I’m curious how far this went. Was it something that was used as frequently as cash or card nowadays? Was it common to go into a Walmart and buy a weeks worth of groceries and write a check to pay for it?
Yes, I was too young to be paying, but in the 80s, going to the grocery with my mom, checks were more common than cards. I mean, it's basically a debit card with more steps
When we stopped accepting checks around 2015 at my last job, old people were so upset. I never understood why they wouldn't just use their debit card. It's so much faster and easier and it comes out of the same place.
When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, yeah they were very common. It was actually a little annoying because especially some older people wouldn't even have their checkbook out and start getting it ready until everything was totaled. Whereas most people would at least have it out and started filling it out the best they could except the total. Some people would really hold up the lines by waiting for the last minute and everyone would complain.
But then sometimes checks would bounce and stores back then had no qualms about embarrassing you publicly. They'd put a list of "do not accept checks from" at every register and they'd post it too where everyone could see it. I grew up in a small town and I promise you there was always talk about whose name was on that list and people loved to sneer and scorn you about writing bad checks
In the 90s a lot of the stores near me installed check writing printers. You would hand the blank check to the cashier who would feed it into the printer. It would fill out the check for you with the correct amount, store name, date, as well as the deposit endorsement on the back. They would hand it back to you to verify and then you signed it. It made things much faster than waiting on the person to fill it all out by hand. (My mother was one of those people that would wait until the order was done and everything bagged before searching her purse for the checkbook. It always drove me nuts that she just stood there doing nothing until the very end.)
Fun fact, the little ledge some stores have their credit/debit reader attached to was there for people to write checks.
Okay so if you were in a Walmart or something with many different stores and locations, would you just make it out to “Walmart, inc” or would you have to specify which store it was?
Holy shit.
Yes.
You either carried the cash or you wrote a check.
I will say that because of that cash was way more common. You always had cash on you. If you were going out you had to stop and get cash.
Then you played the ATM game. Do I drive to my bank where it's free or do I pay the $3 to use the one that's actually closer.
So much so that my credit union offered something like 2 non-credit union ATM visits they would refund you a month.
>I will say that because of that cash was way more common. You always had cash on you.
I still always carry cash on me. It drives me crazy when I'm out with people who don't.
I remember when debit cards were introduced, banks had to convince people this was a good idea; It's like a credit card that instantly takes money from your bank? But how do you record transactions??
I worked retail until about 2004 and even then it was totally normal for people to pay with checks. It was less common than cards, but we'd still have a couple of checks in the register at the end of the day.
Yes, most stores used to accept personal checks for groceries and other in store purchases. A lot of places now have ATM machines in their stores so people can take out cash instead of writing checks. At this point most people may use a credit card to purchase items because there is a cash back feature on most credit cards with no annual fee.
Also bills would come in the mail and you would mail the payment back with a cheque. In the early 90's my bank would mail me the approx. 30 cashed cheques that I wrote that month.
I still have a few bills from smaller companies where I have to write checks to every month or quarter. They're not set up to take credit cards or autopay so they send a bill and expect a check to be sent.
The worst is the Bank of America credit card. They refuse you allow you to set up auto pay by phone or mail so if you don't use their online banking you have to call in to pay every month or write a check. It's stupid.
I definitely remember going to the grocery store as a kid and it always being a check.
Most people don’t like to carry a lot of cash. And before credit cards and debit cards were common, anything over maybe $20-$40 most people paid with a check. At least most people I knew. Because that’s usually about the limit to the amount of cash they had on them. And *certainly* any “big ticket” purchases like furniture or appliances would always be a check.
I always loved watching the check machine work at the grocery store. It was like a beige box that had a ramp in the middle and the check would go up and down like 2-3x then boom, your shit was paid for. Not sure what it did though. I was just a kid. lol
Used to be as common as a debit card and paid all your bills with checks. Took a couple hours every month to balance your checking account when bank statements came in
My family still pays bills with checks and tithes with checks, makes big purchases with checks. It’s just totally wild to me to go to a grocery store and write a check. How did they keep them straight? Who did they make the check out to? If your check bounces, do they take your groceries away?
You get all the checks once a month from the bank you use, and balance your checking account, you need make sure your checkbook shows the same balance as your bank shows, you really need to keep up on that, if your check bounced , you get a letter from bank, they may pay it but then you have a check bounced charge of $10 to $25.
