Grocery store sacker. That store is long closed. I still see a few sackers at my local stores.
Gas pump jockey at an Esso station back in 1970. Everywhere is self serve now days so no.
Waitress, and yes, the job still exists.
Telex operator and, like FairyChatMom and jabiru, relief PBXer. Loved those machines, couldn’t even remember how to use them now. Like the rest of the world, I guess. The world is definitely a lesser place without that tiny, tiny white confetti from the telex strips. And being the first person to know anything of any worth that was going on in the company - well, you can’t beat that, can you…!
Not down across the Columbia
Self-serve gas is virtually unheard of in Thailand. It was recently introduced on a limited trial basis, but the jury is still out on it. No matter how low on the totem pole a driver may be in real life, he at least gets to lord it over the little filling-station attendants like a big shot, so few think it will catch on.
My first job out of college still exists but it’s very different now. I worked as
a production or “paste-up” artist. I would get pieces of paper with the text and
images for the project and glue them to a thin white piece of cardboard with rubber
cement. Everything had to be carefully lined up and square. Borders were created using
black tape or Rapidograph pens that would sometimes leak and stain the tips
of your fingers. The once the page or advertisement was finished it would be sent
out to be printed.
I did this work for several different companies for most of the 1980s. I don’t think
that any of those companies are around today.
Production artists still exist today but everything is done on computer and then
emailed to the printer. Its easy now to make everything straight and accurate
plus there is no more breathing rubber cement fumes all day!
My first job was collating Sunday editions of the newspaper. Had to put the coupons/comics/TV guide section into the Arts section, the Auto section inside the Business section, etc until you put it all into the main section which was always printed last in order to be as up to date as possible. Done by hand on tables back in the mid-late 80’s.
I assume someone is still doing this but probably a lot less people with the state of the newspaper industry. I guess it could be automated but I suspect it’d be difficult to do, especially with all the loose papers in the center inserts. Cheaper to just pay 15 year olds piecemeal wages to do it like we did.
Yes! The job, building, and company are still there.
I started working at Johnny’s Car Wash in Erlanger, Kentucky in 1967 for the princely sum of 95¢ an hour at the tender age of 14 YO. That was minimum wage for an ‘economically depressed’ area back then. Of course the car wash was located about 100 feet from the border of one of the more wealthy areas there.
It was/is a full service car wash. I usually washed the interior windows or vacuumed out the carpet. I worked my ass off at that job, often to exhaustion, and got a few nickel raises to $1.10 an hour after a couple of years.
I learned a lot of good things at that job like showing up on time and putting in a good day’s work.
I also learned that I needed to stay in school and get something better than a minimum wage job!
That job is called “Boarding” in the sock industry. And yes, they still do it by hand, at least in the sock industry.
First job? Bag boy at Winn Dixie. Store is gone and most cashiers bag their own anymore, but still a few places do it.
I did this in the mid-late 90s and it was automated. The sections were automatically inserted into the mains section, plus before that, loose ads were placed into the sections. We had to make sure the hoppers stayed full, clear any jams, and make sure the stacks were stacked neat when they came out.
It was more than 4 times faster than doing it by hand, because we had to do that once or twice when the machines broke down.
My box of Rapidographs, rulers, triangles, blueline pens and pencils, X-Acto knives, whiteout, graphic tape and various adhesives sits ten feet from me… should Creative Suite CC/2014 ever fail me.
Yep, holes still need to be dug, and sod still needs to be thrown.
Well, my high school part-time job slinging burgers at Wendy’s still exists, as does cashiering - though the store I cashiered at is defunct (Murphy’s, which was like Woolworth’s - a low-end “department” store sort of like a cheaper version of Wal-mart!).
My next real job was doing data entry - onto punch cards. Pretty sure nobody uses THOSE any more!!