Jobs You Held That Are Now Obsolete

[silentg]

I worked for a clothing manufacturing company. Used pack and ship clothes to stores.
Later I worked at the Executive Offices of a Retail Store that no longer exists. This is where I met my husband. Later on he worked for a textile manufacturing company, that was closed, most manufacturing companies were outsourced. World is so different now.

 

[sponger76]

Cobol, Basic, Pascal programmer.

Due to legacy systems in some industries or large corporations and the lack of new talent learning them, programmers of certain languages can still command large salaries. From what I understand COBOL programmers in particular can still do quite well for themselves.

 

[pedro47]

A pie catcher for a major pie company on the East Coast.

 

[LannyPC]

Paper route when I was a teenager. I'd load up my Schwinn 10-speed bike (had two metal storage bins to hold the newpapers on each side of my rear tire) with the stack of papers delivered to my house, and then ride through the neighborhood dropping off a paper to each neighbor that was a subscriber. Then once a month I had to go "collecting" door to door to get payment (and then pay my supervisor for what I "owed" for the papers, and then kept the leftover amount as my pay). This was the mid-to-late '70s.

Me too.

I thought I'd add this tidbit that I thought would be applicable for a TS forum and how we like to slag TS sales people.

Our income was based on the number of subscriptions we delivered. We were encouraged to knock on doors in the neighbourhood and sell subscriptions. If the person said "We can't afford it", we were encouraged to respond along the lines of "Our newspaper each week contains coupons, savings, and promotions that will save you hundreds of dollars. You can't afford not to have it."

 

[heathpack]

Hmm I have only worked non obsolete jobs it seems: stall mucker, dining room girl in a nursing home, chemist, essay grader on standardized tests, vet assistant, veterinarian.

 

[jeffox]

Y2K compliance tester. That gig dried up real quick around 2001.

 

[Glynda]

During my senior year of high school I worked part time in the Display Department of Sears at our local mall. Though Corporate sent most of the interior display signage for various departments and promotions, there were still signs to be made in-store. That was my main job. There were two methods. One involved an old fashioned letter press setting individual letter/type blocks and spacers, inking, placing card stock and pulling a roller over the top.The second was a table top punch style machine that was a lot easier but only good for smaller signs. I often had extra time so I helped with window displays and dressing mannequins. In those days, mid 60's, we were not allowed to undress and redress a mannequin in an area where customers could see it "nekkid."

 

[Pennytx]

I worked as a coat check and bagel girl at a Jewish country club in St. Louis.
I used to check in fur coats, overcoats etc…
Then go slice and toast bagels, then return to the coat check to have people retrieve their items… different time

 

[TheHolleys87]

During my senior year of high school I worked part time in the Display Department of Sears at our local mall.

Oh my, this made me remember the job I had the summer between HS graduation and starting college - I was a clerk in the Fabric and Notions department of a brand-new Sears store. I spent the summer cutting fabric and checking out customers in my department. Talk about jobs that don’t exist anymore, not to mention retailers!

 

[Timeshare Von]

How about obsolete employers? I worked 6 years with retail giant K-Mart in the 70's, in several in-store management roles at 3 different stores. I learned a lot in my early work life from those experiences.

 

[Timeshare Von]

When I was in college, I was a teletype operator for a local stock brokerage firm. It had a keyboard, but no screen, and the order you were entering was displayed on a paper strip that printed out, so it was difficult to proofread your work, until after the mistake was already entered in the system. It was nerve wracking.

My Dad was a teletype operator for Voice of America in the 70's!

 

[Timeshare Von]

How about obsolete employers? I worked 6 years with retail giant K-Mart in the 70's, in several in-store management roles at 3 different stores. I learned a lot in my early work life from those experiences.

One of my positions was advertising manager at the K-Mart in Tyson's Corner, VA. I was responsible for providing the departments with their ad and count sheets. They had to take pre-sale and post-sale inventory of items so I could then manual make the monetary inventory adjustments for the sale items in that week's flyer. It was all manual! The department employees had to place "sale" price tags over the regular price, so the cashier could ring up the sale price . . . and then after the sale all of the sale price tags were removed when items were back to the regular (non-sale) price. What an amazing amount of savings in store labor when automation occurred later in the 1980's.

 

[rickandcindy23]

My first job was at Colorado Carnation as a grader of carnations. This was right after we got married. It's been 52 years but I would get a giant bundle of carnations, separate them into dozens based on quality of the flower and stem. I remember the grading was design (worst), standard, fancy, and maybe another grade or two. It was the best smelling job on earth. I love the smell of carnations. The entire building smelled great. I never tired of the smell; however, I did tire of the standing on my feet all day long,

Now machines grade the carnations.

 

[stmartinfan]

Ok, have to ask -- where did you do this? I grew up in that area. Although we never grew sugar beets, my grandfather and uncles did near Hillsboro, ND and I would stay with my cousins for a week every summer and often I earned a little money hoeing beets. I also had relatives that brought in migrant workers -- had an extra house on the farmstead where the family lived each summer.