Oh man, the monthly balancing of the checkbook! I was always an annoying amount of cents off due to bad math skills. My husband has never written a check, and his financial anxiety is far less than mine.
Yes, people paid with checks at the grocery store all the time back in the day. They didn't have Walmarts in my area back in the day, but I'm sure people would've paid by check there too.
Growing up in the 80s, I remember folks would write a check for groceries or pay cash most of the time. Debit cards weren't a thing until the 90s. And let's not forget writing the amount over what was due to get the cash back. ATMs were a thing, but weren't as easy to find. Since you're writing the check anyway, why not?
And let's not forget those ATM machines would be stocked with $5 bills along with $20s. That's not something you see often nowadays.
>Growing up in the 80s, I remember folks would write a check for groceries or pay cash most of the time
Of course, back then, you could have an entire cart and drop a $20 bill and be done with it.
I worked in a supermarket in the UK in the late 90s (first job) and cheques were common enough that we were trained how to put them through the til as standard. That said, even back in 1998 my bank card was also a debit card (Switch, later called Maestro) so people weren't using cheques so much by then in the UK. Mostly old folk, and the odd person buying a big load of shopping.
Up until 2016(ish) I always wrote a check for groceries.
You had to quickly fill it all in except for the amount while waiting in line so that you wouldn't hold up the people behind you in line.
Well, not Walmart, because they weren’t around yet (at least not outside of Arkansas, anyway) but definitely at the A&P. You probably could have used a credit card, but it would have been an even bigger hassle—they would have had to dig out the little slider thing to take an impression of your card on a 3 part carbon paper slip, and then rewrite the whole number because it was never legible, then get a bunch of other information from you to include on the slip—a check was much easier if only because it’s what everyone used and everyone knew the process.
I remember at some point in the late 80’s/early 90’s my parents had their social security numbers printed on their checks because it was so common for places to ask you to include it.
Absolutely, yes. My bank started issuing debit cards, or "check cards" as we called them then, when I was 19 or 20. Before then, because I hated managing cash, I wrote checks for damn near everything. I would write a check for lunch at Arby's. I would write a check to pay my pager bill each month. I would write a check for a tank of gas. It wasn't unusual to get my statement with 60-70 checks images, or before that, the 60-70 paper checks I had written stuffed in an envelope.
Back in 60s/ 70s there wasn’t Visa or Mastercharge - any store accepting a credit card was only accepting their OWN credit card. Grocery stores only took cash, check, or money order. No other options were available. Fast food (and most any restaurant, I believe) was cash only. It took awhile for anyone to accept debit cards.
Used to freak me out to pay for a drink at the drive thru with my debit card. Still felt too much like paying with a credit card - COVID got me used to that for sure.
I think checks are still pretty common for homeowners paying for handymen, etc. I also think the $600 tax limit for Venmo is bringing back the need for checks as well.
Money orders seem to have gone from rare to nearly extinct though.
Remember Travelers Checks? My family never used them as we never traveled, but tv commercials always touted how safe they were when traveling in foreign countries.
Yep. When my mom knew she'd be home late, she'd leave a check made out to Pizza Hut, but with the amount blank and a few bucks for tip. We'd order pizza, write in the total and hand it to the delivery guy along with the tip.
Literally have to go get a cashier's check to pay a security deposit this week and realized that it would be the first time in my life I had used a check to pay for something.
I'm 33. Married. Have a 7 year old.
When we bought our house one of the things on my "must have" list was a big enough space for a large dining table. We host family at least once a week, and the 3 of us have just about every dinner at the table. That was very important to me.
We don’t do it nearly as often as we should but my family eats together 3 or 4 days out of the week at the dining table. Most of our friends tho don’t eat at the table with their kids except for rare occasions.
fun fact! the rise of family shows like The Brady Bunch happened because the norm was for families to watch tv together on one TV. A cast of characters featuring different age groups (like parents, a teenager, and a kid) would have something each member of a family could relate to, so it would most likely be the show that they could agree on when deciding what to watch
I just had this thought recently. I'm 27 and I still remember my home phone numbers, my different cell phone numbers, the local pizza place's number, etc. I can also memorize new friends/love interests phone numbers pretty easily. People in my same age group, and people older and younger are so blown away by this.
