A lot of scams use bad spelling and poor wording intentionally. It's to filter out people that won't fall for the scam. If you're not smart enough or proficient enough in English to notice the mistakes, you're much more likely to click the ad instead of ignoring it like most people
I got an email recently at wet work from the press secretary office of the governor. The first image was upside down. It was sent to my entire agency with at least 5k employees, possibly others as well.
In addition to the reasons I see people above listing, it seems people purposely include typos to increase engagement. Someone may just scroll by if it was just any ad, but if they leave a comment that there is a mistake then that drives the engagement numbers up. They don’t care how people engage, just that they do.
I’ve noticed something similar with mobile game ads. They show someone doing the game and being completely incompetent which makes you want to go do it “right” since it’s so easy. We really love being smarter than other people
The teen paperboys started disappearing in the late 1980s, and the last of them were replaced with adults in the 1990s.
It happened for the reasons you'd expect. There was a series of high-visibility paperboy kidnappings in the 1980s, including two paperboys in Iowa who vanished within a month of each other and were never found. There were also several cases where the families of injured paperboys (hit by cars, injured by overloaded bags, etc.) sued various papers, and the newspapers were found responsible.
I was a paperboy right at the end of the 1980s. My hometown paper was one of the last in our state to still use kids, and it was mostly a BILLING thing. One of my job duties was to knock on everyone's door once a month and collect the payments for the deliveries. The paper didn't have any other payment options at the time, aside from forcing the customers to visit the newspaper office.
I quit delivering when I got into high school. About a year later, some poor kid was out collecting when someone beat the hell out of him and stole his bill money. He survived, but our newspaper announced that it was ending teen paperboys a few days later.
That's why teenage paperboys vanished.
That sounds about right. I was born in 1982, and remember a few older boys with routes. But by the time we would’ve been old enough, it had shifted to lawn mowing, snow shoveling, and corn detassling
> It happened for the reasons you'd expect. There was a series of high-visibility paperboy kidnappings in the 1980s, including two paperboys in Iowa who vanished within a month of each other and were never found. There were also several cases where the families of injured paperboys (hit by cars, injured by overloaded bags, etc.) sued various papers, and the newspapers were found responsible.
Wasn't within a month but 2 years:
* Johnny Gosch was September 5, 1982 in Des Moines, Iowa
* Eugene Martin was August 12, 1984 in West Des Moines, Iowa
But it was in a time with other cases:
* Etan Patz disappearing in NYC on May 25, 1979
* Adam Walsh disappearing and murder in Florida was on July 27, 1981
* Marc Allen disappeared in the Des Moines, Iowa area as well on March 29, 1986
Yep, when I was a kid 3 of us had the whole subdivision, 3 blocks each. Somewhere along the line my two buddies quit and this lady took over and she would drive the route, when I quit she took over my route also.
That was me! Always had a paper route , I think I was the “last of the Mohicans “ of kids having paper routes . And now I’m a mailman for usps. Never thought about how obvious of a career move it was for me until a couple years ago.
Hyperlocal news is coming back! Newspapers are profitable and/or sustainable on their own a lot of the time. They just stopped being profitable *enough* when they consolidated and were bought up by megacorps and hedge funds. We are starting to see hyperlocal printed weeklies come back. Daily papers are probably over for good though.
Literally had USA Today buy up our regional paper press, leading to them no longer posting local news for my small town paper. Sure they still print it, but when I'm a continent away, I want to keep up with back home, and even with a digital subscription that isn't an option.
The two 'regional' newspapers quit home delivery up here about ten years ago. Both stopped stocking the vending boxes (I don't know the proper term for them) maybe four years ago.
The local newspaper cut back to two editions a week down from three. No home delivery, but you can buy them at the stores still.
Far cry from when I was growing up in the 90's up to around 2010. My grandparents usually read about three newspapers a day.
This is so sad, too. I used to do the Blockbuster mail rentals and for a time you could exchange them in store for other movies (and it would flag your's as returned.
The people in the store knew their movies. I would hand them the 3 I got, tell them what I thought, and they would make 3 recommendations and I was never disappointed.
Even before Blockbuster, the Ma&Pa rental places were great, even if I was never allowed to go "behind the curtain".
This use to be a family tradition for me. My parents divorced young, when my father picked me and my brothers up for the weekend, we would all pick one movie each and picked out one snack each.
My dad wasn’t the best parent growing up, but when we got picked up, it was fun. Damn, I’m depressed now.
I actually had almost the same experience. Picked up by my stepmom for the weekend and swing by Blockbuster on the way home.
My dad and stepmom split like 2-3 years ago and it was seriously almost as bad as the first one for me mentally.
Hope things are looking up for you. We can make our own traditions.
>The people in the store knew their movies. I would hand them the 3 I got, tell them what I thought, and they would make 3 recommendations and I was never disappointed.
I definitely miss that. In the 90's a few of us would go to the rental store to try and agree on something. Occasionally we would ask the guy what we should get, which is how I found out about the movie Clerks.
I remember using blockbuster for cheap videos by buying the ex-rentals. Fun fact, this is how I ended up being the only person who had a copy of the waterboy since it went to rental but never got released on VHS (in the UK) for years.
This brought back memories. One time my brother convinced me to push him behind the curtain as if we were playing around in the store, and I did not understand why.
Makes me pine for that sweet spot in the late 2000's, early 2010's where it was common for companies to make single player games with a 10-15 hour playtime designed to be finished in a weekend.
Man I have great memories of inviting a buddy to sleepover on a Friday night. We'd get one of our parents to take us to Hollywood Video where we'd pick out a movie and a video game to rent for the night. It was great.
Photo Booth operator.
Back in the 20th century there used to be small huts in parking lots where a person would develop your film in as soon as 1 hour.
I remember 1 hour photo places in the mall where you could watch the photos developing in the window. Also, 1 hour photos used to cost a lot more than regular developing, which could take a week.
Sometimes it really blows my mind how I can have instant photos at any time.
Radio disc jockeys.
They're not gone yet, but they are dwindling toward extinction. Local disc jockeys are fewer and fewer as radio stations consolidate under corporations.
I agree. They once played records they liked in addition to the hits. A DJ could single handily make a new band famous. Now it’s basically software playing the same predetermined top 40 songs on rotation.
SiriusXM is kinda still like this depending on who the DJs are.
Most DJs are either OG folks or folks porting their fame into it like a bunch of old MTV VJs and a handfull of rockers having shows.
SiriusXM is definitely closer to the old days than current radio, but for the most part they still play the same songs over and over so it’s only a marginal improvement over radio.
Still, between SiriusXM and Spotify I haven’t listened to FM radio in years.
Local DJ here from a family owned cluster of stations. We are truly few and far between. There are less than 10 live, local DJs left in our entire market. I can't just be a DJ, though -- the majority of my job is going out and selling ads. Our station is a hit with the old folks and our market is rural, so we can make good enough money to stay afloat. It's not easy, though.
The numbers on local radio are incredible. At least 90% of the US Population will hear a local radio ad break once a week. Less than 20% of registered vehicles in the US are even equipped for Sirius XM. And the average time spent listening with our listeners per Nielsen is 8.5 hours a day. We've discovered that many of our listeners are on job sites or working in garages or shops.
What we hear from our listeners is a desire to be engaged with the local radio. There's something about a Local DJ that can't be replicated by Sirius, or Spotify (which I use). When I tell people what I do, there's always a "no way that's so cool!" before the inevitable "isn't radio dead?"
Radio is far from dead, and it will never die, but we're not gonna be successful again by trying to compete with Spotify. Local DJs need to continue to promote and engage in events, converse with listeners, and provide entertainment that can't be found elsewhere. We're in a unique spot, and we need to do something with it
I actually just had a friend visit this weekend that is the last holdout from his once large group of friends that all worked in radio. Its never going to be completely dead but its dramatically different than it was 20 years ago. Most "DJs" are likely not in your city at all, and they record the days "show" in the morning, only the traffic actually gets read live. The pay is much much lower these days as well. My friend is struggling, but he is in his 50s now and its all hes known his whole life, though at some point he may have to learn something else so he can pay rent and eat.
