Not My Job: 33 Jobs From History We Couldn't Even Imagine Doing
Quick! Name the last time you saw an arcade attendant.
Published 8 months ago in Wow
Though technology and A.I. may be creating all sorts of new jobs — if you would have said the term "social media manager" 15 years ago, you would have been laughed out of any room — they've cut down a few along the way.
From arcade attendants to "knocker uppers," here are 20 deleted jobs we can't believe anybody did in the first place.
3
Night Soil Men
“Not exactly obsolete, but ‘night soil man’ is one that comes to mind. Before modern sewage and pluming systems but after mass urbanization began, there were men whose jobs it was to take any and all human waste out of the city. They worked at night and cleaned out what we're called privy vaults. Kind of the precursor to the modern septic tank, privy vaults were basically big brink lined pits with rails around its edges at the top where people could sit when using the bathroom.”
6
Flint Knappers
“Flint knappers when metal blades replaced stone blades, though they had something of a revival when the flintlock came into widespread use and the military needed thousands of uniformly sized flint pieces to be made for them, especially as military locks with heavy springs had a tendency to shatter flints.”
9
Lamp Lighters
“You know how modern streets have electric light poles? Before electric lights some cities still had light poles, but they were oil lamps. Lamplighters would to go through the city and maintain those oil lamps. I'm sure there might still be a FEW around. But for the most part the job is obsolete due to electricity.”
10
Aircraft Listener
“A listener and spotter(usually military/airforce)...someone who's job was to listen for approaching aircraft using sound location devices and use judgment to pin point direction who then relayed the information to a spotter who use high powered lights and binoculars or short range telescopes to gain visual.”
15
Clock Keeper
“In the middle ages, people hired clock keepers to track time and maintain clocks and timekeeping devices. Clock keepers often received significant amounts of money to ensure the accuracy of a clock, as the job involved some basic skills in mathematics before these skills were common.”
16
VHS Repairman
“[VCR] repairmen visited customers' homes to inspect and fix malfunctioning VHS players. They also repaired machines customers brought into their shops. As VHS tapes became less common, this position disappeared. Today's equivalent might be a handyperson or a television repair person.”
17
Film Projectionist
“Film projectionist - but the celluloid film reels which had to be switched very carefully at exactly the right moment by matching up the cigarette burns. Yes I know these still exist, but most movie theaters have digital projectors. I miss the hum of the machines and the way the end of the reel would tsp-tsp-tsp as it slowed to a stop.”
19
Miss Cleo
“Transcribed 1-800 calls to Ms Cleo, the psychic lady from commercials late at night on tv. Ms. Cleo's magic crystal gift was labeled and packaged by me. Labels were made by us listening to the calls and filling in name, address, etc. manually. Then once the labels were created, we were in mail room packaging and mailing those f—ng crystals out.”
21
Magazine Fact Checker
“I was a fact checker at a prominent magazine as a high school intern. I made phone calls (not emails as hardly anyone had an email address in 1994) to people to make sure articles were citing accurate facts before they went to print. I even called Sandra Bullock’s mom! Obviously, Google made that internship/job obsolete.”
22
TV Repair Technician
“My dad was a television repair man and made a good living out of it his whole working life. Fortunate timing, because only about ten years after he was able to retire we had a wholesale cultural shift to becomimg a much more disposable society when it comes to household electricals - when they break now we just replace them!”
23
Commercial Radio Operator
“My first job when I was 16 was at an AM radio station, playing commercials during sporting events, using the old cartridges that looked like 8-tracks, but only had one commercial on them. Did station ID over the air, too. Not long after I left for another job, my old job was being done mostly by a computer. I felt like aside from the speaking over the air, a trained chimp could've done my job."
25
Newspaper Printer
“I worked for a printing press outside of Chicago from 1998-99. Used giant lamps to burn yellow, magenta, cyan and black colors to create images mostly for foreign clients. 17 years old me was always excited when the final image was some bare — for some random Norwegian plastic surgeon. Good times. The company went out of business around 2010 as that tech obviously became obsolete in the internet era.”
27
Typists
“Typist. And shorthand Secretary. Imagine a world where every office worker didn’t have a computer on their desk. The boss needs to send out a memo to all staff. They dictate it to secretary who writes it down in shorthand. The secretary then writes it out with pen and paper. Then a typist types that up as a draft Then the boss marks their corrections on the draft Then a typist types out the final memo. But there is no easy way to make 1000 copies to send out. So one option is: More typists type 100 copies of the memo, each with a distribution list of 10 staff. Each memo copy is sent via internal mail to the first person on the distribution list. When you get such a memo you read it, cross your name off, and put it back in internal mail to the next person on the list. If it’s really important the last name on each distribution list is “central filing”, where every copy is collected and stored as proof of who received and read the memo.”
28
Newspaper Delivery Person
“Paper boy. Delivered the afternoon edition of a regional newspaper. They also made us go personally collect the payments from each customer so once a month I would have to go to each house and try to collect. There was always a few that would not pay...we also had nights where my route manager would gather up us boys to go door to door for cold sales. I was maybe 11?”
30
Knocker Upper
“My grandfather told me that they used to have 'knocker uppers'. Basically you'd pay a guy who had a big long stick to bash it against your upstairs bedroom window in the morning to make sure you woke up to get to work. Alarm clocks didn't exist back then. So people would go round knocking everyone up. Obviously that phrase has changed its meaning over time! What I never understood was.. Who knocked up the knocker uppers?”
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