# Have you ever held a job that doesn't exist anymore? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 28, 2024, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218 "2024-09-28T22:05:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![FinsToTheLeft](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finstotheleft/32/2930_2.png) [@FinsToTheLeft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinsToTheLeft)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/101 "2024-09-30T00:53:39Z")
> [@Dr.Girlfriend](#): > > I know there are still one-hour photo places around but they’re much fewer and further between now. There also still blacksmiths shops. I would consider the day of the 1 Hour Photo shop to be gone. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/102 "2024-09-30T01:12:48Z")
I can do better than that. Send me your actual email address and I can send you a note of about 7 pages that I wrote on the subject. It has since appeared in some publication off the IEEE (don’t recall the name of the journal) that is devoted to personal stories. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/103 "2024-09-30T01:20:10Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Yeah, when a store’s busy enough I sometimes see somebody other than the cashiers doing the bagging. I don’t know whether it’s ever a dedicated job any longer, though, or whether the particular people only do that when it’s busy and do other work whenever the lines aren’t as long; I suspect the latter. At least at my primary store, it seems to be a bit of both. There are some employees whom I’ve seen doing both jobs, but there are several people employed there who are, I suspect, developmentally disabled in some way, and I only ever see them doing bagging, never working a register. ---
**Author:** ![fachverwirrt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/94ad74/32.png) [@fachverwirrt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fachverwirrt)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/104 "2024-09-30T01:20:59Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > My first job is nearly gone, a COBOL programmer. Along with this I was also an RPG programmer for pretty much my entire career; disappearing quick. Part of my first job was loading the large reel style storage tapes into a Tandem & AS/400 computers to do data transfers from Ascii to EBCDIC and vice-versa. Also wrote all the conversion code for said transfers. > > But computer programming and analysis is going nowhere, so languages and specific functions are just fading away. My very brief foray into tech was Y2K analysis and testing, mostly in COBOL systems. That specific job disappeared quickly after the turn of the century, of course (although the problems persisted for a while). ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/105 "2024-09-30T01:22:46Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > At least at my primary store, it seems to be a bit of both. There are some employees whom I’ve seen doing both jobs, but there are several people employed there who are, I suspect, developmentally disabled in some way, and I only ever see them doing bagging, never working a register. This is the case at H-E-B (local grocery in Texas). ---
**Author:** ![Old\_Wench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecccb3/32.png) [@Old\_Wench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Old_Wench)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/106 "2024-09-30T02:10:54Z")
> [@teelabrown](#): > > > [@hajario](#): > > > > My stepmom was a legal secretary in the 70s. Isn’t that the same thing as what’s now called a paralegal? > > The jobs are separate, but there’s overlap - each can do a bit of the other’s job. A paralegal has to have more training, and perhaps a four year degree. I was able to do some of the tasks that a paralegal usually did, and a paralegal could of course prepare FedEx packages, tab documents for signature, and scan or file paperwork. But generally they’re not the same thing. > > Gad, I’m glad I’m done with that. Scanning documents into the system was supposed to take the place of filing and paperwork, but in reality, it just added more work. The attorneys still wanted their paper files, so we maintained the ever-increasing mountains of paper files AND had to scan everything as well. Piles and piles and piles of it, day in and day out. Another retired legal secretary here (1978-2022). The paralegals had to have certificates/degrees and were required to bill the clients for their work. Like the attorneys, they were required to bill a minimum number of hours per year. The attorneys often assigned tasks to a paralegal vs. a secretary depending on what a specific client would pay for. I’m with you on the scanning vs. paper files, although the amount of paper dropped off significantly during COVID due to more electronic filing and service requirements. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/107 "2024-09-30T03:08:59Z")
