I didn't realise how lucky I was and how drastically things were about to change. I took for granted how well I was treated.
When I worked for the Harrow Observer, a local newspaper in North West London, in the late sixties, it was clearly overstaffed and we spent most of the day chattering and fooling around. We would take a good hour for a liquid lunch. We might spend an hour or two of the day writing the odd story. And for that we got a generous salary and equally generous expenses.
From what I can gather, newspapers nowadays are chronically understaffed and journalists have to work their arses off writing one story after another. And salaries and expenses are as low as the owners can get away with.
When I worked for the Economists Bookshop, part of the London School of Economics, in the seventies my workload was so light I had plenty of time to read the Guardian from cover to cover and do more chattering and messing around. We got a rude awakening when Dillons and then Waterstones took over the bookshop in the eighties.
I hear so much now from disgruntled employees who're under constant pressure, who're micromanaged and set unreachable work targets, who're bullied and abused and expected to work when they're ill, who get home exhausted and demoralised, that I'm glad I no longer have to work for a living. I'd simply be unable to cope.
The sooner employees are treated decently again, the sooner we stop reliving the Victorian age, the better.