Stuff you took for granted that no longer exists?

[Confusednbemused]

Was saying to my daughter how I used to go to Boots or Superdrug and take free perfume samples to try at home before deciding what to buy and it occurred to me I've no idea when that stopped and the little strips of paper became a thing!!

What inanimate or service level thing do you miss which you used to take for granted?

Yes no nuance

John Lewis fabric department was huge and wonderful, I think Dickens and Jones was too, and Liberty - though that was very expensive. I went to the haberdashery department of John Lewis in Westfields the other day and it was tiny with almost nothing there, no ribbon or velvet, hardly any buttons or zips. John Lewis used to sell beautiful knitting wool too.

And original HOF and Linea

'A nice way' is entirely subjective. What you think is 'nice' might seem awful to someone else. We're all conditioned by the time and circumstances we are raised in. It would be dreadful if we all wore the same things throughout the ages!

Saturday night has always been drivel.... always.

Don't worry, it will disappear if reform get in. Then you'll really have something to miss.

Proper queuing at bus stops and good manners.

Common human decency and common sense. It seemed to disappear when the brexit vote was announced, and it's still missing.

Oh no! We hated those in our house. The looks on our faces if we opened a present to find a box of Weekend. 🤮🤣

I miss the coffee creams from boxes of Roses and (I think also there were some in) Quality Street. No one else liked them so they got left for me! Any coffee flavour chocolates now don’t taste of coffee at all. So disappointing.

That would be good, wished they would bring that back.

I agree. I like a sense of occasion, and I like to dress up a bit for a night out. The rest of the family aren't really on board with this though, and I do feel I'm swimming against the tide when I go to a restaurant and people are in football shirts and joggers.

Travel agents and holiday brochures

When buying from a shop, especially a nice one the fact you were automatically given a free carrier bag
And so did the supermarkets too, even though they weren't as bougie!

Not so much an everyday thing.
The large boxes of chocolates with a picture scene lid.
Then my Gran would use the empty box to store her cigarette coupons.

They still exist though I'm glad that I can now book a holiday without having to pay for unnecessary things such as "underoccupancy" in a room and compulsory travel insurance which wasn't worth the paper it was written on.
Love booking my own holidays without a travel agent trying to sell me stuff.

Plain (ready salted) chipsticks. You can only get salt & vinegar or cream cheese & chive now.

They were great, so salty. I miss them.

Agree with the 'arrangements' bit. When I was growing up in the 1970s, people always used to make plans and stick to them. "I'll give you a call over the weekend" and they did. "I'll meet you outside Boots at 10.00" and they were there ON TIME not half an hour late or texting you five minutes before to say that they're not going to bother.

Our local video rental shop which charged you 25p if you did not rewind your video.
Cheese moments
Calypso shots
The bath pearl pic and mix at boots with all the lovely fruity sprays too
Body shop animal soaps

I still have those! And I’m with an NHS dentist

Getting 500g of Lurpak in the medium sized tub before they changed it to 400g for the same bloody price 🙄

Not hearing about a murder or stabbing every day. Not hearing about teenagers killing other teenagers all the time.

Never ever crossed our minds to take a knife out or to school etc.

@angela1952me too!! I swear that my mum used to park in front of the Natural History Museum in the 90’s (a la Mr Bean), and we once parked near to Harrods! Others tell me that I must be lying. 🤥 I am not lying!!

I work for the Library Service in my area and libraries are now little more than children's play centres with games, toys, crafts, jigsaws etc. The kids leave stuff out all over the floor and tables and the parents just walk away and let the staff tidy up. They also leave the children to chase around the library using moveable stools as chariots, jumping on the bean bags and generally making a thorough nuisance of themselves and potentially causing a danger to other library users - particularly elderly customers. We spend more time trying to get the kids to behave themselves than we do processing books.

@Netcurtainnelly I got threatened with a knife on a bus on the way home from school, about 45 years ago! There was only one seat left upstairs, I went to sit in it and the guy next to it pulled a knife out and said, "You can't sit there." Then he said to the girl behind me, who was presumably prettier than me, "You can though." She did as well (idiot).

(I don't remember actual stabbings and knife murders though, nor murders of teens by other teens).