I was a CSR at Blockbuster for 12 years. Prior to that I was a video clerk at a supermarket.
I was a newspaper boy and delivered an afternoon paper after school. Since I didn’t have a bicycle I used a shopping cart. Some of the buildings I delivered to were five-story walk-ups.
I also worked collecting the subscription fees for a weekly paper that was delivered by mail. Now I’m sure anything like that would be paid for on line.
My summer job in college was as an elevator operator and doorman on Park Avenue in New York. The elevators in most of the buildings were manually operated. There can’t be many of those left any more. In one building I just pushed the buttons when people told me the floor they wanted.
I did work one week checking billing punch cards against error reports on the graveyard shift. Possibly the worst job I ever had.
I was a credit clerk. My job was to look up customers’ records, approve routine charges and call a supervisor if there was some sort of irregularity. The job was already starting to become computerized when I did it 40 years ago.
I also had a summer job collating documents. That job has pretty much been replaced by copiers.
I did classic “cut 'n paste” graphic design for a few years, then the desktop computer revolution arrived. I adapted quite easily to the new technology, but still kinda miss manual designing.
I loved the smell of hot wax in the morning! 
I was a Digital Computer Operator, 1974-1978 at a large mainframe computer center at a large scientific research lab. I have no idea how many mainframe computers are still around or how they’re operated, but it can’t be anything like it was then. The job may still exist here and there, but much reduced from those days.
Even if there are still some large mainframe computer centers around, I don’t know what computer operators would be doing there any more.
I was also a mainframe computer operator, with gigantic open reel tape drives and punch card readers.
I was also a COBOL and Fortran programmer.
I worked in a press clipping bureau, cutting out articles and bid notices to send to various interested parties including US senators. I’m not sure that service exists anymore, what with the demise of so many newspapers and the availability of others online.
One of my first jobs as a teenager was working primarily in the redemption center of a liquor store, counting and sorting cans and bottles manually before the machines took over. 100’s and often 1000’s of sticky, moldy, slimy, putrid smelling, bug, fly and bee attracting recyclables daily. I’d made the mistake of coming to work with a hangover a few times and on those days I’d pray to be hit by lightening or a minivan well before lunch break. Just an utterly loathsome, detestable thing to do for a minimum wage check, can’t believe I stuck it out for the whole summer. I’m only imagining this is a 100% machine operated enterprise by now, but if it’s not it certainly should be.
Typist. Typing pool type work. Doesn’t exist any more
I also worked in a typing pool one summer during college. I gained 15 pounds from sitting 8 hours a day. The place was run like a sweatshop.
I also worked as a library page when I was in high school. I’m sure the shelving books part still exists, but I also had to file cards in the card catalog, which is now of course digital. Checking out books was fun, using the little rubber date stamp and copying the borrower’s card number onto the file card.
I was a LORAN technician, then an Instructor to train more LORAN Technicians. GPS pretty much killed LORAN.
In the summer of 1970, I was hired to be the Saturday morning PBX operator for a small company. I worked a switchboard not unlike this. No dealing with phone trees, no “For English, press 1” - just tell me who you need to talk to and I’ll plug into that line. And for that, I got a whopping $2/hr. Good times…
Operated blueprint machine at a major architect’s office.
Graphic artist: T-square, exacto knife, hot wax, etc.
Typesetter: From paper-tape to floppy disk, plus Typositor.
Are there still offset plate makers?
Full-time kerning of thousands of fonts.
…light table, rubber cement, IBM composer…
This was my first job out of college. My fingertips always had lots of teeny-tiny cuts from wiping off the wax. (I still do this work, but electronically.)
The summer before my senior year of college (it was the Summer of Love, but not for me <Judy Garland’s voice>), I worked at a telephone answering service.
I sat wearing a headset in front of a switchboard–the vertical kind, like in old movies–with about 100 incoming lines. During the daytime hours when I worked, about a third of them were answered by customers at their offices. When some of them went out to lunch, they turned the lines over to us to answer, then called us when they got back to pick up any messages. The rest needed to be answered-- real estate brokers, food service delivery, accountants, ranchers, plumbers-- I wish I could remember all of them. Every type of business, every type of person.
It could get EXTREMELY hectic and nerve-wracking. You might have a customer calling in from home on your line for messages, and you’d see that his office number was ringing. So you’d put him on hold and take that call, then convey the message. You often had several calls coming in at the same time, so you had to put people on hold then get back to them as quickly as possible without sounding rushed or harassed.
Each customer had specific instructions for how to handle calls. Some forbade us to say they were out of the office! We had to give the impression WE were in their office physically. For those customers, we were not allowed to say that we were an answering service–that could get tricky. Especially if the caller asked you point-blank. You must sound like a secretary or receptionist, not like an answering service.
After a while, you got used to the customers’ quirks and requirements, and it became second nature and automatic. You really had to think quickly, but there was a flow to it. Our boss had certain rules. We were never allowed to say, “I don’t know,” either to a customer or a caller. We would say, “He didn’t tell me,” “I don’t have that information,” “I’ll try to find out.” (Good practice for being investigated by Congress.) Never, never say, “I’ll have him call you.” Say, “I’ll give him the message.” You can’t know if the customer will or won’t call, and believe me, if the customer doesn’t return the call, the caller will call YOU back and say, “You said you’d have him call me and he didn’t!!” And your boss will be listening in and you’ll get a note of reprimand in your drawer when you retrieve your headset tomorrow. Basically, you were supposed to be a perfect impersonal robot android who never got ruffled or rude even when four or five lines were ringing.
There were clear rules and procedures for taking messages that have stood me in good stead to this day. Immediately write down the time of the call (we had a date/time stamp, similar to a time clock). Don’t be shy about asking the caller to spell out his/her name, and spell it back to them. Several times, if necessary. Getting the caller’s name right was the most important thing. Repeat the phone number. Ask for a message and repeat the message back.
It was great training for a young girl who lacked confidence and was pretty socially inept. I quickly became good at the pace, the need to juggle things, keep your cool, while being accurate and precise. In a very short time, they had me training new people, older than me. I also learned a lot about a lot of local businesses.
I haven’t thought about this job in detail since LBJ was president. Thanks for the opportunity to remember.
Anyone remember Blue Chip Stamps. I was a stock boy at a redemption center.
I worked in a CD shop. They’re not all gone yet, but they will be soon.
I just remembered - my PBX weekend job became an office-flunky summer job. Among other things, I ran the mimeograph machine and the flex-o-writer to make copies of bills of lading and brokerage bills. I’m guessing the only place you’d see either of those any longer is a museum…
I had an after school job at the cash register.
I know people still work at the checkout counters, charging people for merchandise and receiving their payment and returning their change, but they don’t operate mechanical cash registers to do so, nor do they count back the change in order to make change.
(Does that count?)
This is a *fantastic *skill, and it’s not obsolete, although it’s sadly harder to find these days. Most of my job involves leaving messages for doctors and waiting for them to call me back and leaving more messages when they don’t call me back. There’s one doctor in particular I delight in calling, because his receptionists - both of them - are fantastic at this. I tell him every time he calls me back (and he always calls me back, because he gets good messages telling him exactly what I need and when) that he needs to make sure they’re getting paid whatever it takes to stay there, because they’re golden. 