Stuff that didn’t seem weird at the time but when you tell someone younger they think it’s nuts

[MildGreenDairyLiquid]

Just that really.

The other day I explained to my 11 year old niece that when I was at junior school we used to have a small bottle of milk with a straw every morning, and she looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

081 811 8181 and then later 0181 811 8181
Are you singing the jingle now?

Also going into the plane's cockpit as a child to watch the pilots fly. Cannot believe that was ever allowed!

Parent’s rubbing rum on your gum where your back molars were coming through

Heh, I'd forgotten about that. We did the same, otherwise we'd be stuck with a load of people standing up and saluting.

It would have been remembering your full name and address, knowing how to ask for police/ambulance etc.
Lots of children don’t know their address or parents full names or phone number off by heart. Text mum is often default now. But what would you do if you lost your phone is met with panic.

In England the school leaving age was raised from 15 to 16 in 1972. Before that you could leave at 15 and start work, no exams and no compulsory training for anything any more.

There are plenty of people now in their late 60s and older who left school at 15.

When I started at grammar school in the 60’s my parents had to sign a form saying they would keep me there until the end of the school year in which I turned 16.

Wikipedia tells me

The leaving age was increased to 11 in 1893, 12 in 1899, 14 in 1918, 15 in 1947 and 16 in 1972. In England (but not in Wales), this was increased to 17 in 2013 and 18 in 2015.

Explaining what a Boom Box was...horror at someone in a group of kids having to lug one about and confusion over it needing "giant" batteries changed regularly

This caused problems for DHs aunt a few years ago. Left school at 15, and was employed as a seamstress by the NHSsince then. Got made redundant as it was no longer needed... and was unemployable as shes got no qualifications.

How few teens went on to University is something my 18 yr old hadn’t grasped. I went to a girls school and out of 30 in my class literally a handful went to University. One none academic girl left at 15 to work in a factory and teachers were encouraging. Others did YTS hairdressing or childcare. One girl got an office junior role at council and that was seen as a positive. Even those who went on to A levels often then went to work in a bank etc at 18. This is mid 90s state school.

like being the age I am because, as pp have pointed out, I am relatively tech savvy but I don’t need it. I know I’m resourceful as fuck, and know how to function without an app.

defintely this. I was fully adult before the internet as we know it came along. I view tech as an amazingly useful adjunct to my life but not the be all and end all. One of my sibs was dealing with something financial recently and had to write a cheque. I got a grumpy text saying "who still has a chequebook?" and I texted back "me"....the response was not printable!

A job I did in the 90s. It was an industrial news service for big companies, who would give us a list of all the areas they wanted information on and then wait for the daily report. We'd take turns and one person would come in early each week and go through every national paper to find the relevant articles, 'mark them up' and tear out the page for the others to pick up when they arrived. We had to precis the articles into short reports of no more than 300 words, attach a special code and submit it. You were expected to do at least 30 reports a day. The two most important papers were the Wall Street Journal and a paper about insurance so they had to be done first. We started at 7am so it was a rather rude awakening! Once the papers were done, we moved onto industry journals. Some of it was really interesting but it scrambled my brains working like that.

Also good jobs didn't necessarily come through a degree route. Nursing didn't, teaching didn't, Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy didn't. You came out of training with a formal qualification but you didn't go to Uni and it wasn't a degree.

Smoking everywhere to the point there was a smoking and non smoking section.

I think that’s returning with higher level apprenticeships.

Calling everyone by their surname , so even your next door neighbour would be ‘Mrs Smith’ or ‘ Mr Green’. Actually, I miss that a little, and lament the over familiarity that’s around now, with strangers knowing you first (‘Christian’) name straight away.

You got financial support while you trained for those jobs. Grants for teacher training college. Did student nurses get a salary?

Being sent to boarding school...

I don't remember. You got an education grant to train as an OT or a physio. My point was that you didn't go to Uni to train and didn't come out with a degree.

> no buses on a Sunday

Not normal when I was a kid in '60s/'70s Essex, normal today in Surrey

Yes, student nurses got a salary and were given somewhere to live in a nurses home, too.
Meals were available until late evening.

We learned how to be nurses on our patients. They don't seem to nowadays.

Same with police and fireman as there was also accommodation provided. Our town's police station had the top floor as small flats for young constables (akin to Uni flats) sharing communal facilities. Our local fire station had a block of accommodation adjacent to the drill yard partly set out for young firemen again in small flats, but also a larger flat for the station officer who lived there with his family. Lots of village police stations were effectively police houses, and some smaller town stations had a flat above where the station sergeant lived with his family. Of course, tied houses on farms and estates were common. As were living accommodation for railway station master and his family as part of the station building comprising the booking office, waiting rooms, etc. Lots of jobs had accommodation provided. Such a shame there's very little left these days.

My son has just started work with a major UK insurance firm in a Northern city with horrendous housing shortages. Some of his cohort are still living in hostels! He's made a formal suggestion up the chain of command via their suggestion scheme to invest in residential housing aimed only at renting to their own staff at full market rates. Signs so far are very positive and the suggestion is being taken seriously and gaining traction. The thing is that they already have a huge investment management department of stock market investments, AIM investments, hedge fund investments, commercial property investments, basically a huge professional department managing hundreds of billions of pounds of their own reserves and client funds, so have the infrastructure. So, expanding into residential property aimed at their own staff does look to be viable, especially at open market rates to provide good returns. It'll also be a brilliant marketing tool for attracting new staff in a very competitive market.

In Ireland they played it at the end of a disco/ night club when the lights went on. No one thought it was weird. Lights on stand poker straight next to a guy you've just been snogging singing the national anthem😂

Yes, I don't really understand why that system was changed, especially as the old two tier system of State Enrolled Nurses (two years of training, lower entry qualifications, I think) and State Registered Nurses (three years of training) seems to have been replaced by graduate nurses (equivalent to SRNs but with a lot less practical experience if I understand correctly) and health care assistants doing some of the hands on stuff that all nurses used to do. Do HCAs get any training at all equivalent to the old SEN system?

There are still milk(wo)men and there was a very snowy winter in the south east in 2010 which my 20 something son remembers!

I still have a cheque book although I can't remember the last time I wrote one!

Although a year or so ago my husband and I were walking along a local ex-railway path and underneath an old bridge there were a group of teenagers with a boom box.

We looked at each other and wondered if we'd been transported back to the 80s as they were playing Spandau Ballet!

I used to have a job on a Friday after school collecting the milk money for our local milkman. Most people used to give me a tip. I loved it riding around on the back of a milk float. I'm in my late 40s so this was early 90s

I think the answer to that is "it depends" It depends on the needs of the employer and what the employee wants to do. It also links to the new pay banding system in the NHS. https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/healthcare-support-worker/roles-healthcare-support-worker/healthcare-assistant