Office Girl: 1922

This girl is searching for cards that match the tags she's going to set on the grid. Ones that match won't have notched-out holes. You could do ORs by setting several tags and seeing which ones get picked up. ANDs were more trouble as you had to do one match on one tag and then from the set that got picked up, release the original tag and do a fresh match on just those that matched the first one.

Fun comes after doing the search and having to put them all back in order again.

is where the magic happens, Baby!

Mr. Clements was a patent attorney. I wonder how his inventor-clients reacted to the idiosyncrasies of his office.

Do not open that door.

"Mr. Clements, could you have Mrs. Jones make up an assortment of paper clips after she finishes assorting index cards?"

Could be she is in what used to be a utility room. Note the sink with umbrella in it. There is no apparent rationalization for the door 2-3 feet off the floor but they at least blocked it with a file cabinet.

What's with the door up on the wall to the left? It is obviously being used since there is a space between the filing cabinets, and a step stool under it.

Wow - where I work, you could fit many of our cubicles into her office.

She has windows, even.

She hasn't really bobbed her hair... yet!

Fitzgerald's hilarious short story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" shows that it was considered pretty racy and "good girls" kept their hair long.

I wonder when someone realized that placing the same filing cabinet handle horizontally rather than vertically was a much better idea. Someone made a lot of money with that improvement.

She later sought employment in an office where the working conditions were more favorable, i.e., one with a coat stand.

I wonder what's behind the neck-breaking door.

How many times a day do you think someone comes bounding through that door on the left and ends up sprawled all over our poor office girl's desk, messing up her careful sorting? Then then becomes exasperated and curses her officemate for getting the better desk.

I really like the wooden filing cabinets. How old do you think those are at the time of this pic?