Things that are now obsolete or were easier years ago

oh... customer service... .remember when places had customer services you could ring and chat to a real person? thats long gone, no more numbers to ring customer service on, at best all you get is some crap fake chat bot which is just a online text FAQ which doesnt help at all

and banks, remember when banks actually had bank branches and you could go into a bank? lol

I remember when it was possible to phone a company or organisation, and one could speak to a human being without having to spend an age navigating a menu. 

Sporadic Sparkly said:

I remember when it was possible to phone a company or organisation, and one could speak to a human being without having to spend an age navigating a menu. 

...ah yes, the switchboard operator put you through.

Nostalgic Ben

I think I remember Barbara Streisand saying she did too in her youth whilst trying to get acting jobs after work. She said she'd practice acting while working on the switchboard in some ways e.g. by using different accents and characters too I guess. When I worked in telephone customer services in 1990s we would sometimes do that kind of thing and have a daily prize for the first telephone operator to get the 'quote of the day' into a conversation with a customer e.g. 'you have to look through the rain to see the rainbow'. I also remember that on the telephone console equipment there was a button option we had to press (number 5 I think) for 'comfort break' to show why (and for how long) we had 'left our station'. I wonder how that kind of thing is monitored these days? 

I was a switchboard operator in my early 20s!

I was a switchboard operator in my early 20s!

I think I remember Barbara Streisand saying she did too in her youth whilst trying to get acting jobs after work. She said she'd practice acting while working on the switchboard in some ways e.g. by using different accents and characters too I guess. When I worked in telephone customer services in 1990s we would sometimes do that kind of thing and have a daily prize for the first telephone operator to get the 'quote of the day' into a conversation with a customer e.g. 'you have to look through the rain to see the rainbow'. I also remember that on the telephone console equipment there was a button option we had to press (number 5 I think) for 'comfort break' to show why (and for how long) we had 'left our station'. I wonder how that kind of thing is monitored these days?