The first job I had in the Army doesn’t exist and hasn’t for a long time. I was an Aeroscout Observer. It was me and a pilot in a scout helicopter. Basically we were low paid co-pilots. Part of the job required us to know the basics of flying: take offs, landings, hover everything except autorotation. The program lasted from about the mid 80s to the late 90s. In college I had a job in the bowels of the library backing up the computer system on magnetic tape every night. It was very boring and very cold. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/108 "2024-09-30T03:16:04Z")
I worked as a hospital orderly. That position doesn’t exist anymore, but in my day, orderlies were male and had duties like hauling up the old style oxygen tanks and hooking them up, and other heavy lifting jobs that have mostly been eliminated by mechanical devices like Hoyer lifts to get patients in and out of bed. Both men and women now have a title like “patient care specialist” and except for the gender of the patient they’re assigned to, have exactly the same duties. My sisters and I each worked as credit clerks in the pre-computer days. If a customer wanted to use their charge account, the sales clerk would call the central office, and the clerks would run and get the customer’s payment records. If their payments were up to date, we had a limit we could approve on the spot (mine was $50-$100 with the higher number on weekends or when the store had a big promotion.) If there was an issue, we called a supervisor. Computers have replaced entry-level clerks like us, and most of the supervisory positions, as well. ---
**Author:** ![Mortimus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e36b37/32.png) [@Mortimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mortimus)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/109 "2024-09-30T04:44:25Z")
I was a TV film projectionist in the mid-70’s to early 80’s, back when a significant amount of local programming came from either 16mm motion picture film or 35mm slides. We had 4 film projectors and 3 slide projectors. At least two of them were in use at any given time, sometimes all were used at once or nearly so, in quick succession. It was a hurry up and wait type of job. A fair amount of down time but when things were hopping, they were really hopping. The main thing was to be hyper organized and FAST without getting your fingers mangled in a projector. The sprockets pulling the film through the projector were worm-gear driven and were not going to stop just because you stuck your finger in the wrong place. Film cuts were also a thing. Think of a paper cut but with with film being the cutting instrument. Being a bit more substantial than paper, film was superior at slicing fingers. I had a box of band-aids at the ready. I could swap out one film for another one the same projector while it was running. Sometimes I’d let the film just dump onto the floor because there wasn’t time to place a take-up reel. Film on the floor wasn’t a huge deal tho, as long as you didn’t disturb the pile. If left undisturbed, the pile of film would wind up ever so nicely onto the take-up reel when you had a moment to do it. But if someone came around the blind corner leading to my work area and stepped on that pile of film I would have a tangled and possibly unrecoverable mess and lots of bad words would be loudly spoken. Any movie film or still video you see on TV these days has been digitized and is coming off a server. Nobody has to worry about stepping on a pile of film or losing a finger to a sprocket. Kids these days have it so easy. Push a button and boom, there’s your “film”. Now excuse me whilst I adjust my onion belt. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/110 "2024-09-30T05:28:20Z")
Funnily enough, I now work for Intergraph - or at least the company that bought them out. But not in any GIS capacity. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/111 "2024-09-30T11:05:39Z")
I used to do pre-press/bindery work that’s no longer necessary because of automation. Later I was a Flash developer before it was discovered that it drained phone batteries. Now it’s called Animate and uses HTML5, but there’s too many other animation apps that are easier to use. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/112 "2024-09-30T11:55:16Z")
I loved Flash. 😢 It was so intuitive. What are some animation apps that you like better than Animate? ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/113 "2024-09-30T12:01:38Z")
No, but I am currently in a job that, ten years ago, was so different from the way it is now that it is pretty much a different job. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/114 "2024-09-30T12:14:24Z")
I still like Animate. I just don’t get any projects for it. I use After Effects to make animated versions of static designs like website banners and socials. I could use PowerPoint, but my Never PC/Microsoft coworkers would disown me. 🙂 I’ve pointed out to them that Adobe Express uses a lot of similar features to PPT, but… Some people in the Multimedia team use web-based apps such as GoAnimate and a few others, but because of limited licenses, I don’t get to play with them. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/115 "2024-09-30T12:35:07Z")
