Things that worked better in the old days

[blondeseaside]

Just been for a drive thru Mcdonalds. In the good old days, the whole menu would be hanging above the car on a metal sign. What do we have now? One big screen that just shows a couple of menu "highlights", so it only showed one wrap, one burger....so yeah, we get that you do burgers and wraps, but which ones? Where is the full menu? There are 16 burger types at Mcdonalds, but only 1 burger was on the screen. There are 4 wrap types, but only the Tikka one was on the screen (so I ordered that). How on earth are you meant to know what you want to order, if they only show a fraction of the menu? I asked Gemini and she said you're meant to look at the menu on your phone now....but I am driving!

First world problem, but it did my head in!

Automated messages. I swear they are made deliberately complicated so you can't get through. Not looking at you at ALL, Kingston Hospital.

Brains, because we had to use them, rather than have Google hand deliver info on a plate, or have AI do all the work for us.

Penises. Definitely worked better in the heady days of the early 90s.

That's true! So much ED around these days! I blame porn.

Might be quicker to think of anything that works better these days?
I can not think of anything tbh.
Hate doing everything on line - apps, helplines no wonder half the world is on anti depressants.

Yes! Not that long ago we used to have two deliveries a day! We don’t live anywhere special or urban, but we used to get post delivered around 7am and then a 2nd delivery late morning.

First Class always got there the following day - compared to now when a card I posted First Class took 4 days to arrive in the same county!

Electrical equipment was better too as it was built to last. Now my cooker is going crap and looking shoddy at less than 10 years old.

Parking. I hadn't come across a car park where you needed an app until last Christmas. That had four of us attempting to download an app and work it out, just so that we could go for a breakfast (our much tamer equivalent of a Christmas party). I went to a gig, drove into a car park with, "Please remember your registration number to pay before you exit". I came out of said gig, and then couldn't get on with the app, so couldn't leave until I called a more tech-y family member to sort it out from afar! (Disclaimer: I live in rural farmland. Paying for parking is a novelty, but using apps to dump my car for five minutes is too much!).

And chat bots. I'd rather speak to a person who can fix my issue, not have a chat bot sending me in circles, only for me to abandon it in frustration!

Paying for car parking before app only car parks and meters

Most electrical goods lasted long

Fruit and vegetables from supermarket lasted longer and had taste

High streets were better

Television viewing better because less channels so most people watched same thing. This lead to conversations at school/work/pub or wherever with strangers about TV making more social interaction between people

Driving was better because less cars then and easier to park too. I remember my father taking me to various London attractions and just parking a couple of streets away. No restrictions back then apart from double yellow lines

Going to tourist type attractions or amusement parks. There are just too many people now. Everywhere is always to crowded to enjoy properly and the people that run these places only think about the money coming in. Therefore don't very often try to control numbers.

Children starting school experience in reception and leaving in year 6 or year 11. Many parents have turned it into a bit of a circus so others had little choice but to join in. However some of the making occasions into many different events in the run up to the main event just makes a lot of kids more anxious and tearful etc.

Something that is so very much better is booking cinema tickets. We used to have to book in advance over phone if didn't want to travel to cinema to do it. The voice recognition was so bad it would take several attempts and I often just gave up and risked not getting tickets on the night. Online cinema or theatre tickets is so much easier.

Everything needs authenticated every single day

Going to a till with a worker on it in a supermarket- ah lovely.
Having 3- 4 TV channels - rather than 300 channels showing utter crap.
Too much choice in literally everything.
Bonfire night was a big thing and it was fab and a bit 'pagany' - now it's all Halloween plastic crap.

Absolutely everything
To the point that I’m really amazed someone used McDonald’s as an example (they probably just expect you to look everything up before you come in)

That’s the least of the issues
Everything from a washing machine to a home laptop doesn’t work as well as it used to. Technology is shit now it used to be brilliant.

Having 3- 4 TV channels - rather than 300 channels showing utter crap

My TV has a nagging message along the lines of 'hey! this TV isn't connected to the internet yet!' and every time it comes up I think, yes I know, thanks.

Ai anything
Not getting proper gig tickets that u cd keep forever. ( and not spending silly money to see a band in some crap massive stadium)
I could go on all day ....

Banking, yes you Lloyd's - bank online, nope you may be at risk ring us up, why did you call what is your password, age, distance from Mars. why do you want your money... are you sure ? Vs. Go in write cheque, get cash for builder.
Cars, ding...ding..I have a fault , stop driving IMMEDIATELY- garage, no fault found... ding...ding... STOP I DONT CARE IF THIS IS THE M6 ....
Vs, garage pull up bonnet twist a few things, spray WD40, scowl - all sorted.

Re paying for parking. I live in a fairly touristy rural area. Lots of the car parks that people use to go walking etc have recently moved to pay by phone parking. I don't mind using a parking app usually, but at some of them mobile signal is patchy at best. Which means loads of people give up after trying an failing to get enough signal for long enough to complete a transaction and end up parking on the road side which makes the already narrow roads a nightmare.

Also agree re TV. I love that there are loads of options and that almost everything is available on demand. But there doesn't see to be any TV with the option to just press one button and get whatever is being shown. Which is a problem for a lot of elderly people (especially people like my relative with the early stages of alzheimers).

Charity shops full of crappy Shein crap
Cars with too much technology ( more likely to break too)
Not everything was a 'thing'
Less dickheads everywhere ( maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy)

Everything 😂

Making arrangements with mates that nobody flaked on at the last minute because you had to physically rock up at the prearranged time and meeting point and couldn’t just cancel by text.

Living and experiencing things in the moment, without having to be photo-ready or worrying about what might turn up on SM (ditto being able to forget stupid mistakes made in your teens and twenties because nobody was publicly posting them to follow you around for the rest of your god given life). The most you could expect was some smudgy group photo developed 6 months later from a disposable camera, of which there was precisely one physical copy. No pressure to document your ‘curated’ fucking life.

Travelling. Being able to discover places for yourself. Having experiences that felt new and special and transformative, and which were shared by word of mouth, not just dumped on a ‘3 Days in Burkina Faso’ listicle by some perky explorer trudging the same worn out route as all the other vloggers.

Basically anything to do with phones and social media. These things have reduced the quality and pleasure of life exponentially.

And yes, I understand the irony of posting this on a SM platform whilst on my phone when I should be enjoying the country I’m currently travelling in. It’s a bloody scourge!

There are some things that are better. I love online banking. Also, I love having the choice of tv channels so those have improved for me. But they are expensive if you subscribe.

Christmas cards. I used to post all my cards, about 30, needed a bag to carry them to the post box and it would cast about £3 in total. These days that would cost me £30. Far too expensive.

Everything

Pretty much everything, in my opinion.

Remember when Xmas was a festival that lasted a few days not months on end with Xmas trees and Santa in the local garden centre and shops in SEPTEMBER

OP, definitely get the app and order via that to pick up at the drive thru. You can see the whole menu and you get reward points every order that quickly mount up and you can use them for free food. It's awful not seeing the menu, I agree but the app is great!

Electricity- currently have an unplanned complex power cut in our village. Won’t be back on until midnight

Trains.
I live at the very end of the train line. I can go to ely, cambridge or London.
I travel regularly to Spain using stansted.
The past 4 trips has had cancellations that meant I had to drive.

My bladder and pelvic floor def worked better in the old days