Pay in radio was never great, but there were also lots of opportunities for side gigs, appearing at events for bars, DJing on the side, etc... and those are much harder to come by these days as well since being associated with a station is no longer as cool as it was once considered- at one point they were very minor celebrities.
I used to work as a radio personality. When I first started, there were 4 full time jocks (2 morning show, 1 mid-day, 1 afternoon/evening) and 5 part time (weekends and subs) for ONE station. Now there are 2 full time and 1 part time. And one of the full timers remaining also does mornings on a sister station.
The competing station was down to one local jock per station when I was let go in 2020
And theaters have suffered because of it. Masking is all over the place. No respect for proper brightness. Screens are filthy. These are major reasons people go to the movies less and it starts with the end of protectionists.
Absolutely. Quality control has certainly suffered. I think I might have been to the movies 3 or 4 times since quitting my job at a theater 12 years ago.
I was a projectionist my junior and senior years in HS. One of the best jobs I’ve ever had. Just had to make sure movies started on time and the film fed through the brain correctly. Splicing together all the reels on Thursdays was fun and then I got paid to watch them all. Also didn’t pay horribly for the early 2000’s.
I'm in my early 50's. Here are some.
1. Executive assistant / secretary - When I started my career even low level managers had a person to write memos, answer their phone, and plan their travel. I worked in a company of 3,000 people and I bet there were 100 of them. Now I'm guessing there are two.
2. The entire industry of pricing guns. Everything in the store had a small white sticker with the price on it. The UPC code and scanner eliminated this and probably half of the jobs that stock shelves.
3. Small Engine Repair - Sure, there are still some people out there doing this, but small engines used to fail constantly and everyone had a few of them. Reliability of the devices has reduced the number of people doing this.
4. Cobbler - There used to be people that fixed shoes and shined shoes. Every town had one. Every man had his shoes shined often.
5. Manual processing - Factories used to be full of people doing ordinary things, like flipping over a different piece of metal every 8 seconds, or pulling green apples off of the conveyor belt. Now that robotic systems are easy to program and cheap to buy, those jobs don't exist.
I’ve consistently seen executive assistants in the workplace, but they’re exclusively for that—executives. They help mostly with coordinating a schedule for someone whose triple booked at any given moment. Anyone below that though and they don’t exist.
I work with 3 currently just in my finance department. CFO and two VPs each have one.
Until I worked here, I was not aware of the power that an executive assistant has.
Yes. Powerful and the brains behind the scenes. I spent 10 years at a firm with 25k+ employees. The EAs were incredible and always knew how to figure stuff out.
My mom (former IBM) had an amazing EA named Karen. Mom loved to tell the story about some Japanese businessmen speaking rudely about Karen not knowing Karen was fluent in Japanese having lived in Japan while growing up. Karen kept her cool, waited till the businessmen were leaving and then proceeded to strike up a conversation with the businessmen, in Japanese.
I'd throw TV repairman type stores on that list as well. Now everyone throws them out when they break. (Those dudes would also service VCR's, which seemed to break all the fucking time.)
Offset printing. My dad was a typesetter then lino press operator. The expansion of simple pc printers killed a ton of jobs in the business printing industry.
It's less that people would throw them out but that they're so cheap throwing them out is more economically viable.
I was fucking SHOCKED when my TV had some issue that was covered within warranty and they actually went a guy out to replace the board on it. It felt so weird to have my TV repaired instead of replaced.
> 1. Executive assistant / secretary
So true - we basically attritioned our secretaries away at my company. When I started each of our departments had its own secretary and the company owner had his own secretary. These positions were generally staffed by older women returning to the workforce after their kids had left the house. However, as time passed there was just less paper and fewer phone calls to be made and fewer administrative tasks. As the secretaries retired, no one was hired in their stead and we're now at one secretary for the entire company when we used to have eight.
As a former EA here’s a few things I did: manage the company drivers (we had three drivers for the execs), put together the CEO daily briefing book (get info from every exec that was meeting with CEO the next day so CEO had advance info-this was an all day job because those assholes could not get their shit together until 5:30), print out pocket daily calendar which included all meetings and the dress code for that day (business casual, suit, golf clothes, whatever), pull data from Bloomberg for daily briefing book, draft letters for CEO, review all requests for CEOs time (like from the mayor, local and national museums, Congress, newspapers, nonprofits that wanted him at certain events for fundraising), manage CEO calendar, set up all direct report 1/1s, read all emails to ensure they were answered, keep CEO call log (yes, all calls were logged), log the mail (snail mail-info goes in a spreadsheet including who the actual mail was sent to to handle, example general counsel, cfo, etc, track response), manage three C suite conference room calendars, liaise with exec dining room staff for weekly exec lunch meetings, review board of directors material before CEO gets it so dumbasses don’t get fired for sending him shit with no page numbers and other stupid mistakes, prepare PowerPoints for meetings with Treasury Secretary and others, handle document production requests for litigation, review C suite travel expenses so dumbasses don’t try to put an $800 espresso maker on their expense report, inventory gifts and research cost of gift to ensure it fits within corporate guidelines (if shit is too expensive auction it off for charity), babysit CEOs kids when they show up because the wife and nanny are sick of their shit, manage Chairman of the Board travel and CEO travel, drop Mercedes at dealer, work with international
advance team for foreign investor capital raise trips, liaise with EAs at all companies where CEO was a board member (there were at least 6), manage CEO technology (phones, iPads, laptop), review upcoming speeches and work with speech writer to get the right message and tone, and some other shit I can’t think of. Oh wait, stupid filing and answering the phone. And, talking people down after they got chewed out or shit on (some people cried). Best part of job was when assholes got fired and they had to walk past me on the way out the door. Worst part was when good people were let go or assholes got promoted. Other best part: Learning to juggle personalities and thousands of tasks, meeting smart, funny, dedicated people, upping my knowledge (especially in writing corporate bs), corporate swag. All in all a great experience, good pay, terrible hours, and stress. PS number your damn pages.
I used to make a nice living as a photographer. I worked for Warner Bros., Atlantic Records, Virgin Records etc. There’s really hardly any money in that anymore.
Could still make decent money from doing weddings. There are weddings happening just about every weekend. But can also expand that to corporate events as well
Which is funny, because if you’re in videography/video editing, you have to be doing motion graphics now too.
All three of those things are separate professions. Or at least, they should be.
My friend who got me into photography as a hobby shoots for high fashion companies and magazines still makes a decent living (~$70-80K). But he's away from his family A LOT and his nurse wife makes double that.
If you're a travel/tour photographer for say a celebrity or a musician though, that's an easy 50K in 6 months (which he did once) but you're gonna be traveling the entire time.
I have a brother-in-law who is a wedding photographer. He clears 6 figures in a medium cost-of-living area. He is busy as hell May through September though.
To piggyback on this: camera salespeople.
I was just thinking about the old commercials for a local camera shop when I saw the name of the shop pop up in a much different context. And then I was like "Oh yeah, there aren't really any camera shops anymore".
In fact, I don't think I know anyone who actually owns a camera anymore.
There are less camera salesmen now, but they still exist. There is 1 high end camera shop in my city that I know of.
Although they have branched out from dslr to all kinds of high end video cameras as well.
I still love to go in and oogle the nice high end lenses for dslr and older film cameras.
Repairmen. When I was a kid and something broke, you would just take it to the local repairman and he would fix it. Stereo, TV, vacuum, lawnmower, bike... These guys could fix anything. They had a small shop where they had parts for everything; in some sort of comforting chaos.
And I have been looking for a couple of years now to find someone to fix my 1960's toaster. Even the company doesn't have any ideas where I could send it :(
It's going to sound weird, but try your local senior citizen center! The one near me has a group of guys that love fiddling with small appliances. They fix up lamps, toasters, clocks, etc.
