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Office Workers Had Their Phones (And Desks) Attached To Them
Between answering phones, scheduling golf games, and dodging half-assed sexy secretary jokes, office work really hasn't changed much in the past several forevers. Office attire, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. Gone are the days of stockings, pumps, and 50,000 bobby pins required by both male and female office workers. The modern desk jockey simply needs a button-down shirt and shoes that cover their gnarly toes. Heck, sometimes on Fridays, all the rules get thrown out the window!
A hundred years ago, working with a phone might have meant using one of the first hands-free communication devices. It just so happened that the contraption looked like what happens when a back brace mates with a phone booth:
via Collectors Weekly
Back then, you weren't always on your phone. Your phone was always on you.
At a whopping six and a half pounds, the first hands-free phone needed a harness to strap it to the poor woman tasked with answering calls about steam engines and bow ties or whatever people talked about back in olden days. Looking at the eyes of the woman below, you can tell that her job choices were wearing this thing or trucking her goods over to the local whorehouse.
via Collectors Weekly
Either way, her back ends up screwed.
As hard as it may be to believe now, these ungodly contraptions were once considered a convenient way to create efficiency and speed for the women working in the field. They even had their own crazy old-timey version of a mobile desk, which was absolutely enormous:
Popular Science
At least she didn't have to Flintstone foot it while simultaneously typing.
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