Things where you look back and think "that really was a different world"

[StealthPolarBear]

I am only in my early 40s so young and sprightly.
When I was even younger I had a job in a dentists office. Basically sending reminder letters out, printjng the letters, and addressing the envelopes. The dental records didn't have title on them so I asked what I should do. The response was i a woman's husband is also registered at the practice, she's a Mrs.
So I did that. Mrs for those respectable married women, and using my teenage innovation I decided any where I was unsure would be 'Ms'.
I got such a telling off. Apparently people complained as it looked like they were divorced.
There are times when the 90s seem only yesterday, and times like remembering that when they seem to have more in common with the victorian era than the present day!

I was talking to my children about this kind of thing recently. They really couldn't believe that I didn't have my own computer at work til the early noughties. Or that we didn't have home internet til around the same time and that you couldn't make a phone call and use the internet simultaneously.
I gave up trying to explain what log tables were and that we didn't use calculators til A levels. Mind you, my brother is a bit older than me and used a slide rule for A level maths, which seems unbelievable even to me!
One of the things that shocks me most to remember is that I wasn't allowed to wear trousers at work when I first started. That was 1989, so not exactly the dark ages, but it was very much accepted as the norm. I can't remember exactly when that changed. I was wearing trousers by the time I was pregnant with my first baby in 1998 but I was in a moderately senior role by then and had a fair amount of autonomy. Other female staff in the organisation were still wearing uniforms that were very archaic by today's standards.

Being able to visit the cockpit and talk to the flight crew.. Did it a couple of times in 1990s. Unheard of now!

@Antsinyourpanta yes I watched that too and was blown away my how little real time footage there was. I think there might be only one piece of footage in existence of the first plane flying into the North Tower! Even that was amazing to have been captured - just some firemen recording some random job in the street and the guy holding the camera happened to hear the plane flying low so looked up with his camera. Also, as dd1 pointed out, there were people standing in the street actually watching events unfold through their own eves and not through their phone. Then all the waiting around and conjecture, not knowing what had happened and having to rely on eyewitnesses around them and the news, no social media.

The other day I was eating lunch outside a cafe with my friends, in the sun, and we asked to be moved as two people on the table next door to us were chain smoking. I can't believe people used to smoke indoors in restaurants not all that long ago. Although it's legal to smoke outside at tables, there seems to be an etiquette not to now. The people in question were foreign so I guess from another European culture where it's still OK. Not so in the UK anymore!

I feel very old!

@Wincarnis I did that one too, in 1996. Another world.

*once

Handwriting and signing off work letters with Your Respectful Servant.

They were then sent on a trolley down to typing pool. They came back a couple of days later to be corrected or sent out.

Also watching paper cash whooshing through perspex tube from supermarket checkout to back of store.

@irresistibleoverwhelm

I mean writing and sending one letter could literally take a whole day!

This is how accountants still work! Although the secretary has been cut out. Meeting with manager to get the general idea, type out letter, print draft, manager corrects by hand then re-print final. Not just old managers either, I'd do the same if I was having a junior write something for me. I don't think it has the same impact doing tracked changes on a document as it's too easy for the junior to just go through hitting approve and not digesting the info. I'd only use track changes if someone at the same level or more senior asked me to sense check their letter/report

Also sitting in my Grandads van with my feet on dashboard because there was a verylarge hole in passenger seat floor. You could watch road surface as he drove. No seat belts.

@StillWeRise

NO Ms was always intended as equal to Mr, a title that did not indicate marital status. It was never intended to indicate being divorced.

That's what I thought, I used it when I was a young married woman and I'm over seventy.

This one makes me feel a little shame faced. You could pay for something on your credit card even if you were upto the limit. They would just swipe it on the doofer with the carbon paper ro take a copy of the card. Saved me many times when my kids were babies & we were skint.

Travelling around Europe alone for weeks on end. I would call my parents once a week usually on a Sunday & send the occasional postcard!

@Soupsseason

This one makes me feel a little shame faced. You could pay for something on your credit card even if you were upto the limit. They would just swipe it on the doofer with the carbon paper ro take a copy of the card. Saved me many times when my kids were babies & we were skint.

Oh I remember the doofers! I was 18 and worked in a boutique and the bloody things took a lot of muscle to move!

I also remember, working in a local corner shop and we used to cash cheques for people! They'd just give us a cheque and then we'd give them money for it!

You could also pay by cheque a couple of days by payday knowing the money wouldn't come out until after you'd been paid.

Got caught out once when struggling with the council tax when I posted them a cheque by second class post and somehow they received and banked it the next day and tried to take money that wasn't yet in my account.

I'm still baffled how that happened and annoyed that it did and it was about 20 years ago.