Kurt

I grew up about 20 miles east of there in Ada, MN. We worked on farms around the area, although not as far west as the ND border. We'd get loaded into the back of a truck and hauled out to the local farms—such a safe way to travel! Started early in the morning and quit about 1:00 before it got terribly hot and often spend the afternoon at the local pool. No sunscreen of course..is it any wonder I've had several cancerous spots on my face and legs!

 

[TolmiePeak]

Radio DJ. I'm sure most of those will be replaced by AI in a few years.

 

[clifffaith]

Do any of the remaining department stores still have a gift wrapping department? My first job was at a small local department store called Naha’s. I worked in the gift wrapping department which was busy on weekends and during the Christmas season, but dead on a Tuesday night at 7pm. In my down time I either hauled the bow making machine out from under the counter and stood there making bows, or put the bell out and listened for it while I straightened fabric bolts in the nearby sewing department. One Christmas one of the managers slipped one of his own gifts into the backlog of packages three of us were struggling to get wrapped, and we decided to wrap it in the ugliest combination we could come up with — green foil with a hot pink bow. It actually looked “not bad” and while it was on the counter waiting for him to pick it up a customer said they wanted their package wrapped that way too!

 

[wackymother]

Photo lab tech. Put myself through university developing film and printing pictures. It was much better pay (and any hours I wanted) compared to most on/near-campus jobs. I'd wake up at 4am, work for a few hours, go to class. Do my class work. Work a couple more hours and go to bed.

I seriously thought it was a skill I could use in a pinch for my entire life. "People are always going to want their film developed."

Nope. Not so much. It's still a niche skill for serious photographers. But the days of a photo lab in every other strip mall in North America are long gone.

Oh, yeah. This reminded me of ANOTHER obscure job I had--I worked in the Fotomat lab in Edison, NJ in the early 1980s. The rolls of film got trucked in every night from the little kiosks all over central Jersey, and then they got processed during the night and the morning to go back to the kiosks the next day. I worked a lot of lobster shifts.

 

[normab]

2 things…

1. I saw the demise of Secretaries from the 80s through the aughts. Yes they became “administrative assistants”. But the job itself morphed because all of us got computers. We started typing our own memos and letters, and we didn’t dictate to secretaries anymore. Email replaced typed letters and faxes.

I remember when secretaries had a lot of functions and also had a lot of power and could really mess with you if they didn’t like you. I’m not sure if there are even any secretarial schools anymore, are there?

2. DH was an expert related to long distance phone networks. That world started disappearing with VOIP. He had to find a new expertise.

Technology forces us to reinvent. Can be a good thing or a bad thing depending how you react to it.

 

[normab]

I screwed up the quote… but regarding gift wrapping…..I think the local Bealls in Florida still does! And definitely Von Maur does.

I enjoy doing my own gift wrapping, but I think a lot of men and maybe some women too just buy a gift bag, add some tissue and put the gift in it. I think that’s what made you wrapping disappear.

 

[Tia]

Not sure but as a kid in 7th& 8th grade did 'corn detasseling' a couple summers, think they plant it too close now days so people can't walk in a field and think there are machines.

 

[stmartinfan]

Not sure but as a kid in 7th& 8th grade did 'corn detasseling' a couple summers, think they plant it too close now days so people can't walk in a field and think there are machines.

No, corn detasseling is still a summer job here in the Midwest. Kids as young as 14 can get hired.

 

[stmartinfan]

Do any of the remaining department stores still have a gift wrapping department?

My gift wrapping job was at the local hardware store in our small town, and I worked December weekends and during my college break. There weren't many stores to choose from, so the farmers and other men would come in to get their wives’ Christmas gifts, like a toaster or an iron! And I got to wrap them all in festive paper. The worst part of the job was wrapping giant sleds for kids' gifts!
Don't think you'll find any hardware stores with gift wrapping now. But I still love gift wrapping presents.

 

[DrQ]

Not so much obsolete, but most manufacturing has been outsourced. Started as a line analyzer for smoke detectors that failed auto-testing, then I became a maintenance technician for Universal auto insertion equipment which was used to insert components in circuit boards prior to soldering. This also included component sequencers which would take rolls of components on bandoleer tape and cut them out and place them in sequence and then taped into another bandoleer roll of sequenced parts to be fed into the auto insertion equipment.

Both these machines were run by a Digital PDP-11/05 mini computers which was multiplexed to run 4 machines simultaneously. The main program was loaded in from a Teletype console with a tape reader and you had to toggle in the bootstrap program using the bit switches an the front of the unit.

 

[jeffox]

I've worked at organizations that would do gift wrap at stores in December for donations as a fund raiser.

 

[Tia]

No, corn detasseling is still a summer job here in the Midwest. Kids as young as 14 can get hired.

okay and hope they are getting paid more then 50cents/hour now days.