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!

Also, I watched a group of teenagers together on holiday in a hotel recently. All around 13
to 15. All on their phones not speaking. A couple of them looked quite distressed, as though they'd rather have been talking or interacting but since all the others were on their phones they felt they had to be too. Really sad.

The NHS.

Clothes shopping. I live in a town of 10 000 people and there isn't anywhere to buy clothes.

There were no influencers or people becoming "celebrities" despite having zero talent.

People communicated with each other and didn't have their heads buried in phones.

Parents parented their children and didn't expect schools to do everything for them.

Just going for a day out when you decide to do so and pay a sensible entry price on the day. Not having the ease 🤨 of booking in advance, looking for a discount code, booking a time slot…. 😡

I can’t get over the fact McDonalds existed in the old days.

Yes, then paying charges on top of the ticket price.

"The cheque is in the post."

My parents lived by that adage and nine times our of ten the extra time allowed carried them through. When it didn't, theatrical Basil Fawlty like incomprehension followed and it always got worked out in the end.

Slow banking was good.

So we're nearly all agreed the past was much better? Nearly all of our gripes are to do with lack of personalisation - but that's capitalism I guess. Sad .Good thread though OP!

Workplace communications and filing! There’s too many options. I waste time trying to remember where something might be. This never happened when I just had to manage paper copies, common drives, and emails. I used to be able to locate everything I needed in seconds. Now it’s a right trawl.

Standards were higher I suppose. Nobody gives out decent customer service anymore but still stick on a service charge in some places. They are all but CF’s.

I was looking for something to wear to a wedding. Going to our local city and going round shops used to take ages. Now there are hardly any shops and most clothes are poor quality. I had looked online...things that looked possible online were cheap and nasty in reality.
So I went for coffee and cake...the cake looked really nice but had zero flavour. The nice cafe I used to go to is no more.
And my phone provider can't be contacted by phone.

Applying for jobs. Where do the applications go? Does anyone ever receive them? Read them? We’ll never know. They go in to some sort of digital black hole.

My partner and my teen have both applied for approximately 100 jobs each in the last four months. Rarely do either of them receive confirmation, and as for an interview? Nothing.

I don’t know how anyone finds a job now. It’s a dystopian labyrinthine nightmare.

Jobs were much easier to get years ago , but now they are impossible and no wonder there are so many ‘ neets ‘ as it’s a minefield. Or who you know , not what

Have a bloody menu McDonald’s!

Let me arrive at a venue and buy tickets for trampolining or a farm or wherever without having to mess around on some shitty app first.

I want to run in and grab an item quickly, not download a parking app and get verified from visa and pay an admin charge and mess around with a loyalty card because the item is 90 million pounds without one, but only a fiver with one, whilst the self service tills are all flashing and the staff are hidden behind cages of produce and you get back to the car and your phone beeps and it’s another school message saying by the way your child needs to dress up like a Victorian or something in two days time, so you go onto your Amazon app when you get home to order a costume as you don’t have any doilies lying around or the ability to make a costume that evening and the reminder pings up that children need to log into the apps for their homework and don’t forget to read the letter sent by email about too much fucking screen time and the younger one wants to do some crafts which you’re happy with, but need to get the older one into the app and carve fifteen minutes each for solo reading time and your heart sinks as it’s bloody biff and you try not to eat your eyeballs out of boredom and feel grateful your kids still love books despite biff and kipper and the WhatsApp group pings with parents asking if anyone else knows that the cakes you’ll be running out to buy later for the cake sale have to be vegan and Victorian day has fallen on the same day as dress up as a tree day and you get a reminder to go for your smear that you’ve tried three times on hold to do and you want to send back some clothes you ordered a fortnight ago, but the website you brought it from tells you you need to download a return label from a different seller, but it repeatedly doesn’t work, so you go on to “contact” to resolve it, but get told what is meant to happen and not what to do when that doesn’t work, you try to find an email address with no joy, so ask AI who hallucinates a few times and you wonder how AI is taking over the world when it can’t seem to do basic bloody things correctly.

I hate hate hate those menu screens, I'm half way through reading them and they change! Then the cashier seems annoyed I don't know what I want, sorry I don't know the menu off by heart, having not been in for months!

Today we got the 11+ results and the website wouldn't work and then it did but then it took the results down and then it had an internal error. Honestly, posting them out worked so much better.

Im glad Im not the only one who is sick of modern living. I can’t embrace it. I loath it and the thin end of the wedge is ‘ you can only have the table for two hours ‘ or whatever. It’s almost telling you to ‘ do one ‘ isn’t it. As for parking apps .. devils own work.
Its all just rubbish.

The words ‘ here to help ‘ are lying to us.

Ha- only this weekend I filled out the McDonald’s survey to say exactly the same thing- how do I know what to order?!!
Also- how can I order in an app at the drive through- I’m driving!!

With bonus "convenience charge" (or booking fees)

You're charging me more because the pay machine is vandalised and you don't have to send someone out to collect the money, yet I'm the one pissing around with authentication codes??? Make it make sense!

When the codes don’t come through .. they never keep their side of the bargain so they. So you go round in circles. It’s all designed to make life harder than it is already. I find it all very depressing and difficult.

Men.

Listening to music! The sound quality of how we listen to music these days is shite compared with stack systems and vinyl!!!

Cars - 12 months ago, just got in, key in ignition, lights on, seatbelt and off you go - simple push button knobs for heating, air, radio, volume, windows, occassional red light on the dashboard and the garage deal with it - job done.

New vehicle, same model, but newer - feels like trying to be the driver an Airbus A300 with New Engine Option, everything complex and automated on a huge screen when I want to be concentrating on the road ahead, 11 separate new electrical faults, 10 separate unwanted irrelevant unhelpful AI interactions needed to book a routine service, then they want me to go online to confirm it on their platform, having already confirmed it twice, multiple random alarms appearing on the dash as you drive…

I call modern cars ’computers on wheels ‘ and they get faults that ( mysteriously) the dealer can never find what the problem is because they probably just don’t know either. They cost loads and mostly awful and the customer service once you’ve bought it becomes scant or hard to access.

Concert tickets agree was 100 x easier in the olden days
White goods seemed to last forever - literally cant even remember getting new anything when we were kids
But google, GPS and online banking have been game changers. I literally can not comprehend having to go to the bank to check your balance or see if a cheque had cleared.