Not just that, but there's a younger crowd online that's establishing repair centers in different cities. The idea is, you show up with your broke shit. Someone there helps you troubleshoot and repair and you take it home. A lot of people like tinkering and teaching. They both fit well here.
If you have an antique dealer around, ask them. They may know someone that repairs stuff so they can sell it. Repairing that isn't hard for someone that deals with anything electronic, but parts may be hard to source.
You made me remember those in the middle of a parking lot film development shops. Those little ones about the size of a shack. More often than not with a loudly colored roof. You would drop off your film and few days later, sometimes even a week later, you would pick up your pictures.
Those have gone the way of the dodo.
Shoe repairmen. I still remember the unique smell that was inside their shops. Now there are almost none left as shoes are wildly available everywhere so it doesn't make sense to keep a broken pair.
Also, watch repair shops. They evolved into changing glasses, batteries and the little pieces that hold the strap, but they dissapeared a few years later
If you live in a big city they still exist. I just took my Birkenstocks to get resoled at one near me. Definitely not as many as there used to be though.
This one bums me out. Invested in a nice pair of goodyear welt boots and they need to be resoled but I can't find anyone anywhere near me to do it. I'm probably going to have to mail them in somewhere.
I would occasionally see news stories about really old cobblers (shoe makers/repairers) trying to find someone to apprentice to continue the trade else everything they know be lost.
I've worked for a commercial printing company going on 22 years. It's amazing how much different it is now compared to when I first started. Never had to old school "typeset" like you're talking about but we did have to burn negatives for every single printing plate we used.
An aunt was an AT&T operator. When they were broken up, she received some "throw away" stocks in the new company NYNEX, which she kept. It's now Verizon.
She doesn't need to work but is a health care aid.
I remember vacuum salesmen still showing up and doing a 30 min demo in the late 80s. Now you just go to Walmart and get a vacuum for $100. Things have gotten so cheap.
Kirby still does door to door. A van pulls up on my street like twice a year, 4 people get out and spread out, and they ask to come do a carpet cleaning demo.
Our company still types using dictation and typists, it’s my job actually. Hearing how some doctors report, some really can’t use voice recognition as they are too hard for it. But I agree a lot of places are going the way of voice recognition now.
I remember when our family bought a set in the early 80s. It was such a huge help for me and my siblings to not have to go to the library to work on every research assignment. It was kind of a bummer how quickly they became outdated to the point of being almost unusable though.
I'm not saying I got all Navin Johnson about the new phone book arriving, but it always had a wealth of information and good coupons along with the phone numbers and addresses. I just got our new one a few months ago, and it was very disappointing.
Lol... When my wife or I found the new book, we'd run around screaming "the new phone books are here!" That would lead to one of us screaming "he hates cans!"
Bike messengers. Don't know if that's really a "profession," but there used to be hundreds of 'em in SF and NYC (and other cities) racing around to deliver envelopes, advertising art, court filings, etc.
Now everything can be done with high speed internet.
The actual profession would be courier and they certainly still exist because this would probably encompass some postal workers and FedEx/UPS/Amazon delivery folks. Just the specific mode of transportation being a bike is seen less frequently in the US.
There's still some in NYC doing deliveries, not as many but you can still occasionally see them out and about. Nowadays they're mostly doing packages instead of actual mail though.
I worked as a journalist for a local newspaper, which alone is an endangered species sadly. But so many jobs around the reporter are already extinct.
I remember reading the local newspaper as a kid and thinking these folks had the coolest jobs. I loved writing, and these people got to go around the city learning about cool shit and then come back to write about it. And every so often, they get to hold some asshole in power accountable. What could be better?
I went to college 2004-2008 with every intention of becoming a journalist. If you look up the profitability graph of local newspapers, these are the exact year when they had a major decline. And then I graduated into the housing crisis.
My career took a detour and by the time I got a job as a journalist for a local paper, the office was nearly empty. A few reporters. Two ads guys. Someone at the front desk. A delivery partner. One person for graphics. That's it.
No full time photographers or paginators. Those positions were rolled into the reporter responsibilities. No printers. That was outsourced. Our office had a huge printing press in the backroom that was empty and inoperable now because it became too costly to maintain.
The whole thing is tragic. I've since moved on. It was a fun job, but it's even more fun to earn enough money to pay for both rent and food. The shit of it is that now that small town simply has no one to tell them what's going on with the school board, the water district, and so on.
Blacksmiths rarely use old school hammer and tongs these days. Everything has moved to cnc, so smithing is now a cross between mechanical and software engineering.
They still exist, but it's become a niche specialty. There's a guy near my dad's place in east Tennessee that still does old fashioned wrought iron work and also makes knives by hand.
Also traditional blacksmithing is rarer because modern metallurgy is much harder to work with by hand. You need more specialized tools for working with tool steel than wrought iron.
Nowadays blacksmithing and machining can be (and often are) entirely separate processes. The only overlap I can think of is heat treatment and welding but since technology has completely changed how even those things work, not a single process is the same even if the product that results is very similar.
Sadly, film protectionists are way way down due to the conversion to digital instead of film in theaters.
EDIT: I meant projectionists, but I'll leave my typo so the replies make sense.
I worked in a movie theater when that job was phased out. The projectionist we had continued to work part time fixing the projectors before he eventually moved to Chicago. We threw a farewell party for him.
I don't know the name of this occupation. But when I was a kid in the 1970s, lining the sidewalks up and down my street were parking meters which took only dimes.
Every now and then I'd spot the guy whose job it was to empty the parking meters of the dimes into this large metal trunk shaped box on wheels. He'd put his key into the lock of the parking meter, pull out the front round part where all the dimes were locates, stick it into a circular hole at the top of the metal trunk, give it a twist, and one could hear all the dimes pouring into the trunk. Then he'd put back the circular thing into the parking meter, and go to the very next parking meter to repeat the process.
Did this with each and every parking meter up and down, both sides of the street.
Here's a recent article with a photo of a guy doing the same thing with the same metal type trunk
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/business/columns/steve-lackmeyer/2017/09/11/okc-first-to-use-mechanical-parking-meters-taking-down-the-last-ones/60571264007/
Here is an old photo as to what the old parking meters looked like. As far as I can recall, around my time, the meters accepted only dimes. Not nickles or quarters
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4806436/Photographs-capture-New-York-1960s-1990s.html
I just ran into one yesterday! Imagine my surprise. I thought they'd disappeared or the business had dried up, but nope. They still have a customer just down the block from my place.
Full service gas station attendants. The kind who would pump your gas and do your windows. They were still around when I first started driving (30 years ago) but I can't recall the last time I saw a full service gas station.
Professional film criticism. It's still out there - Mark Kermode being my favorite critic - but the industry has shrunk to a shell of its former self, thanks mainly to amateur critics and social media. People would usually rather trust their friends' quick summaries than a read a full dissection by someone who might have very different tastes.
shoot, Just profesional criticism!
Its one of my theories why every restaurant sucks now, when I was a kid if any restaurant gave as bad food or service as has become the standard, they would be reviewed at some point by the local paper and that could make or break the business.
I don't see a lot of independent hobby shops and art supply stores anymore. They had everything, from art supplies to model clays, RC equipment, rocketry, model cars and airplane, diorama sets, and scrap booking. They filled very niche markets. They were owned by people who understood hobbies.
Me and my wife were just talking about this. There used to be a store near us called Ben Franklin that had just about everything. I guess they got killed by Michael's arts & crafts?
That is true. I've watched these stores get shuttered in my hometown. One of them was a 10-minute bike ride from my house. I lived in different cities over the years, and when I inquired about local hobby shops, I would be pointed to Hobby Lobby or Michaels.
TV repairmen seem to be almost extinct. You're supposed to just buy another one, plus the technology changes encourage people to buy new TVs instead of fixing their "old" one. What are we up to 8K now? I still live at 1080p basically.
To be fair, modern TVs are effectively single-board computers without much possibilities for repair (except for some easy capacitor replacements, as a few replies down below noted).
