Office Courtesy: Meeting The Public (1952) Part 1

A "bad" receptionist learns from her "good" receptionist roommate how improving her attitude can make her job more enjoyable. In a dream sequence the "bad" receptionist is stuck in a hellish office with an equally bad receptionist behind the desk -- herself!!! The bad girl reforms and becomes lovely and happy.

Offices have the reputation of being clean, placid environments, and for most of us office work seems preferable to labor in factories, kitchens, or parking lots. At the same time, there's a downside: offices are also a perfect breeding ground for abnormal psychology.

White-collar work has always been associated with a strong emphasis on manners, conduct, etiquette, and propriety. Perhaps this relates to its mystique as a more genteel alternative to the factory, or maybe the perceived need to regulate the behavior of large numbers of lower-paid women. But the focus on "doing the right thing" that permeates almost all office training films renders them key artifacts of social control. Historically, the office has been the place where young workers (primarily women) have been socialized and taught appropriate behavior, which in America equals training in "middle-classness."

Films like Office Courtesy, Office Etiquette, Duties of a Secretary, Take a Letter From A to Z and I Want to Be a Secretary position the office as a place where young workers (mostly women) are socialized and taught appropriate behavior, and where social hierarchies learned elsewhere are reinforced. Office Courtesy depicts social control as a covert process, a disturbing vision of how manipulation occurs through etiquette, masked by empathy, courtesy and smiles.

As the expressionistic montage of angry men at its beginning makes clear, Office Courtesy is very much about instructing women on how to behave courteously towards their male superiors. Many kinds of behavior need to be learned: subordination to visitors, customers and supervisors; repression of emotions, positive transference and projection ("people behave to you as you do to them, and if you are nice to people they will usually be nice to you too"). In white-collar culture, these threads run deep. Many typewriting textbooks published during this period contain practice exercises which are catechistic statements on proper conduct and etiquette.

Producer: Encyclopaedia Britannica Films

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• WORK
• LABOR
• WORKERS
• SECRETARIES
• OFFICES
• TELEPHONES
• COURTESY
• ETIQUETTE

[ballerfications]

I'm gonna use this video for my Introduction to Business Education class. It's very appropriate and timely.

[shaggylocks]

I'm not sure I'd call it "timely," since its appeal is that it's so dated. Your Business Education class will most likely see it that way as well.

[mannaz2525]

I LOVE THIS the need to drop this tape off at the dmv and hold all its workers at gun point and make the watch it!!!

[ballerfications]

Well the rules that govern a receptionist hasn't really changed over the years, you still have to be courteous, tactful, and a people person. Thats why I appreciate the video so much.

[supertrouper]

I do agree that you do need to be nice and have a positive personality to get along with people in an office environment or in any types of settings, but at the same time you have to stay neutral. You don't want to be too nice or too rude. there has to be a balance and a degree of neutrality.

[belladeballe]

I've worked in public contact jobs since 1979, and I'm definitely more of a "Ruth" kind of receptionist. One of the reasons I enjoy working as a receptionist aka "Lobby Goddess" is that each day I meet people from all over the world, and most of them are nice. I figure the ones who are rude it says more about them than it does about me.

[belladeballe]

@yellowwitch1 The film was made in 1952...different times.

[belladeballe]

@ballerfications I agree. Maybe the fashions are "dated" but the basical principle is re: attitudes remain the same.

[asiantrolls]

@yellowwitch1 - that's because men are better and smarter managers.

[yellowwitch1]

why are all women secretaries and men managers??

[GusF]

Barbara looks like a Romulan when she furrows her brow like that.

The rude Barbara in the dream reminds me of my school secretary, except more polite.

[tjttzcspplt]

My office could use this film.

[philduffer]

why dont office ladies dress like that anymore?

[lambchopxoxo]

I really think that courtesy never goes out of style. I don't think offices are quite this formal obviously, but I think that the part where she is told that the people are a reflection of her is definitely applicable for today.