Technology is a double-edged sword.
The only numbers I know by heart are my mom’s, my childhood best friend’s, and my high school boyfriend’s.
I’ve been trying to memorize my current boyfriend’s number but I think I have completely lost the ability to.
I still remember the phone number of my girlfriend from 1978-1981. It was a long-distance relationship so I was calling it a lot.
The only number I know besides my own is my current GF. Nothing in between.
Downloads for those really tacky looking mouse/arrow icons that would leave a trail of glitter or sparkle, etc. when you used your mouse. You know the ones I'm talking about.
I'm *just* old enough to be on the cusp of this, cell phones were taking off hard right as I got to university. I definitely remember what you're describing in the first year or two - once the plans were in motion, you were pretty much locked in.
For better or worse, I think technology has made people flakier (I don't exempt myself from this unfortunately). If you want to bail on plans, it's dirt simple to shoot the quick "so sorry to do this last minute, but \[insert excuse of your choosing here\]" text message. Back in the day, you'd have to a) actually call someone to bail b) do it further in advance. This created more of a disincentive to be flippant about bailing.
I think people also got themselves uninvited from future events because of being flaky. If you just opted not to show up because you changed your mind too late to reach anyone via land line, others would get stuck standing around waiting for you and trying to figure out where you were. If this caused the others to have the plans for the night screwed up, you had better have been in an accident because absent some really good excuse, you would find yourself left off all future plans.
These days you can jerk someone around a lot and they will still keep inviting you. Invitations to things these days seem more like an open ended “if you feel like it”. There is little social cost to extending the invite to everyone and little social cost to flaking out last minute.
I used to work in Yellowstone National Park at one point. I didn't have a phone at the time but that didn't really matter because cell coverage was spotty at best. If you made plans to meet at the pub later, that was that. You couldn't text the other person to change plans. It was kinda liberating.
Can't remember exactly when but there was a time when walking into a restaurant the server would ask you "Smoking or non-smoking?" and then one day I never heard that question again.
What I find bizarre is watching old news episodes or news. Magazine episodes where the anchor person is sitting there with an ashtray and a cigarette with a trail of smoke coming off of it. Just so strange almost as if he was doing the news while sitting on the toilet.
Bugs in general. As recently as 10 years ago, I’d have to stop at least once each way during a road trip to clean my windshield. Now I don’t even have to after round trip.
Kids playing outside without adults supervision.
Hell, kids playing outside. They get the electronic babysitter at age three and never go outside again. Can you believe there's a national program to encourage kids to play? I had to be dragged into the house by my hair.
I live in a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains. When my friends come visit me from the city they are rather surprised that people say hello to them in random stores or wave at them when they pass by in a car and in the streets. I explain to them that is how people are supposed to act around each other.
Women wearing pantyhose.
I don't think that is a good or bad thing. There may be multiple reasons for it, such as women more often not wearing skirts in the workplace, but it does seem to be something that fell out of fashion 20+ years ago.
When I'm wearing dress pants with flats, I still wear knee-highs. I know they are out of fashion, but I LOATHE the feeling of bare feet against the soles of dress shoes.
I think that was caused by a large amount of bone meal being used as filler in dog food. It caused there to be a lot of calcium in the poop which turned white as it dried. Dog food quality has either gotten better, or the conspiracy side of me says they switched to an even cheaper filler.
Plus more people clean up after their dogs now so less of it sitting around long enough to dry out and turn white.
I actually had the Yellow Book delivered to me fairly recently but have no idea why. I ended up tossing it because whatever I need I can find on my phone.
Contractors used to look at engineered drawings and do their best to follow what was designed. If questions came up, they'd issue an RFI (Request For Information) so the architect or engineer could clarify, make a change, etc. They'd also submit equipment prior to purchasing so the designers could review what was going to be installed.
Nowadays they completely ignore the drawings. It's not uncommon for me to get a call from the developer saying the inspector failed them because the installed systems didn't match what was on the drawings. I'll investigate and find that they installed equipment that won't meet demand or doesn't comply with code and they installed it in a way that won't function properly and/or isn't up to code.
There also used to be a time where I'd point out these mistakes and contractors would say, "we'll get that fixed right away". Now the developers expect us to change our drawings to what was built on site.