Either it's a cracked screen (often not worth replacing), burnt out LEDs or a dead power supply.
You can still find TV repairmen in developing countries, but fixing a modern TV is nothing like fixing a CRT with hundreds of components.
Certainly in commercial environments it's (at least as often as not) cost prohibitive to pay to ship a TV anywhere for repair. Some TV's are still built with repairability in mind (Samsung was a few years ago at least) but if you're swapping out screens on a regular basis you can't just schlepp them to a repair guy in a strip mall IF you're going to go to the expense and effort of getting them repaired - so it STILL has to be cheaper to pay to ship it to a repair center, have it repaired, AND then pay again to ship it to another location as a refurbished replacement. THIS is how they become "disposable" - when it's less expensive to ship ONE *new* screen from A to B and have the site itself or the field technician take responsibility for disposing of the old one.
We have had projects where we couldn't even GIVE AWAY relatively good TV's fast enough, or where 85" monster screens weren't worth the cost and effort of sourcing the needed parts and having them repaired compared to just throwing them away and replacing with something newer and EVEN CHEAPER.
Really? We still have plenty of them in aus. Their insurance premiums are obscene though (by aus standards) and their fees equally high. Not uncommon to see them bill $4m a year and spend $500k-$600k in insurance premiums. A bad claim will likely only cost the insurers a max of $15m here though, unlike US where you see awards of damages into the hundreds of millions, and that’s probably the distinction that makes the difference.
That and the legal landscape in the US regarding reproductive health makes it an absolute minefield. A lot of laws are being passed that increase the risk of massive fines, jail sentences, and loss of licensure.
The job still very much exists, just the tools have changed. A good cad technician is priceless in the design game. Although, I know what you mean, I get to review a lot of old legacy engineering drawings done by hand and there’s a beauty to them you don’t get with the computer.
My parents go through a travel agent for cruises. Rather than it being her only profession she has a full-time job, then arranges travel on the side. She gets them travel discounts (not sure if it equals out the charges for her service) and knows tricks to get upgrades on some things. She's been on most of the trips she sells and can say, "You wouldn't think so, but you really want do activity ABC. Just reserve it now because it fills up about six months out." Or tells them to avoid whatever because it wasn't good. They've been happy with her and I think will continue to use the service.
Actually it still very much exists and is booming at the high end of the market. I work super hard so one of my luxuries is well, luxury travel and I only book it through a luxury travel agent. Reason being is that they have relationships with the hotels meaning you get upgrades, valuable perks, special pricing, priority on availability etc etc. Being a top end travel agent is incredibly lucrative.
My wife and I used one for our honeymoon. I feel like it’s a great service for a complicated vacation. I don’t need one to book a simple flight though.
Same here - we used one for our honeymoon. The agency was based in the country where we wanted to travel. The agent we used was FANTASTIC - and she had better rates than I could find online, probably because of all the business she sent to these places. We had fantastic rooms with great view in every hotel, fantastic car service to and from the airport, all our in-country flights were booked with no issues and when we did have a minor problem with our rental car, it was fixed in under a half hour. And, for all that, I paid LESS than what I would have paid booking all of it on my own and she did ALL THE WORK. 10/10 would do again!
It's a thing and likely to remain a thing for business travel.
Travel agency provides a service not dissimilar to insurance, except they help sort out the inevitable mess in real time instead of paying for it after the fact. "Your employee overstayed their visa in where!?"
three - street sweeper - literally a man with a broom, dust pan and a garbage can with wheels and rag picker - a man in a horse drawn cart selling rags that he washed, you'd give him your dirty rags and he'd sell you the clean ones - they also sold pots and pans dug out of the trash they would clean up and bang out the dents...that was long before paper towels and disposable mop supplies. lastly a guy in a truck would ride around the neighborhood sharpening your knives and garden tools
Drafting (mechanical drawing). I started with lead pencils on vellum. Became expert in civil, mechanical, structural and electronic fields. Was an early adopter of CAD. Used Autocad 2.1. Progressed from there, but there came a point where not having an engineering degree pushed me out, despite years of experience and even being proficient at CAD. Nowadays draftsmen are by and large new engineering grads if they're needed at all because at this point, those guys that pushed me out are established engineers who are also proficient at CAD and don't need a draftsman.
Keypunch operators.
Entering code and data into computers used to involve writing it down, then handing it off to keypunch operators who typed it onto 80 column punched cards that were then read into the computer via a card reader that interpreted the holes in the cards as characters (or sometimes binary data). I punched my own programs and JCL when I started “back in the day”.
I still see them. They're just few and far between because you only need 1 for tens of thousands of people. But they still make sense because quality shoes cost hundreds of dollars
That's what I loved about NYC, there's still a considerable amount of cobblers there. I went to one to fix the sole of a pair of boots I didn't want to part with, my roommate said I could've gotten new boots for the price, nope. Not that quality. Nope.
Typesetting. I remember touring a newspaper facility as a kid. There were all these people putting lead letters into guides to make the day’s newspaper.
Judging by the advertising I see online these days, proofreader.
Proofreading and editing are very much reduced professions.
I retired just in time.
Me, too. I had gotten too old, experienced and expensive to keep. LOL.
I'm inspired that despite your retiredation, you still have a good sense for timing things correctly.
I’m glad I proofread that comment bc I read it wrong
Do you really need proof reading though? Is it to hard for righters to just do they're job right the first tim?
A lot of scams use bad spelling and poor wording intentionally. It's to filter out people that won't fall for the scam. If you're not smart enough or proficient enough in English to notice the mistakes, you're much more likely to click the ad instead of ignoring it like most people
Yup. It's also intentionally designed to avoid certain algorithms that pick up keywords
I got an email recently at wet work from the press secretary office of the governor. The first image was upside down. It was sent to my entire agency with at least 5k employees, possibly others as well.
What does the governor want with a wet work specialist?
Well I had to have a nonsense error in there to stay on topic.
In addition to the reasons I see people above listing, it seems people purposely include typos to increase engagement. Someone may just scroll by if it was just any ad, but if they leave a comment that there is a mistake then that drives the engagement numbers up. They don’t care how people engage, just that they do.
I’ve noticed something similar with mobile game ads. They show someone doing the game and being completely incompetent which makes you want to go do it “right” since it’s so easy. We really love being smarter than other people
Paperboys. Having a paper route used to be a thing, now there very few people who get a daily physical paper. The route must cover a lot of miles now.
There was also a shift in the 90's that it went from kids on bikes to adults in cars.
The teen paperboys started disappearing in the late 1980s, and the last of them were replaced with adults in the 1990s. It happened for the reasons you'd expect. There was a series of high-visibility paperboy kidnappings in the 1980s, including two paperboys in Iowa who vanished within a month of each other and were never found. There were also several cases where the families of injured paperboys (hit by cars, injured by overloaded bags, etc.) sued various papers, and the newspapers were found responsible. I was a paperboy right at the end of the 1980s. My hometown paper was one of the last in our state to still use kids, and it was mostly a BILLING thing. One of my job duties was to knock on everyone's door once a month and collect the payments for the deliveries. The paper didn't have any other payment options at the time, aside from forcing the customers to visit the newspaper office. I quit delivering when I got into high school. About a year later, some poor kid was out collecting when someone beat the hell out of him and stole his bill money. He survived, but our newspaper announced that it was ending teen paperboys a few days later. That's why teenage paperboys vanished.
That sounds about right. I was born in 1982, and remember a few older boys with routes. But by the time we would’ve been old enough, it had shifted to lawn mowing, snow shoveling, and corn detassling
> It happened for the reasons you'd expect. There was a series of high-visibility paperboy kidnappings in the 1980s, including two paperboys in Iowa who vanished within a month of each other and were never found. There were also several cases where the families of injured paperboys (hit by cars, injured by overloaded bags, etc.) sued various papers, and the newspapers were found responsible. Wasn't within a month but 2 years: * Johnny Gosch was September 5, 1982 in Des Moines, Iowa * Eugene Martin was August 12, 1984 in West Des Moines, Iowa But it was in a time with other cases: * Etan Patz disappearing in NYC on May 25, 1979 * Adam Walsh disappearing and murder in Florida was on July 27, 1981 * Marc Allen disappeared in the Des Moines, Iowa area as well on March 29, 1986
Yep, when I was a kid 3 of us had the whole subdivision, 3 blocks each. Somewhere along the line my two buddies quit and this lady took over and she would drive the route, when I quit she took over my route also.
