this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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It’s always a little wild to me to look at pre-computer offices, especially to think how tedious some tasks would’ve been when done by hand on paper
Well back then they got paid more money to create less shareholder value, so it was okay to be that slow. These days we produce so much more wealth for billionaires, and we have to hustle to do it
Yup, but also remember: "tedious" = "relaxed pace".
We make things less tedious to get more efficiency out of our time. But the asymptote of the efficiency curve is living death.
I mean, there is lot of tedium invented in the computer era as well, especially with paper-oriented digital workflow and WYSIWYG software.
I suspect the desk telephone must have done a lot more of the heavy lifting back in those days
Just imagine: Spreadsheets existed before Excel.
By the way, a great movie to show that type of work is The Day The Earth Caught Fire.