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 asked one of my staff to fill in a cheque for me to sign a couple of years ago. She looked at me sheepishly and said that she had never written a cheque so had no idea what to do, she was 22.
DS17 has a bank account with a card. He immediately put it on his iPhone and uses iPay for everything. He has no idea how to use the card and has forgotten the pin number🙄

I started work mid 1980s. We had these great big word processors with floppy discs which I had to set up address labels on. I set them as Mr for male, Ms for female. I was also informed people had complained- one woman stating that 'she was not a lesbian'!!

Being able to get a fiver out of the cash machine when I was at uni.

And that fiver equating to half a tank of petrol in my little car!

Yes, the no mobile phones resonates with me. DP and I used to arrange to meet up in town (this was the 80s) and he was always late. I remember that sometimes I would look for a pay phone and check with his mum if when he had left the house so I could wander round the shops for a while. He has ADHD, so the lateness has not improved! If it was now, a quick text/call would do the trick, unless of course he forgot his phone, which is highly likely.

In the 80s/90s DP's office was the 'smoking office' where everyone came to have a fag. He doesn't smoke and has asthma, but just had to put up with it. There is no way that would happen now, even if smoking was still allowed in the workplace. Someone with a health condition would be accommodated.

@Antsinyourpanta

Another one is cheques. I grew up in another country. Cheques were non existent from about the 80s, we'd moved to bacs/card machines ( i could pay by card in a taxi in the late 90s). Moving to uk i had to learn how to write a cheque- felt like I'd gone back on time

Someone recently told me that contactless payment is rarely used in the US and they dont use contactless for tube/transport barriers. No idea how true it is but I was pretty mind blown about that as I thought they would be ahead of the game in tech.

I believe that US citizens have to complete their own tax returns hence the need for their cheque book log . It's easier than having receipts for absolutely everything.

I LOVE having these conversations with my children.

they were open mouthed when I explained if I wanted to watch a movie I had to go the the video shop and hire one, then remember to return it!

No Netflix recommendations😂

Plus SKY dishes, we had a massive dish that would move!

Teletex for holidays, info etc.

Ringing round for insurance!

And that fiver equating to half a tank of petrol in my little car!

THIS I regularly put £4 in my car.

I'm the 80s my best friend's family were very short of money. Her dad was ill so couldn't do his manual job any more, and they were skint.
The electricity and tv in their house ran on 50p pieces - the tv was rented so the man from Radio Rentals would come to empty the box once a month.
I will never forget, one day when we were about 14, we went into Binns (big department store) with her mam, and somehow, her Mam was given a store card on the spot with about £150 limit on it. Credit was so so easy to get!
My friend had a spree, all the things teenage girls covet but she'd never had - clothes, shoes, make up, earrings, you name it. We had no real idea what was happening, and thought it was great.
Years later, maybe 2010ish, I mentioned that day, and she said that it took her Mam until "last year" so 2009ish to finish paying it all off
I tried to apply for a job as an apprentice in 1986, when the careers office came to school, recruiting, and was told in front of everyone that I couldn't do it because "you're a girl"

So many things are different. I’m a baby from the late 60’s. Most of my toys were wooden, though I did have plastic dolls. Fuzzy felt was basically virtual reality 😆.
As a teenager we had a 2p or a 5p for a phone call if necessary. We could remember many many phone numbers because who would be so uncool as to need an address book!
Everything lasted for as long as possible. Fashion might have changed from season to season, but we didn’t throw clothes away - they were made much better then. We adapted. I remember Miss Selfridge opening. It was really good quality and fun. I also loved Chelsea Girl ❤️

TV was dull most of the time. I hardly watched any. I read books, got bored, went out for a ride or met up with friends.

It wasn’t a golden time in many ways, the fear of nuclear war was real, AIDS was being a thing which we didn’t understand but was horrific to contemplate, but we still had fun. It was just different.
Absolutely the past is a foreign land.

@irresistibleoverwhelm 😀

Absolutely remember those days. My first experience of word processors was having my dissertation typed (BF's mother recommended the service and I didn't really understand what was being offered )

I saw the first draft and made corrections trying my best to minimise the number of pages which would need to be retyped.

Mind blowing when it was explained that the changes would be made in screen and everything repainted easily.

Fell in love with tech on the spot.