The lady that does the paper route around here drives then makes her kids bring them to the door.
When I was a kid, that’s what we’d do during the winter. Summer was biking.
Dey tuk ur jerbs
That was me! Always had a paper route , I think I was the “last of the Mohicans “ of kids having paper routes . And now I’m a mailman for usps. Never thought about how obvious of a career move it was for me until a couple years ago.
Our city's local paper completely stopped production a few weeks ago. It's actually kinda sad seeing everything go to digital these days.
Hyperlocal news is coming back! Newspapers are profitable and/or sustainable on their own a lot of the time. They just stopped being profitable *enough* when they consolidated and were bought up by megacorps and hedge funds. We are starting to see hyperlocal printed weeklies come back. Daily papers are probably over for good though.
Literally had USA Today buy up our regional paper press, leading to them no longer posting local news for my small town paper. Sure they still print it, but when I'm a continent away, I want to keep up with back home, and even with a digital subscription that isn't an option.
The two 'regional' newspapers quit home delivery up here about ten years ago. Both stopped stocking the vending boxes (I don't know the proper term for them) maybe four years ago. The local newspaper cut back to two editions a week down from three. No home delivery, but you can buy them at the stores still. Far cry from when I was growing up in the 90's up to around 2010. My grandparents usually read about three newspapers a day.
> the vending boxes (I don't know the proper term for them) I forgot these things existed! Such a staple of the street corners too for a long time.
Video rental stores
I remember when most grocery stores had a video rental section too. Albertsons had the best selection of B-horror movies.
This is so sad, too. I used to do the Blockbuster mail rentals and for a time you could exchange them in store for other movies (and it would flag your's as returned. The people in the store knew their movies. I would hand them the 3 I got, tell them what I thought, and they would make 3 recommendations and I was never disappointed. Even before Blockbuster, the Ma&Pa rental places were great, even if I was never allowed to go "behind the curtain".
This use to be a family tradition for me. My parents divorced young, when my father picked me and my brothers up for the weekend, we would all pick one movie each and picked out one snack each. My dad wasn’t the best parent growing up, but when we got picked up, it was fun. Damn, I’m depressed now.
I actually had almost the same experience. Picked up by my stepmom for the weekend and swing by Blockbuster on the way home. My dad and stepmom split like 2-3 years ago and it was seriously almost as bad as the first one for me mentally. Hope things are looking up for you. We can make our own traditions.
>The people in the store knew their movies. I would hand them the 3 I got, tell them what I thought, and they would make 3 recommendations and I was never disappointed. I definitely miss that. In the 90's a few of us would go to the rental store to try and agree on something. Occasionally we would ask the guy what we should get, which is how I found out about the movie Clerks.
I remember using blockbuster for cheap videos by buying the ex-rentals. Fun fact, this is how I ended up being the only person who had a copy of the waterboy since it went to rental but never got released on VHS (in the UK) for years.
This brought back memories. One time my brother convinced me to push him behind the curtain as if we were playing around in the store, and I did not understand why.
When I was a kid there was a video rental/pizza place! You could order a pizza and they’d deliver your rental as well. I miss those days.
Makes me pine for that sweet spot in the late 2000's, early 2010's where it was common for companies to make single player games with a 10-15 hour playtime designed to be finished in a weekend.
Man I have great memories of inviting a buddy to sleepover on a Friday night. We'd get one of our parents to take us to Hollywood Video where we'd pick out a movie and a video game to rent for the night. It was great.
My mom used to manage a small independent chain of video rental stores. Glorious times for a kid.
Photo Booth operator. Back in the 20th century there used to be small huts in parking lots where a person would develop your film in as soon as 1 hour.
I remember 1 hour photo places in the mall where you could watch the photos developing in the window. Also, 1 hour photos used to cost a lot more than regular developing, which could take a week. Sometimes it really blows my mind how I can have instant photos at any time.
I don't remember parking lot photo booth operators. But for some reason there was a parking lot hut Arby's near me growing up lol.
The common brand name was "Fotomat", if you want to do more research.
USSR General Secretary
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Nah, Putin doesn't want to be General Secretary. He wants to be Tsar.
Radio disc jockeys. They're not gone yet, but they are dwindling toward extinction. Local disc jockeys are fewer and fewer as radio stations consolidate under corporations.
I agree. They once played records they liked in addition to the hits. A DJ could single handily make a new band famous. Now it’s basically software playing the same predetermined top 40 songs on rotation.
SiriusXM is kinda still like this depending on who the DJs are. Most DJs are either OG folks or folks porting their fame into it like a bunch of old MTV VJs and a handfull of rockers having shows.
SiriusXM is definitely closer to the old days than current radio, but for the most part they still play the same songs over and over so it’s only a marginal improvement over radio. Still, between SiriusXM and Spotify I haven’t listened to FM radio in years.
Local DJ here from a family owned cluster of stations. We are truly few and far between. There are less than 10 live, local DJs left in our entire market. I can't just be a DJ, though -- the majority of my job is going out and selling ads. Our station is a hit with the old folks and our market is rural, so we can make good enough money to stay afloat. It's not easy, though. The numbers on local radio are incredible. At least 90% of the US Population will hear a local radio ad break once a week. Less than 20% of registered vehicles in the US are even equipped for Sirius XM. And the average time spent listening with our listeners per Nielsen is 8.5 hours a day. We've discovered that many of our listeners are on job sites or working in garages or shops. What we hear from our listeners is a desire to be engaged with the local radio. There's something about a Local DJ that can't be replicated by Sirius, or Spotify (which I use). When I tell people what I do, there's always a "no way that's so cool!" before the inevitable "isn't radio dead?" Radio is far from dead, and it will never die, but we're not gonna be successful again by trying to compete with Spotify. Local DJs need to continue to promote and engage in events, converse with listeners, and provide entertainment that can't be found elsewhere. We're in a unique spot, and we need to do something with it
I actually just had a friend visit this weekend that is the last holdout from his once large group of friends that all worked in radio. Its never going to be completely dead but its dramatically different than it was 20 years ago. Most "DJs" are likely not in your city at all, and they record the days "show" in the morning, only the traffic actually gets read live. The pay is much much lower these days as well. My friend is struggling, but he is in his 50s now and its all hes known his whole life, though at some point he may have to learn something else so he can pay rent and eat. Pay in radio was never great, but there were also lots of opportunities for side gigs, appearing at events for bars, DJing on the side, etc... and those are much harder to come by these days as well since being associated with a station is no longer as cool as it was once considered- at one point they were very minor celebrities.
I used to work as a radio personality. When I first started, there were 4 full time jocks (2 morning show, 1 mid-day, 1 afternoon/evening) and 5 part time (weekends and subs) for ONE station. Now there are 2 full time and 1 part time. And one of the full timers remaining also does mornings on a sister station. The competing station was down to one local jock per station when I was let go in 2020
Toll booth collector
Dude, that was one that was on its way out, but then got absolutely *deleted* by Covid. RIP
Not in my town. Same ladies been working the booths for the last 6 years. Still are as of last week.
RIP Toll Booth Willie
Welcome to Worcesta, dollar twenty five bub.
That's it! I'm coming out of the boothaaa!
not in oklahoma! mr. tollbooth was a little too happy telling me it’s a misdemeanor to not carry cash 😑
what's that now that cannot be real
All the toll booths are now open lane tolling with a transponder or drive thru and pay your toll online in Chicago now.
Shit paid like $35/hr in the Bay Area too, before overtime
I used to be a projectionist at a movie theater. Most theaters are all digital now with the projectors on timers.