> [@robby](#): > > Similarly, it’s too bad the import company didn’t cross-train the hand-calculator guy to do other tasks that surely needed doing. Maybe they thought he was too hide-bound. It was kind of complicated. The new president didn’t like the guy so I think he wouldn’t have survived even if we didn’t automate his job. The other problem was that he didn’t try to pick up any new responsibilities or anything after the change, but instead just took it easy. Another job I had was working in sales in a small documentation company with J-Star computers. “J” was for “Japanese” and “Star” was the [Xerox Star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star) computer and operating system. It was a small company that did documentation, such as layout, back when most office workers in Japan didn’t have their own computers. Most of that business faded away but I was long gone by then. One job I turned down was working for a US company that offered low cost fax services. They used leased lines and offered faxes at 100 yen (about $1) per page where the phone company cost a couple of times that. That was in 1995, and while Japanese companies held onto their faxes longer than most places, that was all wiped out by email. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/116 "2024-09-30T14:24:18Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I spent a couple of summers being what amounted to a courier at a mid-sized engineering firm. > > I’m pretty sure that these days they just email each other the drawings and use something like Bluebeam to mark them up for each other. I seriously doubt they send a college kid haring across the general area with several sets of drawings to be delivered to or picked up from county engineering departments, city engineering departments, and construction companies. I’m a civil engineer, and so is my son. I spent the early part of my engineering career doing exactly this (20+ years ago). My son did the same thing as an engineering intern and junior engineer as late as 2019. But it seems like the pandemic pushed most municipal engineering departments and public agencies to finally be able to send and receive large files electronically. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/117 "2024-09-30T14:29:07Z")
> [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](#): > > My job in the Air Force no longer exists. The mission was retired a short time ago and it is not likely to be reinstated for cost reasons. Can you give any details about what the job and mission were? ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/118 "2024-09-30T18:50:15Z")
I operated radio and television broadcasting equipment from the rear of an EC-130. Information operations/Psyops. Of course, high-powered broadcasting equipment can do things other than broadcasting, and I’ll leave it at that. The plane’s operating costs and aging equipment was deemed far too expensive to replace in spite of it being in high demand at all times for over 20 years, so it was retired and the planes were de-modded. I believe they have the ability to do certain things on a small scale that we did, but when you can put out 6 radio broadcasts and an analog TV broadcast simultaneously, completely saturating an operational area, it doesn’t compare. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/119 "2024-09-30T19:21:46Z")
Very interesting! I’ve never heard anything about aircraft-based broadcasting capabilities before. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218/120 "2024-09-30T19:46:25Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > > Yeah, when a store’s busy enough I sometimes see somebody other than the cashiers doing the bagging. I don’t know whether it’s ever a dedicated job any longer, though, or whether the particular people only do that when it’s busy and do other work whenever the lines aren’t as long; I suspect the latter. > > At least at my primary store, it seems to be a bit of both. There are some employees whom I’ve seen doing both jobs, but there are several people employed there who are, I suspect, developmentally disabled in some way, and I only ever see them doing bagging, never working a register. At most supermarkets around here, the bagging is done either by the cashier or sometimes just left to the customers themselves. Occasionally another cashier might help if they’re on duty and store isn’t busy but that’s rare. The few employees willing to work for minimum wage generally do things like rounding up shopping carts and moving them from the parking lot stall back to the store. I don’t know any store that specifically hires baggers any more. The one upscale grocery store that usually has baggers I believe is just using extra cashiers; they’re profitable enough to afford lots of them, and it helps profits by making the checkout lines faster and helps justify their high prices by minimizing and practically eliminating lineups. (I sometimes shop there because they have a lot of unique products that are actually fairly priced considering that they’re high quality and unavailable anywhere else; it’s just a bad place to buy everyday commodity items unless you’re as rich as some of the pretentious snobs I see there in their Bentleys and Lamborghinis.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-held-a-job-that-doesnt-exist-anymore/1008218.md?page=7)