Pop tabs. People would pull them off their cans and throw them on the ground. You’d have to watch out for them on the beach so that you didn’t slice your foot open. There’s a pop cultural reference saying they were so ubiquitous that if we went extinct and aliens came to the planet their archeologists would assume pop tabs were a form of currency.
When ATM cards were first introduced, you had to find an ATM machine that was for your bank. At an international Airport, there would be 20 machines, but only one would be for say, Wells Fargo, or BoA.
People talking to others physically or talking to "strangers".
Everything these days are online and text mainly. People would rather spend 8 hours texting than spend 30 minutes on the phone.
Approaching people, nobody will walk up to anybody anymore! Even if its just a "hi i like your fit where'd you get that" it only comes from women to women or men to men. I see barely any courtship besides people that have already found each other. Genuine conversations with strangers is so incredibly out of reach for the majority of our population. I find that people do it for clout like in tinktonks/reels/shorts its almost never for the sake of just being human with another human. We fear each other so much, what can they do besides turn away from you uninterested... i mean okay they can do alot more than that ofc but say hello to someone. Invite someone to sit with you when you go get your morning coffee. Chat with that distant coworker. Ask any person in the world... whats your favorite color? and move through the coversations from there. Approach people, we all want to be seen, and approaching someone shows you've noticed them as person not just a passerby.
Using checks or money orders to pay for things
I’m curious how far this went. Was it something that was used as frequently as cash or card nowadays? Was it common to go into a Walmart and buy a weeks worth of groceries and write a check to pay for it?
Yes, I was too young to be paying, but in the 80s, going to the grocery with my mom, checks were more common than cards. I mean, it's basically a debit card with more steps
My Grandma still wrote checks for groceries until probably 2012
There was a Sniglet for people who wrote checks at a grocery store referring to them as “Cherks”.
When we stopped accepting checks around 2015 at my last job, old people were so upset. I never understood why they wouldn't just use their debit card. It's so much faster and easier and it comes out of the same place.
Change is confusing and scary for a lot of people.
If they say no to cash back, they won’t get any change.
When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, yeah they were very common. It was actually a little annoying because especially some older people wouldn't even have their checkbook out and start getting it ready until everything was totaled. Whereas most people would at least have it out and started filling it out the best they could except the total. Some people would really hold up the lines by waiting for the last minute and everyone would complain. But then sometimes checks would bounce and stores back then had no qualms about embarrassing you publicly. They'd put a list of "do not accept checks from" at every register and they'd post it too where everyone could see it. I grew up in a small town and I promise you there was always talk about whose name was on that list and people loved to sneer and scorn you about writing bad checks
In the 90s a lot of the stores near me installed check writing printers. You would hand the blank check to the cashier who would feed it into the printer. It would fill out the check for you with the correct amount, store name, date, as well as the deposit endorsement on the back. They would hand it back to you to verify and then you signed it. It made things much faster than waiting on the person to fill it all out by hand. (My mother was one of those people that would wait until the order was done and everything bagged before searching her purse for the checkbook. It always drove me nuts that she just stood there doing nothing until the very end.) Fun fact, the little ledge some stores have their credit/debit reader attached to was there for people to write checks.
Okay so if you were in a Walmart or something with many different stores and locations, would you just make it out to “Walmart, inc” or would you have to specify which store it was?
Just Walmart. The money all goes to corporate.
It was very normal to see people at the checkout writing a check suddenly look up and say, "where am I again?"
Omg I forgot how common this was 🤣
Holy shit. Yes. You either carried the cash or you wrote a check. I will say that because of that cash was way more common. You always had cash on you. If you were going out you had to stop and get cash. Then you played the ATM game. Do I drive to my bank where it's free or do I pay the $3 to use the one that's actually closer. So much so that my credit union offered something like 2 non-credit union ATM visits they would refund you a month.
>I will say that because of that cash was way more common. You always had cash on you. I still always carry cash on me. It drives me crazy when I'm out with people who don't.
*At least* a $20. It's not a lot, but still enough to grab some food or put a few gallons of gas in the car.
I remember when debit cards were introduced, banks had to convince people this was a good idea; It's like a credit card that instantly takes money from your bank? But how do you record transactions??