And theaters have suffered because of it. Masking is all over the place. No respect for proper brightness. Screens are filthy. These are major reasons people go to the movies less and it starts with the end of protectionists.
Absolutely. Quality control has certainly suffered. I think I might have been to the movies 3 or 4 times since quitting my job at a theater 12 years ago.
I was a projectionist my junior and senior years in HS. One of the best jobs I’ve ever had. Just had to make sure movies started on time and the film fed through the brain correctly. Splicing together all the reels on Thursdays was fun and then I got paid to watch them all. Also didn’t pay horribly for the early 2000’s.
I'm in my early 50's. Here are some. 1. Executive assistant / secretary - When I started my career even low level managers had a person to write memos, answer their phone, and plan their travel. I worked in a company of 3,000 people and I bet there were 100 of them. Now I'm guessing there are two. 2. The entire industry of pricing guns. Everything in the store had a small white sticker with the price on it. The UPC code and scanner eliminated this and probably half of the jobs that stock shelves. 3. Small Engine Repair - Sure, there are still some people out there doing this, but small engines used to fail constantly and everyone had a few of them. Reliability of the devices has reduced the number of people doing this. 4. Cobbler - There used to be people that fixed shoes and shined shoes. Every town had one. Every man had his shoes shined often. 5. Manual processing - Factories used to be full of people doing ordinary things, like flipping over a different piece of metal every 8 seconds, or pulling green apples off of the conveyor belt. Now that robotic systems are easy to program and cheap to buy, those jobs don't exist.
I’ve consistently seen executive assistants in the workplace, but they’re exclusively for that—executives. They help mostly with coordinating a schedule for someone whose triple booked at any given moment. Anyone below that though and they don’t exist.
I work with 3 currently just in my finance department. CFO and two VPs each have one. Until I worked here, I was not aware of the power that an executive assistant has.
Yes. Powerful and the brains behind the scenes. I spent 10 years at a firm with 25k+ employees. The EAs were incredible and always knew how to figure stuff out. My mom (former IBM) had an amazing EA named Karen. Mom loved to tell the story about some Japanese businessmen speaking rudely about Karen not knowing Karen was fluent in Japanese having lived in Japan while growing up. Karen kept her cool, waited till the businessmen were leaving and then proceeded to strike up a conversation with the businessmen, in Japanese.
I'd throw TV repairman type stores on that list as well. Now everyone throws them out when they break. (Those dudes would also service VCR's, which seemed to break all the fucking time.)
Offset printing. My dad was a typesetter then lino press operator. The expansion of simple pc printers killed a ton of jobs in the business printing industry.
It's less that people would throw them out but that they're so cheap throwing them out is more economically viable. I was fucking SHOCKED when my TV had some issue that was covered within warranty and they actually went a guy out to replace the board on it. It felt so weird to have my TV repaired instead of replaced.
Lightning Fast VCR Repair is still going strong. They just narrowed their clientele down to the elderly.
I mean, you can get a decent TV brand new for like $200-$300. As wasteful as it is, it doesn't make sense to try to repair an old TV.
> 1. Executive assistant / secretary So true - we basically attritioned our secretaries away at my company. When I started each of our departments had its own secretary and the company owner had his own secretary. These positions were generally staffed by older women returning to the workforce after their kids had left the house. However, as time passed there was just less paper and fewer phone calls to be made and fewer administrative tasks. As the secretaries retired, no one was hired in their stead and we're now at one secretary for the entire company when we used to have eight.
As a former EA here’s a few things I did: manage the company drivers (we had three drivers for the execs), put together the CEO daily briefing book (get info from every exec that was meeting with CEO the next day so CEO had advance info-this was an all day job because those assholes could not get their shit together until 5:30), print out pocket daily calendar which included all meetings and the dress code for that day (business casual, suit, golf clothes, whatever), pull data from Bloomberg for daily briefing book, draft letters for CEO, review all requests for CEOs time (like from the mayor, local and national museums, Congress, newspapers, nonprofits that wanted him at certain events for fundraising), manage CEO calendar, set up all direct report 1/1s, read all emails to ensure they were answered, keep CEO call log (yes, all calls were logged), log the mail (snail mail-info goes in a spreadsheet including who the actual mail was sent to to handle, example general counsel, cfo, etc, track response), manage three C suite conference room calendars, liaise with exec dining room staff for weekly exec lunch meetings, review board of directors material before CEO gets it so dumbasses don’t get fired for sending him shit with no page numbers and other stupid mistakes, prepare PowerPoints for meetings with Treasury Secretary and others, handle document production requests for litigation, review C suite travel expenses so dumbasses don’t try to put an $800 espresso maker on their expense report, inventory gifts and research cost of gift to ensure it fits within corporate guidelines (if shit is too expensive auction it off for charity), babysit CEOs kids when they show up because the wife and nanny are sick of their shit, manage Chairman of the Board travel and CEO travel, drop Mercedes at dealer, work with international advance team for foreign investor capital raise trips, liaise with EAs at all companies where CEO was a board member (there were at least 6), manage CEO technology (phones, iPads, laptop), review upcoming speeches and work with speech writer to get the right message and tone, and some other shit I can’t think of. Oh wait, stupid filing and answering the phone. And, talking people down after they got chewed out or shit on (some people cried). Best part of job was when assholes got fired and they had to walk past me on the way out the door. Worst part was when good people were let go or assholes got promoted. Other best part: Learning to juggle personalities and thousands of tasks, meeting smart, funny, dedicated people, upping my knowledge (especially in writing corporate bs), corporate swag. All in all a great experience, good pay, terrible hours, and stress. PS number your damn pages.
These are really great examples.
I used to make a nice living as a photographer. I worked for Warner Bros., Atlantic Records, Virgin Records etc. There’s really hardly any money in that anymore.
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Could still make decent money from doing weddings. There are weddings happening just about every weekend. But can also expand that to corporate events as well
Which is funny, because if you’re in videography/video editing, you have to be doing motion graphics now too. All three of those things are separate professions. Or at least, they should be.
My friend who got me into photography as a hobby shoots for high fashion companies and magazines still makes a decent living (~$70-80K). But he's away from his family A LOT and his nurse wife makes double that. If you're a travel/tour photographer for say a celebrity or a musician though, that's an easy 50K in 6 months (which he did once) but you're gonna be traveling the entire time.
I have a brother-in-law who is a wedding photographer. He clears 6 figures in a medium cost-of-living area. He is busy as hell May through September though.
To piggyback on this: camera salespeople. I was just thinking about the old commercials for a local camera shop when I saw the name of the shop pop up in a much different context. And then I was like "Oh yeah, there aren't really any camera shops anymore". In fact, I don't think I know anyone who actually owns a camera anymore.
There are less camera salesmen now, but they still exist. There is 1 high end camera shop in my city that I know of. Although they have branched out from dslr to all kinds of high end video cameras as well. I still love to go in and oogle the nice high end lenses for dslr and older film cameras.
Repairmen. When I was a kid and something broke, you would just take it to the local repairman and he would fix it. Stereo, TV, vacuum, lawnmower, bike... These guys could fix anything. They had a small shop where they had parts for everything; in some sort of comforting chaos. And I have been looking for a couple of years now to find someone to fix my 1960's toaster. Even the company doesn't have any ideas where I could send it :(
It's going to sound weird, but try your local senior citizen center! The one near me has a group of guys that love fiddling with small appliances. They fix up lamps, toasters, clocks, etc.
Not just that, but there's a younger crowd online that's establishing repair centers in different cities. The idea is, you show up with your broke shit. Someone there helps you troubleshoot and repair and you take it home. A lot of people like tinkering and teaching. They both fit well here.
If you have an antique dealer around, ask them. They may know someone that repairs stuff so they can sell it. Repairing that isn't hard for someone that deals with anything electronic, but parts may be hard to source.
There's print shops but actual film development.
