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Things that are now obsolete or were easier years ago

Homebird

A recent thread got me thinking about a couple of things.

The first one is instructions. I find things like mobiles frustrating as they don't come with instruction manuals. Then other things have to be researched on the internet. If I have flat packed furniture to build I lay it out and follow the instructions at my own pace. That's what I liked about Lego unless that has changed now.

The other thing I was thinking about recently is things we used to use that young people would have never seen. I was thinking of the phrase being a carbon copy which I guess comes from the use of carbon paper. In my first office job the typists did two copies of letters using this which went in different files. Some shops used it for receipts so they had a copy. I wonder if anyone uses it today.

Are there things that others can think of that aren't in use now?

Parents

  • 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

  • in reply to Caelus

    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. 

  • in reply to Sporadic Sparkly
    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

  • in reply to Uhane

    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? Upside down

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  • in reply to Uhane

    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? Upside down

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