Just had a random thought slash memory. I remember when I was a kid, one of the important jobs my dad did when preparing to go somewhere for a few days was to go to the bank and cash a check - as in, an actual check written out to “CASH” - so that he’d have enough cash on hand to last through the trip.
I wonder how long it’s been since anyone did that.
I can’t remember the last time I used the Yellow Pages to look up a phone number.
<hamgs head in shame> I still use the Yellow AND White pages; I mean the physical ones made from dead trees and stuff. And I still go the the library to look things up in actual books.
I haven’t written a check to myself though in ages and ages although I do go to a teller more often than I do an ATM to get cash out of my account.
I haven’t used a paper dictionary for years. It used to be my constant deskside companion.
I was just thinking that nobody sees Elvis anymore, but I guess that doesn’t really go with this thread.
For some reason tons of people still use the Yellow Pages, at least in the library. I have no idea why so many other librarians do it. You guys know Google knows this stuff, right?
Something that surprises me every time a patron wants to do it is “writing away for information”. I remember when I was a kid you did that pretty frequently, but now it’s just weird.
I no longer use those small dictionaries, but I do have my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary to hand. Because one thing online dictionaries do badly is allow you to browse.
One of my employees sometimes cashes checks made out to “cash” out of the register money (with my OK). She then “buys the check back” later in the week. I no longer accept checks for payment, so it’s kinda strange to see a check in the drawer.
Almost every week I cash a check for my spending money. I went on vacation a few weeks ago and took a wad o’ cash from my savings. Didn’t charge or use my debit card at all. I go to the library about every week and check out a print book, as well as DVDs that I put in the DVD player that is connected (with a cable!) to my tv.
I haven’t used the Yellow Pages in donkeys. Somehow in my recent home cleaning frenzy I believe I disposed of my dictionary (the one I had since grammar school) and I’m hoping I just put it in a different spot because I hate looking up definitions on Google.
Do people still use travel agents to plan trips?
The other day, I made a comment in another forum that I’d pay to hear Aretha Franklin sing the telephone book.
And felt tempted to add, “For you kids, that’s a book we used to have that had everyone’s name, address, and landline phone number, back when everyone had landlines.”
The phone company still gives us new phone books every year, and out of sheer habit I keep putting the new ones on the shelf and tossing the old ones, but it’s been years since I’ve actually looked a number up in either the white or yellow pages.
I changed from a bank to a credit union a couple years back, and it struck me at that time that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone inside a bank. (They wanted me to sign the signature card in person.) Since that time, I’ve opened an additional savings account for myself, one for vacation spending money, and a college fund for my brand new grandson. All of that I did over the internet.
Another thing that strikes me is that years ago I used to go in and pay my bills in person. I haven’t done that in at least 20 years, probably more. I couldn’t if I wanted to. Most places won’t let you now.
Finally (and this is one I definitely don’t miss), I haven’t shinnied up and down a ladder carrying insanely heavy wooden storm windows to change seasonally since the early 1980s.
I still get cash from the bank before a trip. I’d rather do that than pay other banks’ ATM fees on the road, and while I’ll pay for most stuff with a credit card, I still use cash for enough small purchases that I like having a couple hundred bucks with me on a trip.
We tried to a couple years ago. We were planning a trip to Washington DC and New York City, flying in to one city, taking the train to the other, and flying home from there. We thought that with the non-standard travel, and because we weren’t familiar with the area, it might be easier to use a travel agent to make the arrangements.
It wasn’t. After a few days of going back and forth, not quite getting what we were looking for, we decided to just do it ourselves. We found better hotels and better flights than the travel agent was trying to book us, for what was essentially the same cost.
Do traveller’s checks still exist? I remember when I was about 15, back in the 1980s, I took a trip to Germany with my high school German club. One of the big things I got to do before the trip was go to the bank and get several hundred dollars worth of traveller’s checks. It was a whole big thing where you had to sign each one in front of the teller, and you got a list of the check numbers which had to always be kept IN A SEPARATE PLACE from the checks themselves, in case the checks were stolen.
I felt awfully grown up doing all that, but these days, between credit cards and ATMs, that sort of thing seems like it would be incredibly cumbersome and unnecessary. I know you never see commercials for traveller’s checks on TV anymore, and they used to be all over the place, with Karl Malden intoning in a stentorian voice about what a fix you would be in if you were “traveling abroad” and your money was stolen.
I honestly do not know the price of stamps now. I pay my bills online, and except for birthday cards, when I slap a “forever” stamp on them, I rarely mail anything. I could not tell you what the going rate for postage on a first class letter is now. (And I’m sure someone will be along shortly to fight my ignorance 
)
I’ve never used a travel-agent. My gf has in the past, but she does not miss their ?assistance (I have no real idea what it is they even do).
I’m pretty sure that they still exist. The first time I went to San Francisco was in 2009, essentially for a long weekend, and I brought some US travellers’ cheques from my bank in Canada. But it was a pain to find places that would cash them, especially from 5 Friday-9am Monday.
From then on, I just change some dollars before I leave to go to the US, and have my ATM card in case I need to get more paper money. (And usually try to hide emergency money in unexpected places, so unless ALL my luggage gets stolen and my wallet, I won’t be without resources.)
Exactly. In contrast to my Germany trip, when I went to a conference in Toronto a couple of years ago, I changed some money at the border, and used my ATM card (which worked in Canada, how about that!) when I needed to top up my cash toward the end of my time there. SO much easier!
Yes, although I haven’t used them in a long time, now that pretty much every ATM worldwide can access my bank accounts.
“Back in the day,” they did what, say, Orbitz and Travelocity do now. It was also where you went to get information on things like travel packages (e.g. British Airways offered one to London with a 6-night hotel stay and two tickets to a West End show) before the World Wide Web existed. Note that the BA package still exists, but now you can order it online.
The last time I went to a travel agent was something like 1995; their computers had apps that could list schedules and prices, and purchase plane tickets (and had printers that actually printed out the tickets in their office). The software needed was a little behind the time; even when Windows had switched to being able to move the windows around, the app still required the older-style Windows that had to take up the entire screen (you could split the screen into 2 or 4 smaller windows, but that was it).
Even in the days before home access to the Internet was readily available, you could access flight schedules through services like Compuserve (which used a version of American Airlines’ sAAbre system).
Whenever I go to a hotel site to check prices, usually I see space to ever a travel agent’s IATA number, so it’s possible that they can get discounts that “mere mortals” cannot.
My Wife and I went to Germany a few years ago we used a travel agent.
But we knew nothing about traveling in Europe, and did the whole train thing. The agent was very helpful.
I wonder what’s in Pueblo Colorado now. It seems like there was a bunch of organizations based there where you could write for the info.