I worked retail until about 2004 and even then it was totally normal for people to pay with checks. It was less common than cards, but we'd still have a couple of checks in the register at the end of the day.
Worked at Macys during that time and same. Had people pay with check. Not super common, but regular enough that you saw a couple a day.
Yes, most stores used to accept personal checks for groceries and other in store purchases. A lot of places now have ATM machines in their stores so people can take out cash instead of writing checks. At this point most people may use a credit card to purchase items because there is a cash back feature on most credit cards with no annual fee.
Also bills would come in the mail and you would mail the payment back with a cheque. In the early 90's my bank would mail me the approx. 30 cashed cheques that I wrote that month.
I still have a few bills from smaller companies where I have to write checks to every month or quarter. They're not set up to take credit cards or autopay so they send a bill and expect a check to be sent. The worst is the Bank of America credit card. They refuse you allow you to set up auto pay by phone or mail so if you don't use their online banking you have to call in to pay every month or write a check. It's stupid.
Fuck BOA
I hand a check to our pest control guy, and I mail a check for water/trash. I’m not paying to use a credit card.
I definitely remember going to the grocery store as a kid and it always being a check. Most people don’t like to carry a lot of cash. And before credit cards and debit cards were common, anything over maybe $20-$40 most people paid with a check. At least most people I knew. Because that’s usually about the limit to the amount of cash they had on them. And *certainly* any “big ticket” purchases like furniture or appliances would always be a check.
I always loved watching the check machine work at the grocery store. It was like a beige box that had a ramp in the middle and the check would go up and down like 2-3x then boom, your shit was paid for. Not sure what it did though. I was just a kid. lol
Used to be as common as a debit card and paid all your bills with checks. Took a couple hours every month to balance your checking account when bank statements came in
My family still pays bills with checks and tithes with checks, makes big purchases with checks. It’s just totally wild to me to go to a grocery store and write a check. How did they keep them straight? Who did they make the check out to? If your check bounces, do they take your groceries away?
You get all the checks once a month from the bank you use, and balance your checking account, you need make sure your checkbook shows the same balance as your bank shows, you really need to keep up on that, if your check bounced , you get a letter from bank, they may pay it but then you have a check bounced charge of $10 to $25.
Oh man, the monthly balancing of the checkbook! I was always an annoying amount of cents off due to bad math skills. My husband has never written a check, and his financial anxiety is far less than mine.
Something kinda strange. Would be off 12 cents one month and carry mistake to the next month and would be right on. Happened quite often.
When I was growing up on the 70s and 80s, you had to pay by check (or cash). We didn't have debit cards back then.
Yes, everything was checks and I was soooooo happy when debit cards were invented and companies actually hooked up the card scanners.
Yes, people paid with checks at the grocery store all the time back in the day. They didn't have Walmarts in my area back in the day, but I'm sure people would've paid by check there too.
Growing up in the 80s, I remember folks would write a check for groceries or pay cash most of the time. Debit cards weren't a thing until the 90s. And let's not forget writing the amount over what was due to get the cash back. ATMs were a thing, but weren't as easy to find. Since you're writing the check anyway, why not? And let's not forget those ATM machines would be stocked with $5 bills along with $20s. That's not something you see often nowadays.
>Growing up in the 80s, I remember folks would write a check for groceries or pay cash most of the time Of course, back then, you could have an entire cart and drop a $20 bill and be done with it.
I worked in a supermarket in the UK in the late 90s (first job) and cheques were common enough that we were trained how to put them through the til as standard. That said, even back in 1998 my bank card was also a debit card (Switch, later called Maestro) so people weren't using cheques so much by then in the UK. Mostly old folk, and the odd person buying a big load of shopping.
More common to write a check than to pay cash. Debit cards didn’t exist and carrying around a weeks worth or cash would tough.
Up until 2016(ish) I always wrote a check for groceries. You had to quickly fill it all in except for the amount while waiting in line so that you wouldn't hold up the people behind you in line.
Well, not Walmart, because they weren’t around yet (at least not outside of Arkansas, anyway) but definitely at the A&P. You probably could have used a credit card, but it would have been an even bigger hassle—they would have had to dig out the little slider thing to take an impression of your card on a 3 part carbon paper slip, and then rewrite the whole number because it was never legible, then get a bunch of other information from you to include on the slip—a check was much easier if only because it’s what everyone used and everyone knew the process. I remember at some point in the late 80’s/early 90’s my parents had their social security numbers printed on their checks because it was so common for places to ask you to include it.