My mother raised six children without having a phone at home.

Just imagine having no way for parents and children to communicate once they'd gone out. No way to tell mum you were going to be late home, that you were injured or in a pickle, and no way for her to contact any child who didn't come home at the expected time. She just had to not worry and wait patiently for the child to turn up.

When the eldest kids grew up and left home they could not phone to say they were coming to visit; they would just turn up and hope someone was home, or go away and come back later.

If people lived near a call box they sometimes gave out the number. I'd hear one ringing sometimes and answer it, and the caller would ask me to go and knock at no.25 and ask them to come to the phone!

And yet nothing terrible happened as a result of this.

Mum finally got a phone after all 5 older children had left home and the youngest, the only one left at home, was 11.

We weren't poor but so many things were affected by how much they cost.
Long distance phone calls - usually only made in emergencies.
Switching on the immersion heater (water heated by the one coal fire) - limited to 15 mins.
Meat a couple of times a week - sausages, spam etc the rest of the time.
ALWAYS switch the light off when you leave a room.

When I started uni in the mid 90s we were given all given an email address and login password. And we looked at each other and thought 'wtf do we need that for?!'...

Ha - same here- email was for computer science students only. The rest of us just scribbled a note and put it in the person's pigeonhole or stuck it on their door.

It's weird how email has already basically died out as a form of social communication.

DH and I were talking about this the other day.

We had been watching the film Bohemian Rhapsody where Roger Taylor was recording his bit in the title song and singing "Galileo etc". He is then shown asking "who's Galileo?" In those days, if you didn't know something, you had to physically walk to a library to look it up in an encyclopedia or reference book.

I dont think anyone born in the internet age can appreciate how easy getting information is now compared to then. I always think it must be much easier being at university and doing research now although am happy to be corrected!

@Tippexy

Well to be fair, Ms was used for divorced people, and still is to this day! It’s just that it’s become a little more popular for non-divorced women now too.

In the 1990s I was also quite young working in a legal office where an older male lawyer told me that there was no such thing as “Ms”. It meant nothing and he wouldn’t use it. (What must he think of pronoun usage today?). He was probably divorced and resentful. But from that day I started using Ms.

When I was a kid my much older brother would take me and my parents down to the coast for the day in his car. All three of them would chain smoke all the way there and back with all the windows close --- no aircon in those days, either.

At home most evenings I was in a small, airless living room watching tv with my parents both chain-smoking. Nobody gave my lungs a single thought. Oh, and women smoked and drank throughout pregnancy. My mum certainly did. All six of her kids are still alive and aged 60 to 80.

How am I still alive???

Not only paying cheques for everything, but in our city at the Nat West, if you ran out of cheques, you could go and get a new book printed while you waited! I didn’t very often, but seem to remember it was a huge printing press, in a secure area

You’ve reminded me that I used to call my parents every week from the pay phone in our hall of residence 😆 (2000s) I miss normal sized cars too!

@THisbackwithavengeance

DH and I were talking about this the other day.

We had been watching the film Bohemian Rhapsody where Roger Taylor was recording his bit in the title song and singing "Galileo etc". He is then shown asking "who's Galileo?" In those days, if you didn't know something, you had to physically walk to a library to look it up in an encyclopedia or reference book.

I dont think anyone born in the internet age can appreciate how easy getting information is now compared to then. I always think it must be much easier being at university and doing research now although am happy to be corrected!

Oh, this! Getting info about anything was such a slog, and sometimes the info was outdated or wrong -- and we had no easy way to find other sources and double-check.

Early '80s: I was trying to research a geography assignment for school. Teacher referred me to a book in the school library, but the one and only copy was signed out. Went up to the municipal library, but they didn't have it. Caught a train downtown to the State Library, which like almost everything in those days closed at 5pm, so was cutting it fine. Rocked up in my school uniform with my polite request and was treated like shit by the librarians, who hated schoolkids. Left library and stepped out into the middle of a snap public transport strike (Sydney in the '80s had a lot of industrial action) so was stuck downtown with thousands of enraged city workers and had to walk 10km home. Next day went back to my teacher, who said "Well, you should be able to find the information somewhere!" Eventually I hacked into the school library's files (a box of index cards) and bailed up the girl who'd borrowed the book.

@StillWeRise

NO Ms was always intended as equal to Mr, a title that did not indicate marital status. It was never intended to indicate being divorced.

Yep

They’ve done away with distinctions for marital status altogether in Germany.

Similarly, this is the neutral option - hopefully at some point it will supersede Mrs and Miss altogether.

@ItsRainingTacos

When I started uni in the mid 90s we were given all given an email address and login password. And we looked at each other and thought 'wtf do we need that for?!'...

I remember that! Handwritten uni essays too.