Interested to know years ago was spanking really acceptable in the work place instead of being fired or was it just a myth?

[REALTEARS]

Years ago was it true that employees got threatened with a spanking instead of being fired? Or is it just in old films ect just curious that’s all?

[Chastener]

I've heard stories, but really never met a woman who was spanked in the workplace.  I imagine it could have happened in the 1950's, but not since then.  I have been in touch with a young woman in Eastern Europe who tells me she is spanked regularly by her employer, but I take that with a grain of salt.

[Longtimespanking]

For many years, I had an ongoing spanking arrangement with a librarian, and she told me that she had spanked a number of her younger part time workers over the years and the previous librarian had spanked her several different times in the first few years after she started working there and was well known to have spanked many others. Given her age, she would have been working between the late 1940's or early 1950's and her retirement age. 

That certainly wasn't commonly done,  but wasn't unheard of and probably more common going further back than any time more recently when it would likely result in the person being called out on such behavior.  However, there's no way of knowing what might currently take place or might have taken place in the past in small businesses or offices where only a few people were employed. 

I knew at least a couple of people when I was younger who told me they had been spanked at work and I had no reason to doubt that was true. Those spankings would have taken place in the 1950's and 1960's. There were other widely circulated reports of people being offered the option of taking a spanking from an authority figure in the business world instead of some more serious consequences for various things that might have happened, such as financial irresponsibility. Today of course, that's quite unlikely. 

[tryingit]

Well if it ever was officially a thing it’s not now.  But taking a few stories of isolated incidents in the workplace may not be an indicator it used to be a thing.  Think about all the other “things” that used to be okay.  A consensual sexual relationship with an employee, forms of racism, all kinds of jokes, all kinds of unsafe work practices.  Why wouldn’t spanking have been “okay” then and why would it have not happened?  And when these things were either okay or tolerated, they may not have been widespread but there were more stories of them.

A banker in China recently was fired for spanking all his employees for failing to meet quotas!

 

The British military used to do it.

 

[geeky_child]

It used to be normal for the head of a household to “spank”* his or her younger household staff.  This could be delegated to higher ranking servants, too.  Entry-level domestic servants used to be children and teenagers, and that’s just what you did with young people then.

 

* When I say “spank,” I mean more like “whip” or “beat,” but it was the same sort of physical punishment meted out by parents to their children, and was often given on the seat of the pants or the bare butt.  The closer you get to modern times, the greater the tendency to punish over clothes and on parts of the body other than the bottom, especially for girls.  I don’t know for sure, but I expect this mostly died out in the early 20th century when compulsory education kept kids and teens out of domestic service.

 

Historical spankings are like a lifelong hobby topic of mine.  I mostly know Western European history (not only spankings, actually) from ~1400 to 1789, although I do know some medieval and modern stuff.   If you want me to go on more about work spankings I can.  I don’t want to do some massive dump in your thread, though.

[Redskinluver]

Will not say it never occured, but the first time I saw workplace spankings discussed was in the old Letters to Mr. Magazine. And it is well known that those letters were made up by staff.

 Then again  jokes and cartoons about a boss spanking his secretary were around way back, in the old humor magazines, and what came to be called soft porn. No doubt even PlayBoy. 

I can imagine a boss jokingly threatening an employee with a spanking back then far more easily than believing it happened, on anything  like a commonplace basis.

[wide_eyed]

There are many accounts of workplace discipline on the voiceinthecorner.com blog. Some of them may even be true.

It's worth keeping in mind how different the standards of behavior, both in the workplace and between genders, was at that time. This excerpt from an essay of Helen Gurley Brown's, editor of Cosmopolitan, where she talks about her experience at work around 1940, gives a little perspective,

Quote

 

When I was working my way through secretarial school in Los Angeles at radio station KHJ, and I came in from school every afternoon, some of the men would be playing a dandy game called ‘Scuttle.’

Rules: All announcers and engineers who weren’t busy would select a secretary, chase her down the halls, through the music library and back to the announcing booths, catch her and take her panties off.

Once the panties were off, the girl could put them back on again. Nothing wicked ever happened. Depantying was the sole object of the game.

While all this was going on, the girl herself usually shrieked, screamed, flailed, blushed, threatened and pretended to faint, but to my knowledge no scuttler was ever reported to the front office. Au contraire, the girls wore their prettiest panties to work.

There was some retaliatory action one afternoon. Four secretaries ambushed the head scuttler while he was announcing ‘Captain Midnight’ on a 42-station hook-up and took his pants off.

Alas, I was never scuttled. Sometimes I would look up hopefully from my typewriter to see three or four scuttlers skulking in the doorway mulling it over, but the decision was always the same: too young, too pale, too flat-chested. Clearly unscuttlable.

 

Yeah, I think some of those stories about workplace spankings in the 50s and 60s just might be true.

[Spankmered57]

I have wondered if workers get spanked for poor work habits.  This could better work performance. And could create a more positive work environment. I don't think it would work today because some people would call it abuse.  In my opinion, feel that spanking especially on a naked butt could change behavior because of the embarsrnent and the pain from the spanking.  

[Bramblewine]

On 12/10/2020 at 11:41 PM, Spankmered57 said:

I have wondered if workers get spanked for poor work habits.  This could better work performance. And could create a more positive work environment. 

Only in spanko fantasyland.

In a real workplace, that would mean forcing lots of people who don't share that kink to participate. Big no-no.

Even people who do have a spanking kink/fetish aren't always discipline spankos, aren't always spankees, and even people who do check both those boxes wouldn't necessarily be willing participants in a discipline spanking dynamic with their boss.