You made me remember those in the middle of a parking lot film development shops. Those little ones about the size of a shack. More often than not with a loudly colored roof. You would drop off your film and few days later, sometimes even a week later, you would pick up your pictures. Those have gone the way of the dodo.
One Hour Photo
Shoe repairmen. I still remember the unique smell that was inside their shops. Now there are almost none left as shoes are wildly available everywhere so it doesn't make sense to keep a broken pair. Also, watch repair shops. They evolved into changing glasses, batteries and the little pieces that hold the strap, but they dissapeared a few years later
If you live in a big city they still exist. I just took my Birkenstocks to get resoled at one near me. Definitely not as many as there used to be though.
This one bums me out. Invested in a nice pair of goodyear welt boots and they need to be resoled but I can't find anyone anywhere near me to do it. I'm probably going to have to mail them in somewhere.
Check your nearest major metro area. Anything with a pop of 500K+ should have options.
I would occasionally see news stories about really old cobblers (shoe makers/repairers) trying to find someone to apprentice to continue the trade else everything they know be lost.
There's still money to be made there, but it probably helps to be in a bigger city. Plenty of people with expensive shoes who want them repaired.
type setter. They guy who would physically lay out all the fonts and arrange how a newspaper or magazine page would be printed.
I've worked for a commercial printing company going on 22 years. It's amazing how much different it is now compared to when I first started. Never had to old school "typeset" like you're talking about but we did have to burn negatives for every single printing plate we used.
Then linotype operators. Had a big vat/bucket of melted type metal as part of the machine.
Telephone switchboard/long distance operator
An aunt was an AT&T operator. When they were broken up, she received some "throw away" stocks in the new company NYNEX, which she kept. It's now Verizon. She doesn't need to work but is a health care aid.
Door to door salesmen. You used to see them pretty frequently back in the 60s, never see them now.
I remember vacuum salesmen still showing up and doing a 30 min demo in the late 80s. Now you just go to Walmart and get a vacuum for $100. Things have gotten so cheap.
Kirby still does door to door. A van pulls up on my street like twice a year, 4 people get out and spread out, and they ask to come do a carpet cleaning demo.
Yeah they sell 3k vaccums to your grandparents that will never use them because they are giant. Fuck you Kirby scamming asshole.
Not in Florida, I get either lawn companies or solar companies frequently. Doesn’t matter that I already have solar and I have a no soliciting sign.
Peeling yet another advertisement flyer off my front door this morning, I beg to differ.
I'm talking about where the salesman showed up with merchandise and tried to sell it on the spot.
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We still have them where I am, but they're no longer hospital employees. They've been outsourced to save money.
Our company still types using dictation and typists, it’s my job actually. Hearing how some doctors report, some really can’t use voice recognition as they are too hard for it. But I agree a lot of places are going the way of voice recognition now.
Encyclopedia salesmen...
I remember when our family bought a set in the early 80s. It was such a huge help for me and my siblings to not have to go to the library to work on every research assignment. It was kind of a bummer how quickly they became outdated to the point of being almost unusable though.
Phone books - used to be major money in ad sales
I'm not saying I got all Navin Johnson about the new phone book arriving, but it always had a wealth of information and good coupons along with the phone numbers and addresses. I just got our new one a few months ago, and it was very disappointing.
Lol... When my wife or I found the new book, we'd run around screaming "the new phone books are here!" That would lead to one of us screaming "he hates cans!"
Elevator Operator.
Empire State Building still has one, the small elevator way up top is manual.
Bike messengers. Don't know if that's really a "profession," but there used to be hundreds of 'em in SF and NYC (and other cities) racing around to deliver envelopes, advertising art, court filings, etc. Now everything can be done with high speed internet.
Bike messengers all work for the dispenseries now.
They're still around. Hospitals and labs use them to courier urgent patient samples.
Did you ever see that movie Premium Rush with Joseph Gordon Levitt?
The actual profession would be courier and they certainly still exist because this would probably encompass some postal workers and FedEx/UPS/Amazon delivery folks. Just the specific mode of transportation being a bike is seen less frequently in the US.
There's still some in NYC doing deliveries, not as many but you can still occasionally see them out and about. Nowadays they're mostly doing packages instead of actual mail though.
They're still around. We used them in construction all the time, and my buddy owns a courier service in midtown. Still very much a thing.
I worked as a journalist for a local newspaper, which alone is an endangered species sadly. But so many jobs around the reporter are already extinct. I remember reading the local newspaper as a kid and thinking these folks had the coolest jobs. I loved writing, and these people got to go around the city learning about cool shit and then come back to write about it. And every so often, they get to hold some asshole in power accountable. What could be better? I went to college 2004-2008 with every intention of becoming a journalist. If you look up the profitability graph of local newspapers, these are the exact year when they had a major decline. And then I graduated into the housing crisis. My career took a detour and by the time I got a job as a journalist for a local paper, the office was nearly empty. A few reporters. Two ads guys. Someone at the front desk. A delivery partner. One person for graphics. That's it. No full time photographers or paginators. Those positions were rolled into the reporter responsibilities. No printers. That was outsourced. Our office had a huge printing press in the backroom that was empty and inoperable now because it became too costly to maintain. The whole thing is tragic. I've since moved on. It was a fun job, but it's even more fun to earn enough money to pay for both rent and food. The shit of it is that now that small town simply has no one to tell them what's going on with the school board, the water district, and so on.
Blacksmiths rarely use old school hammer and tongs these days. Everything has moved to cnc, so smithing is now a cross between mechanical and software engineering.
They still exist, but it's become a niche specialty. There's a guy near my dad's place in east Tennessee that still does old fashioned wrought iron work and also makes knives by hand.
Also traditional blacksmithing is rarer because modern metallurgy is much harder to work with by hand. You need more specialized tools for working with tool steel than wrought iron.
Nowadays blacksmithing and machining can be (and often are) entirely separate processes. The only overlap I can think of is heat treatment and welding but since technology has completely changed how even those things work, not a single process is the same even if the product that results is very similar.
Sadly, film protectionists are way way down due to the conversion to digital instead of film in theaters. EDIT: I meant projectionists, but I'll leave my typo so the replies make sense.
I worked in a movie theater when that job was phased out. The projectionist we had continued to work part time fixing the projectors before he eventually moved to Chicago. We threw a farewell party for him.
Was this meant to say projectionists, or are film protectionists something I've never heard of?
The milk man though some small dairies still do in small towns.
And yet he still visits my wife every week, such a friendly chap
Our pool guy is really nice. We don't even have a pool!
I don't know the name of this occupation. But when I was a kid in the 1970s, lining the sidewalks up and down my street were parking meters which took only dimes. Every now and then I'd spot the guy whose job it was to empty the parking meters of the dimes into this large metal trunk shaped box on wheels. He'd put his key into the lock of the parking meter, pull out the front round part where all the dimes were locates, stick it into a circular hole at the top of the metal trunk, give it a twist, and one could hear all the dimes pouring into the trunk. Then he'd put back the circular thing into the parking meter, and go to the very next parking meter to repeat the process. Did this with each and every parking meter up and down, both sides of the street. Here's a recent article with a photo of a guy doing the same thing with the same metal type trunk https://www.oklahoman.com/story/business/columns/steve-lackmeyer/2017/09/11/okc-first-to-use-mechanical-parking-meters-taking-down-the-last-ones/60571264007/ Here is an old photo as to what the old parking meters looked like. As far as I can recall, around my time, the meters accepted only dimes. Not nickles or quarters https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4806436/Photographs-capture-New-York-1960s-1990s.html
Are you talking about Meter Maids? The only reason I know that term is because of American Dad
Swanson driver.
I still see them around. Kind of a crazy business model but it works. I will say their drummies are good!
They do have some decent food here and there. Their chicken strips are pretty good.
Do you mean Schwan's? They're still around. I see the truck in my neighborhood every week. https://www.schwans.com/
I just ran into one yesterday! Imagine my surprise. I thought they'd disappeared or the business had dried up, but nope. They still have a customer just down the block from my place.