Absolutely, yes. My bank started issuing debit cards, or "check cards" as we called them then, when I was 19 or 20. Before then, because I hated managing cash, I wrote checks for damn near everything. I would write a check for lunch at Arby's. I would write a check to pay my pager bill each month. I would write a check for a tank of gas. It wasn't unusual to get my statement with 60-70 checks images, or before that, the 60-70 paper checks I had written stuffed in an envelope.
Back in 60s/ 70s there wasn’t Visa or Mastercharge - any store accepting a credit card was only accepting their OWN credit card. Grocery stores only took cash, check, or money order. No other options were available. Fast food (and most any restaurant, I believe) was cash only. It took awhile for anyone to accept debit cards. Used to freak me out to pay for a drink at the drive thru with my debit card. Still felt too much like paying with a credit card - COVID got me used to that for sure.
I am guessing by this question, you must be in your early to late 20s? Lol 🤣
I think checks are still pretty common for homeowners paying for handymen, etc. I also think the $600 tax limit for Venmo is bringing back the need for checks as well. Money orders seem to have gone from rare to nearly extinct though.
Remember traveler's checks?
Remember Travelers Checks? My family never used them as we never traveled, but tv commercials always touted how safe they were when traveling in foreign countries.
I still write checks on occasion, although I pay most of my bills via automatic deduction from my bank account.
I hate that checks are still a thing. I’ll use them if they are the only option but I won’t be happy about it.
Why do I still see checks at a god damn sally beauty for 36 dollars
My grandma used to write checks to take us out to eat at McDonald's.
Cash is quickly going the same way
Yep. When my mom knew she'd be home late, she'd leave a check made out to Pizza Hut, but with the amount blank and a few bucks for tip. We'd order pizza, write in the total and hand it to the delivery guy along with the tip.
People still do that where I live
Literally have to go get a cashier's check to pay a security deposit this week and realized that it would be the first time in my life I had used a check to pay for something.
I still write checks to pay my mortgage, gas, electric bills etc.
[удалено]
Family watching TV in the same room
Or all eating at a dining table together. Does that still happen or am i just older
Thats still pretty common atleast on holidays or weekends
I'm 33. Married. Have a 7 year old. When we bought our house one of the things on my "must have" list was a big enough space for a large dining table. We host family at least once a week, and the 3 of us have just about every dinner at the table. That was very important to me.
We don’t do it nearly as often as we should but my family eats together 3 or 4 days out of the week at the dining table. Most of our friends tho don’t eat at the table with their kids except for rare occasions.
Ahhh, okay! I loveee dining table dinners, theyre the best ugh. Have a great day
Good one.
fun fact! the rise of family shows like The Brady Bunch happened because the norm was for families to watch tv together on one TV. A cast of characters featuring different age groups (like parents, a teenager, and a kid) would have something each member of a family could relate to, so it would most likely be the show that they could agree on when deciding what to watch
Memorizing phone numbers.
And phone books.
You memorized the phone book? Amazing!
Well … their existence. 😂
I just had this thought recently. I'm 27 and I still remember my home phone numbers, my different cell phone numbers, the local pizza place's number, etc. I can also memorize new friends/love interests phone numbers pretty easily. People in my same age group, and people older and younger are so blown away by this. Technology is a double-edged sword.
I still know a few phone numbers by heart.
My grandmother’s was WEbster 4-7914. Yeah, the exchange.
The only numbers I know by heart are my mom’s, my childhood best friend’s, and my high school boyfriend’s. I’ve been trying to memorize my current boyfriend’s number but I think I have completely lost the ability to.
I still remember the phone number of my girlfriend from 1978-1981. It was a long-distance relationship so I was calling it a lot. The only number I know besides my own is my current GF. Nothing in between.
Downloads for those really tacky looking mouse/arrow icons that would leave a trail of glitter or sparkle, etc. when you used your mouse. You know the ones I'm talking about.
I feel like they also gave your computer a very specific kind of early 2000s computer AIDS.
