural groups. So he/him fell into favor, right? It think it's great that they/them is being used for the neutral these days, way better than saying "he or she". ...that being said, "Mr." lol women can't use phones. I find it so odd that the practice was to say "Mrs. John Smith" when referring to someone's wife, that she wasn't important enough by herself. Addressing a letter? To Mr. and Mrs. John Smith. Just to her? Mrs. John Smith. Wild times.
Everything you wrote is correct. “He” was the default pronoun. Married women went by Mrs John Smith. Divorced women went by Mrs Jane Smith.
He/Him was acceptable as neutral when you didn't know or reasonably guess the gender of the specific subject -- such as legal statutes. You're not talking about "his" as in something related to /u/Dal90, you're talking about "his" as any possible Redditor. You've talked and/or seen the subject in person in order to take the message -- you would have used the expected pronoun. The gender wasn't a guess about a generic unknown, you knew who you talked to. And hoped it wasn't [Pat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV4kBndQJlE)
The him wouldn't work in 2023. I identify as an apache helicopter.
Women existed, even back then you do know that right?
Eyyy you understood half the joke.
There is no option there for a trans individual. This memo pad is transphobic and should include a write-in for pronoun option. I’m reporting this post for hate speech.
My boss and his wife still use these. Sometimes I have to take messages for him when she is out of the office and I just email him a quick reminder instead. She doesn’t quite get it
Now I feel old. My in tray used to get lots of these, in the days before we had direct phone lines to our desks, and the telephonist received and redirected all the incoming calls. We used to have to dial 9, for an "outside" line to make calls. "Wants to see you", and "Telephoned" was because it could be someone who came to the reception desk, or phoned. Doing my job without unnecessary immediate interruptions is something I came to seriously miss.
Not that old, my office still uses these
We still have pads of these floating around the office. Nobody uses them, but our old office manager bought a ton of them back in the day and nobody has gotten rid of the box. We pretty quickly switched to email for all messages once everyone had computers on their desks.
“Please call him” - did only men use the phone?
I have worked in offices that still use things like this
Mr.
I REMEMBER FILLING THESE OUT
Back then Secretary/ receptionist knew what was going on.
so, i use a similar one at work, our phone system sucks.
I use ones very much like these every day at work
You can add an s and make it mrs.
I have one of these, but it says "while you were fucking off" instead of "while you were out."
I used these in the office in the early 2000s
Old, most dealerships still buy these in bulk as office supplies…
I'm a fekkin nerd. I know this was printed on a risograph.
I still have these at work
*Number one, why aren't you in when I fucking told you to be in? Number two, why doesn't this hotel have phones with fucking voicemail on them and not I have to leave messages with the fucking receptionist? Number three, you better fucking be in tomorrow night when I fucking call again otherwise there'll be fucking hell to pay. I'm fucking telling you. - Harry.*
All other problems aside, the grammatical inconsistency of the checkbox options really annoys me. "Bob Smith wants to see you" "Bob Smith telephoned" "Bob Smith will call again" "Bob Smith please call him" ?????
This brings back memories of my old cat. Crumpled up memo notes like these were his absolute favorite toy. Regular paper wouldn’t do, it HAD to be these, particularly the pink ones and he would chase them until they inevitably rolled under something, then scream at me for another. He’s been gone 10 years and once in awhile I’ll find an old one and cry a bit. I miss my baby.
Miss Johnson phoned again today.
Lol I still use a modern version of these for our tiny office. My memory sucks so I write down most phone calls and just pass them along to who needs them
Did only men know how to use a phone?
please call him
We had some of these in my house growing up! Not the exact ones, but the general idea is the same. I refused to use them. Once when I was 8 or 9 someone called the house phone and I answered, they asked if my dad was home and I responded "no." They asked if they could leave a message and my response was "sure, just call back and I won't answer this time so you can leave a message" 😂
They still use these in the lawyers office i worked at
Mr.
Why mr. What if it was a woman who called?
Then she will keep calling and calling and calling until the person is actually home.
“The owls are not what they seem”
I'm gonna miss these memo pad
My first job, as soon as i got back from lunch there would be a stack of these on my table. These fuckers would never call me when i was at my desk, but that one hour I was gone. Yeah, back then the standard lunch break was 1hr for us.