Swanson Man chicken tendies are the best.
Full service gas station attendants. The kind who would pump your gas and do your windows. They were still around when I first started driving (30 years ago) but I can't recall the last time I saw a full service gas station.
Come to New Jersey. Although good luck getting your windows done lol.
Some municipalities in BC Canada don’t let you pump your own gas, so full service stations are still a thing!
Professional film criticism. It's still out there - Mark Kermode being my favorite critic - but the industry has shrunk to a shell of its former self, thanks mainly to amateur critics and social media. People would usually rather trust their friends' quick summaries than a read a full dissection by someone who might have very different tastes.
shoot, Just profesional criticism! Its one of my theories why every restaurant sucks now, when I was a kid if any restaurant gave as bad food or service as has become the standard, they would be reviewed at some point by the local paper and that could make or break the business.
Toll collector and paper delivery
I don't see a lot of independent hobby shops and art supply stores anymore. They had everything, from art supplies to model clays, RC equipment, rocketry, model cars and airplane, diorama sets, and scrap booking. They filled very niche markets. They were owned by people who understood hobbies.
Me and my wife were just talking about this. There used to be a store near us called Ben Franklin that had just about everything. I guess they got killed by Michael's arts & crafts?
They still exist. The problem for them is that the margins are razer thin and the infinite selection of an Amazon is hard to compete with.
That is true. I've watched these stores get shuttered in my hometown. One of them was a 10-minute bike ride from my house. I lived in different cities over the years, and when I inquired about local hobby shops, I would be pointed to Hobby Lobby or Michaels.
TV repairmen seem to be almost extinct. You're supposed to just buy another one, plus the technology changes encourage people to buy new TVs instead of fixing their "old" one. What are we up to 8K now? I still live at 1080p basically.
To be fair, modern TVs are effectively single-board computers without much possibilities for repair (except for some easy capacitor replacements, as a few replies down below noted). Either it's a cracked screen (often not worth replacing), burnt out LEDs or a dead power supply. You can still find TV repairmen in developing countries, but fixing a modern TV is nothing like fixing a CRT with hundreds of components.
Certainly in commercial environments it's (at least as often as not) cost prohibitive to pay to ship a TV anywhere for repair. Some TV's are still built with repairability in mind (Samsung was a few years ago at least) but if you're swapping out screens on a regular basis you can't just schlepp them to a repair guy in a strip mall IF you're going to go to the expense and effort of getting them repaired - so it STILL has to be cheaper to pay to ship it to a repair center, have it repaired, AND then pay again to ship it to another location as a refurbished replacement. THIS is how they become "disposable" - when it's less expensive to ship ONE *new* screen from A to B and have the site itself or the field technician take responsibility for disposing of the old one. We have had projects where we couldn't even GIVE AWAY relatively good TV's fast enough, or where 85" monster screens weren't worth the cost and effort of sourcing the needed parts and having them repaired compared to just throwing them away and replacing with something newer and EVEN CHEAPER.
High risk obstetricians Used to be at least one specialist at every large hospital. They were essentially sued out of existence.
Really? We still have plenty of them in aus. Their insurance premiums are obscene though (by aus standards) and their fees equally high. Not uncommon to see them bill $4m a year and spend $500k-$600k in insurance premiums. A bad claim will likely only cost the insurers a max of $15m here though, unlike US where you see awards of damages into the hundreds of millions, and that’s probably the distinction that makes the difference.
That and the legal landscape in the US regarding reproductive health makes it an absolute minefield. A lot of laws are being passed that increase the risk of massive fines, jail sentences, and loss of licensure.
Draftsman (as it was traditionally called). Required some amount of talent, a steady hand, training, and lots of practice. Replaced by CAD technician.
The job still very much exists, just the tools have changed. A good cad technician is priceless in the design game. Although, I know what you mean, I get to review a lot of old legacy engineering drawings done by hand and there’s a beauty to them you don’t get with the computer.
Telephone sanitizer.
I know it’s not full scale yet, but man there use to be a whole lot more cashiers 10-15 years ago.
Travel Agent
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My parents go through a travel agent for cruises. Rather than it being her only profession she has a full-time job, then arranges travel on the side. She gets them travel discounts (not sure if it equals out the charges for her service) and knows tricks to get upgrades on some things. She's been on most of the trips she sells and can say, "You wouldn't think so, but you really want do activity ABC. Just reserve it now because it fills up about six months out." Or tells them to avoid whatever because it wasn't good. They've been happy with her and I think will continue to use the service.
Actually it still very much exists and is booming at the high end of the market. I work super hard so one of my luxuries is well, luxury travel and I only book it through a luxury travel agent. Reason being is that they have relationships with the hotels meaning you get upgrades, valuable perks, special pricing, priority on availability etc etc. Being a top end travel agent is incredibly lucrative.
They're still a thing for cruises, or were, pre-Covid.
As a travel agent, until boomers learn to stop freaking out at having to look at an airplane schedule on the internet, my job is very safe.
My wife and I used one for our honeymoon. I feel like it’s a great service for a complicated vacation. I don’t need one to book a simple flight though.
Same here - we used one for our honeymoon. The agency was based in the country where we wanted to travel. The agent we used was FANTASTIC - and she had better rates than I could find online, probably because of all the business she sent to these places. We had fantastic rooms with great view in every hotel, fantastic car service to and from the airport, all our in-country flights were booked with no issues and when we did have a minor problem with our rental car, it was fixed in under a half hour. And, for all that, I paid LESS than what I would have paid booking all of it on my own and she did ALL THE WORK. 10/10 would do again!
It's a thing and likely to remain a thing for business travel. Travel agency provides a service not dissimilar to insurance, except they help sort out the inevitable mess in real time instead of paying for it after the fact. "Your employee overstayed their visa in where!?"
Still very much a thing. Even with the internet some people don’t have the time to sit down and figure everything out.
I've actually used one. Kinda alright for group trips or going to specific resorts. Not so useful for a vacation where you're kinda winging it.
They now cater more to corporates.
people used to sell encyclopedias until the internet came about.
three - street sweeper - literally a man with a broom, dust pan and a garbage can with wheels and rag picker - a man in a horse drawn cart selling rags that he washed, you'd give him your dirty rags and he'd sell you the clean ones - they also sold pots and pans dug out of the trash they would clean up and bang out the dents...that was long before paper towels and disposable mop supplies. lastly a guy in a truck would ride around the neighborhood sharpening your knives and garden tools
The collect call operators
Fullbacks
Drafting (mechanical drawing). I started with lead pencils on vellum. Became expert in civil, mechanical, structural and electronic fields. Was an early adopter of CAD. Used Autocad 2.1. Progressed from there, but there came a point where not having an engineering degree pushed me out, despite years of experience and even being proficient at CAD. Nowadays draftsmen are by and large new engineering grads if they're needed at all because at this point, those guys that pushed me out are established engineers who are also proficient at CAD and don't need a draftsman.
Thank you for the wake up call. I've just decided to finish my degree.
Elevator operator.
Keypunch operators. Entering code and data into computers used to involve writing it down, then handing it off to keypunch operators who typed it onto 80 column punched cards that were then read into the computer via a card reader that interpreted the holes in the cards as characters (or sometimes binary data). I punched my own programs and JCL when I started “back in the day”.
Cobblers are rare these days, although some footwear manufacturers will resole their products if you return them.
I still see them. They're just few and far between because you only need 1 for tens of thousands of people. But they still make sense because quality shoes cost hundreds of dollars
That's what I loved about NYC, there's still a considerable amount of cobblers there. I went to one to fix the sole of a pair of boots I didn't want to part with, my roommate said I could've gotten new boots for the price, nope. Not that quality. Nope.
The guy that prints X-Rays, now they are all done on computer screens.
The lady who sat on a little stool in the elevator and pushed the button for you. "Going up?"
Typesetting. I remember touring a newspaper facility as a kid. There were all these people putting lead letters into guides to make the day’s newspaper.
The milkman