Office clerk
As a 20th-century clerk you would wield a fountain pen, a rubber stamp and a typewriter – and the fate of many people’s paperwork would rest on your desk.
The paper machine
The 20th century was the age of the office. Governments, banks, insurers, railways and factories employed armies of clerks to keep records, process forms, write letters and calculate wages. The tools were mechanical: typewriters, carbon paper to make copies, card indexes, filing cabinets, adding machines and, later, mimeographs and photocopiers. Xerox launched its first plain-paper office copier, the 914, in 1959. Information moved by internal mail, telephone and telex.
Hours, hierarchy and the typing pool
Office work was cleaner and safer than factory work and carried social prestige – a ‘white-collar’ job. Days followed fixed hours, with a clear hierarchy from junior clerks to section heads. As offices grew, work was broken into routine tasks, an approach influenced by scientific management. Women entered office work in huge numbers, often as typists and stenographers in typing pools, usually paid less than male clerks and long expected to leave on marriage. Pay was modest, but jobs were secure, and many clerks spent their whole careers with a single employer.
In communist Poland, the urzędnik also became a stock character of satire: queues, stamps and the need for a document certifying another document. Stanisław Bareja’s comedies of the 1970s and 80s mercilessly mocked this bureaucracy.
Enter the computer
From the 1950s large organisations used mainframe computers with punch cards for payroll and accounting, and from the 1980s personal computers began to appear on clerks’ desks. The IBM PC came out in 1981. Spreadsheets and word processors transformed office routines, making many clerical roles disappear while creating new ones. A clerk who started work with a typewriter in 1960 might retire in the 1990s having learned to use email.