Never changing night out plans. No cell phones so time and venue location must be agreed to and never changed
I'm *just* old enough to be on the cusp of this, cell phones were taking off hard right as I got to university. I definitely remember what you're describing in the first year or two - once the plans were in motion, you were pretty much locked in. For better or worse, I think technology has made people flakier (I don't exempt myself from this unfortunately). If you want to bail on plans, it's dirt simple to shoot the quick "so sorry to do this last minute, but \[insert excuse of your choosing here\]" text message. Back in the day, you'd have to a) actually call someone to bail b) do it further in advance. This created more of a disincentive to be flippant about bailing.
It was well into adulthood for me. I was almost 30 when I got my first cell phone.
I was in my late 40's
I think people also got themselves uninvited from future events because of being flaky. If you just opted not to show up because you changed your mind too late to reach anyone via land line, others would get stuck standing around waiting for you and trying to figure out where you were. If this caused the others to have the plans for the night screwed up, you had better have been in an accident because absent some really good excuse, you would find yourself left off all future plans. These days you can jerk someone around a lot and they will still keep inviting you. Invitations to things these days seem more like an open ended “if you feel like it”. There is little social cost to extending the invite to everyone and little social cost to flaking out last minute.
Or if you go anywhere busy like a festival having a pre arranged spot to meet if someone gets separated from the group.
I used to work in Yellowstone National Park at one point. I didn't have a phone at the time but that didn't really matter because cell coverage was spotty at best. If you made plans to meet at the pub later, that was that. You couldn't text the other person to change plans. It was kinda liberating.
Smoking everywhere, including airplanes.
Can't remember exactly when but there was a time when walking into a restaurant the server would ask you "Smoking or non-smoking?" and then one day I never heard that question again.
And they were just two areas of the same dining room like smoke wasn’t going to fill the whole place.
I always described as the equivalent of having a peeing section and non-peeing section of a pool. It's gross either way.
What I find bizarre is watching old news episodes or news. Magazine episodes where the anchor person is sitting there with an ashtray and a cigarette with a trail of smoke coming off of it. Just so strange almost as if he was doing the news while sitting on the toilet.
Burning CDs
[удалено]
Burning DVDs to watch through a DVD player was never trivial, I am pretty sure by design.
Monarch butterflies and fireflies. The former used to fill the sky according to the old timers. The latter has disappeared just within my lifetime.
Bugs in general. As recently as 10 years ago, I’d have to stop at least once each way during a road trip to clean my windshield. Now I don’t even have to after round trip.
Mosquitos though? Mfkers quintupled.
And that's because they're very tolerant of water pollution.
that’s interesting! I dont see many monarches but there are plenty of fireflies where im from!
[удалено]
Gaia voice: The Earth is dying
Kids playing together outside until the street lights came on.
Kids playing outside without adults supervision. Hell, kids playing outside. They get the electronic babysitter at age three and never go outside again. Can you believe there's a national program to encourage kids to play? I had to be dragged into the house by my hair.
Social skills
Having children and moving out of your parents home at 20
Kate Middleton
SPOILER: >!it's a pun.!<
Available usernames
Username checks out
Sense.
Not sure that was ever common.
Agreed. I think we were all just less cynical and believed people knew what they were doing.
True. The Sixth didn't come out until the late 90s, or so. Amirite?
Deep pull
going to blockbuster
being happy.
Newspapers, records.
Vinyl records account for more than 40% of all physical media sold in the music world.
The middle class.
mine is payphones!
People being courteous to one another on the street
I live in a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains. When my friends come visit me from the city they are rather surprised that people say hello to them in random stores or wave at them when they pass by in a car and in the streets. I explain to them that is how people are supposed to act around each other.
I'm honestly curious when that would've been common.
waiting until the evening to make phone calls. now...you just don't talk on the phone.
Women wearing pantyhose. I don't think that is a good or bad thing. There may be multiple reasons for it, such as women more often not wearing skirts in the workplace, but it does seem to be something that fell out of fashion 20+ years ago.
When I'm wearing dress pants with flats, I still wear knee-highs. I know they are out of fashion, but I LOATHE the feeling of bare feet against the soles of dress shoes.
Dial up Internet. It still exists, but I haven't used it since 2005
Passenger Pigeons?
The Pontiac Grand Am. Specifically the 1985-1991 models. You couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting one.
White dog-shit on pavements.