Went to Uni in 80's and Geography Dept I studied in had 12 BBC basic computers for whole department which we were only able to use in senior honours, but we had to write computer program in order to use it...took ages to do a simple diagram!
Stayed in halls , no en suites in those days and had to share bathroom/ showers with 20 other students
Stayed in a flat in final year as a a student, with my then bf ( which was scandalous to my mother who was born in the '20's ) so to appease her we got engaged!- we've now been married 35 years !
Flat had no central heating, and frequently had ice on the inside of the bedroom windows in the winter , just shoved another duvet on top
We bought a twin tub washing machine, which was height of sophistication!
nearest phone box to flat was next to pub so always stank of urine
Got our first computer in '94 when pregnant with first dd...spent most of my time before she was born playing solitaire- no Internet back then ...also had a preview of upcoming film 'Braveheart' - 20 seconds of v poor quality images which kept freezing
Dh got his first mobile telephone that year as well, replacing the pager he'd previously used....still has same phone number!
Does anyone remember the blue ink 'photocopied' sheets of paper you used to get in school?...think it's called Roneo machine or mimeograph? - had a very distinctive smell

We could remember many many phone numbers because who would be so uncool as to need an address book!

Thanks to rotary dial phones, I can still remember the phone numbers of various friends and family from the 1980s. Yet in 2021 I couldn't tell you my husband's mobile phone number.

Fresh out of secretarial college, I went for a job interview for an office junior/clerk typist role. This was early 80s, I was 17 and it was a gaming company who are still in business today.

I was interviewed by a guy and taken to a room absolutely littered with girlie calendars, they ran the length of the room and I've never forgot it all these years later.

I didn't get the job!

@Insert1x20p

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.

This! I met DH in the early 90s and he was studying Computer Science. I remember him trying to explain email to me and it just sounded like witchcraft! Especially as I was still hand writing all my essays as a literature student, and posting off proper letters to friends at other universities.

Talking of Saudi Arabia, when you got to the airport the staff would manually check your bags. If you had a magazine or a tape with a picture of a woman on (like the Spice Girls) they’d colour in any skin with a black felt tip pen. They’d confiscate anything Christmas related and we had to crush up our Easter eggs so they didn’t look like Easter eggs (and had probably melted by the time we got home hmm). If we were travelling with just my mum, my sister and I would have to go through to the arrivals lounge, get my dad and bring him back through to customs so that he could tell the staff that we were allowed into the country!

I was in Saudi during the very late 80s and this brought back such memories! You could buy cheap copies of albums on tape & the covers were photocopies with skin covered over with black marker. I have Madonna's Like a Prayer album with her tummy covered over.

My Dad also had to come into arrivals to meet/claim us when flying in.

We then bought a family computer (Acorn 3000) and we were among the first to get one. How exciting! The school bought one the same soon after and I had to show the teachers how to use it. Mind, I only really knew how to change the hue of the screen display so that's mostly what I showed them

@HelenaJustina

DH worked somewhere with a typing pool. He says you knew your favourite typist’s birthday and bought chocolates and flowers. Those who were more canny also knew the birthday of the lady who ran the room…

I remember the day the locks were fitted and security changed at my junior school vividly - the day after the Dunblane Massacre. This was a massive watershed moment for schools and I'm suprised that teacher didn't know.

@KitchenDancefloor

In the mid 90s going to university far from home and calling my parents once a week from a pay phone, if I remembered.

So different from a world of family WhatsApp groups and always being able to contact your teenagers instantly.

My parents could go for a fortnight without hearing from me without worrying unduly. My kids message me to let me know if they've sneezed.

We have long digital apron strings now. We we cut loose a lot younger in the past.

I'm 54 and my aunts go nuts if they haven't heard from me for a week.

Ffs quoted the wrong post! Was meant to be about school locked gates and single access points

Have we had telephone books in phone booths yet?

I'm 36 and remember the smoking room at my Saturday job in Beatties department store when I was 16. It was revolting at the time but unthinkable now.

I immediately thought about Mandy Smith and Bill Wyman.
I'm the same age as Mandy and I remember at the time wondering things like, did her parents know what was going on, how did she hide it from them, did she go to school and also what did she see in a 47 year old, old man. Ugh.
Now it's horrifying that this relationship happened in plan view of many people and even after it was brought to the publics attention, there were no consequences for Bill.

@SirSamuelVimes

Being able to book a smoking ticket on a plane.

My brother flew to Australia in about 2002/3 and would only fly with one airline because they were the only ones who still had the option.

It always puzzled me that one side of a cinema was designated as a non-smoking area; the smoke wasn't actually going to stay on the other side!

Writing cheques was on the KS3 Maths curriculum. I used to get my classes to write mock cheques to each other.
Pay one hundred million pounds only (Can’t fit all the numbers in the box Miss!)
Pay five thousand and forty two pounds 27 p, £5042.27

Good for place value!

It always puzzled me that one side of a cinema was designated as a non-smoking area; the smoke wasn't actually going to stay on the other side!

It wasn’t great, but at least it meant you weren’t sitting next to someone actively smoking.

I also remember 'sexualised teenage schoolgirl' being a popular dressing up option, e.g. Britney in the 'Hit Me...' video. Just accepted as a bit of fun to pander to a 'typical' male fantasy like that