Now, if you want to imagine a once-upon-a-time-in-the-mid-twentieth-century spanking utopia in which such things are workplace norms, feel free. Just don't confuse it with history.

[NeedDiscipline1]

Not likely since the 1950’s. I can tell you it wasn’t uncommon before the war, corporal punishment across the board was normal. 
Watch cartoons for hints about the timeline here. 

[Bramblewine]

1 hour ago, NeedDiscipline1 said:

Not likely since the 1950’s. I can tell you it wasn’t uncommon before the war, corporal punishment across the board was normal. 
Watch cartoons for hints about the timeline here. 

Not in the workplace, it wasn't. You'd have to go back to the dawn of the industrial revolution for that, and even that was rarely if ever spanking as we think of it.

In those early factories, foremen could and did whip workers. It was similar, in that respect, to the plantation system where overseers whipped slaves. But none of the accounts we have from the factory workers of that time say it was a good thing. Far from it. Physical punishment was one of the abuses that the labor movement rallied against.

Cartoons are a better indicator of an era's popular fantasies than of its reality.

[HerrBlacktooth]

In my 4+ decades around the BDSM and spanking scene, in both a commercial and private capacity, there seems to be a distinct difference between actual BDSM scene people and the spanking scene people .... Spanking scene people oft appear to be looking for some form of approval for their predilection ... This is no form of attack by myself, merely an observation.

@ Bramblewine is of course wholly correct; Yes, in the now distant past, lower socio economic group people used to get beaten, whipped etc at work  ... but it was not 'spanking'; it was not 'charming' nor playful. It was people without social power, being brutalised.

Whilst there might have been personal/private agreements between some boss and his staff member, akin to some 'Carry on... " or 'Confessions of a .......' type 1960/70's movie (pornography I admit has given me an unrealistic expectation of how fast one can get a plumber to one's house) .....   there is certainly no history of people 'being spanked'.  Most everyone used to smoke until the later 1970's for sure, but not get spanked  .... The UK 1861 Offences Against the Person Act had already defined common assault, ABH & GBH. Spanking is of course most definitely in that little lot.

Truly and more to the point IMHO  .... If anyone likes spanking, giving or receiving, then it is not the end of the world. It is an activity which absolutely does not require the approval of others if it is between two consenting adults  ... Nor does it require people making up stories and alleged 'lore' which they would so like to be true. All in some vague attempt it appears to justify their personal interests.

 

 

[Bramblewine]

On 12/31/2020 at 2:16 PM, HerrBlacktooth said:

 

Truly and more to the point IMHO  .... If anyone likes spanking, giving or receiving, then it is not the end of the world. It is an activity which absolutely does not require the approval of others if it is between two consenting adults  ... Nor does it require people making up stories and alleged 'lore' which they would so like to be true. All in some vague attempt it appears to justify their personal interests.

 

 

Spankos are very fond of lore, is my observation. True or not, spanking stories are a big turn on for many of us.

Workplace spankings are a popular fantasy. Historical spankings are also a popular fantasy. Workplace spankings set in the mid twentieth century are apparently a  quite popular fantasy.

Seems to me that the folks who want it to be true are just deeply indulging their fantasies.

 

[jackcros]

Some years ago there was a UK tv programme about secretaries in which they discussed their experiences in the workplace, mostly 40 or so years ago. There were tales of being sent in the boss’ Rolls Royce to collect presents for his wife and so on. However, one recalled as a junior secretary in her teens, being spanked for some error. Although done in an office, other staff could see what was happening. Nothing was said or done about it, it seems her spanking was just accepted by others as normal and deserved

[mikeae102754]

In 1975  I was attending Western Michigan University. There was a rumor that if girls in the Home Economics department did not dress properly for this one instructors class they would have to go to her office after class and get spanked. If they didn't show up in her office then they would get it the next class day in class on the bare bottom. Again it was a rumor.

The dorm I lived in during that time was co-ed by alternating suites. One female floor mate said  she had gotten spanked by this instructor. No one really believed her because she was known to tell a lie now and then. 

 

[Krabask]

This reminds me of a true story from my hometown in 2004, where a 53-year-old hotel owner was sentenced to 50 days probation for giving his 24-year-old female employee (cleaning assistent) a good old spanking in her bare butt. He revealed her in an attempt to forge documents, and therefore he gave her the choice: Shall we call the Police, or do you want a spanking from me? She chose to bare her bottom and bend over his knee, so she could get her spanking - but she got revenge when she herself called the Police afterwards. The Police said she would not be arrested for her crime. She showed her bare sore red butt to the officers to prove what had happened, and they nodded appreciatively - and then they arrested her boss. In court, he confessed immediately and gladly received the judge's decision.

[Jfegoosk]

I have actually chatted with a few ladies in the last few years that have been spanked in the workplace. In every case it was Ff with the spanker owning the company, a small company, and the spankee usually older. I think 2 in Europe and 1 in rural Canada. In every case it was to avoid dismissal for a real mess up. No guy would ever try it.

[nicoleS39]

Well...now that I think about it...I work for my husband at the fitness center and coffee/smoothie shop he owns...so...tecnically...my "boss" at work does spank me...lol...but not at work location....but lots at home...lol.

[noragirl]

On 10/22/2021 at 6:18 PM, nicoleS39 said:

Well...now that I think about it...I work for my husband at the fitness center and coffee/smoothie shop he owns...so...tecnically...my "boss" at work does spank me...lol...but not at work location....but lots at home...lol.

This made me giggle, nicoleS39!!! Thank you😊