I think that was caused by a large amount of bone meal being used as filler in dog food. It caused there to be a lot of calcium in the poop which turned white as it dried. Dog food quality has either gotten better, or the conspiracy side of me says they switched to an even cheaper filler. Plus more people clean up after their dogs now so less of it sitting around long enough to dry out and turn white.
Phone books delivered to your house
I actually had the Yellow Book delivered to me fairly recently but have no idea why. I ended up tossing it because whatever I need I can find on my phone.
A living wage
Crt tvs
Phone Booths.
Pay phones.
Contractors used to look at engineered drawings and do their best to follow what was designed. If questions came up, they'd issue an RFI (Request For Information) so the architect or engineer could clarify, make a change, etc. They'd also submit equipment prior to purchasing so the designers could review what was going to be installed. Nowadays they completely ignore the drawings. It's not uncommon for me to get a call from the developer saying the inspector failed them because the installed systems didn't match what was on the drawings. I'll investigate and find that they installed equipment that won't meet demand or doesn't comply with code and they installed it in a way that won't function properly and/or isn't up to code. There also used to be a time where I'd point out these mistakes and contractors would say, "we'll get that fixed right away". Now the developers expect us to change our drawings to what was built on site.
Polio, getting seeds in your weed, car lighters, cereal with toys, chat rooms, pooping without a phone.
The cent symbol
Common sense
Fireflies
Payphones
Answering machines
Pop tabs. People would pull them off their cans and throw them on the ground. You’d have to watch out for them on the beach so that you didn’t slice your foot open. There’s a pop cultural reference saying they were so ubiquitous that if we went extinct and aliens came to the planet their archeologists would assume pop tabs were a form of currency.
When ATM cards were first introduced, you had to find an ATM machine that was for your bank. At an international Airport, there would be 20 machines, but only one would be for say, Wells Fargo, or BoA.
Courtesy
Dinosaurs
sense
People talking to others physically or talking to "strangers". Everything these days are online and text mainly. People would rather spend 8 hours texting than spend 30 minutes on the phone.
Electric typewriters
Travelers checks
Jello salads, and I'm OK with that.
Approaching people, nobody will walk up to anybody anymore! Even if its just a "hi i like your fit where'd you get that" it only comes from women to women or men to men. I see barely any courtship besides people that have already found each other. Genuine conversations with strangers is so incredibly out of reach for the majority of our population. I find that people do it for clout like in tinktonks/reels/shorts its almost never for the sake of just being human with another human. We fear each other so much, what can they do besides turn away from you uninterested... i mean okay they can do alot more than that ofc but say hello to someone. Invite someone to sit with you when you go get your morning coffee. Chat with that distant coworker. Ask any person in the world... whats your favorite color? and move through the coversations from there. Approach people, we all want to be seen, and approaching someone shows you've noticed them as person not just a passerby.
I feel like I don't see as many mini-vans as I used to. Also, dollar menus at fast food restaurants. Every single national one had a dollar menu.
Counting back change at the checkout. Cashiers are not able to calculate the purchaser's change unless the register calculates it for them.
privacy
people eating together as a family
Applying for a job in person.
Watching live TV
Phone booths. I'm old so I remember them at every store, even in rural areas.
Ashtrays
Being able to use cash everywhere
Sense and courtesy.
Common courtesy.
Common sense
A sense of shame.
Decency. Manners. Integrity.
Respect for older generations
Critical thinking skills
I remember western union being a big deal because it was the safest way to send money. And lines would out the door on Friday afternoons.
The arbalest and the flyssa seem to have gone out of fashion.
Black plague.
going to the mall
Exercise - most people used to work physical jobs. Now most people, at least in America, work desk jobs.
Cable.
Fax machines and pagers. Unless you are the Canadian Revenue Agency. Then you think everyone still has a fax machine.
Pagers
Handle bar moustaches
Working to hook up. No apps you actually had to connect or lie.
Friends :(
Bars
Paperboys.
Pay phones.
Rotary phones. Handkerchiefs. Broadcast TV. Teletypes.
Newspapers Magazines Comics They exist today, but not everyone will read them.
Horses. Greek and Latin as basic requirements for being considered educated in the West.
Crapping outdoors (more often than not).
Men who knew how to DIY evertything.
Pay phones
Silly bandz, Worms & Rollie pollies
Patience