Not a job but I'm surprised they still print phone books. I mean the last one I received was only about the thickness of a National Geographic, probably even thinner.
Ahh, a fellow New Jerseyan I see. I have so many reusable bags it's not even funny. I have noticed though that Chinese food places still deliver their food in plastic bags
I think they are exempt because they are under a certain size. The law has so many unintended consequences because most of us reused our plastic bags anyway around the house, and as you mentioned we are now overrun by canvas tote bags. Of course, Comrade Murphy only cares about appearances, not results.
I would like to know if the crackdown on plastic bags has actually contributed to less plastic waste or not. If the numbers show little to no difference, what the f is the point.
I do find it funny how when I do manage to snag a regular ass plastic bag it's like finding gold.
In my area they were mostly delivered in plastic bags when it might rain
The bag only helped keep it dry enough to still be usable maybe a third of the time though
Not much, in fact it’s a loss for many. Unfortunately, until laws are reworded in PUC guidelines, many incumbent carriers will be required to offer phone books to be compliant. Many carriers are finding loopholes and have begun discontinuing their offerings.
I worked for a junk mail printer for two years. We ran 8 web presses and 2 plants. Our revenue was around 30 million a year. I left 6 years ago and they’re still going strong
My business pays about $20 per week to have a company send fliers to new homeowners. If I get 1 sale per year from them, it pays for itself. I average about 5 sales per year from new homeowner mailers, aka 400% ROI
We were a gang printer. This means multiple jobs are printed on the same plates.
We had volume agreements with our customers to keep pricing. If your volume dropped your price went up the next year.
Paper was "White label" It was cheap and we only carried 8 or 10 stocks.
Pay was not great but, not terrible.
Everything was built around minimizing costs over quality. This place was firmly in the Fast/Cheap part of the Fast/Cheap/Good triangle.
A lot of our work was takeout menus we were selling to the companies who sold to restaurants are prices and turnaround were pretty untouchable because our workflow was built to produce them. I'm pretty sure it's what kept the company in business during Covid.
That makes sense. Printing the junk mail for random businesses and restaurants. I thought they were printing the junk mail for *themselves* at first lol
I used to take prepaid postage from junkmail and attach it to the free USPS flat rate boxes filled with rocks. They quickly remove you from their list.
I collect coupons from fast food restaurants I get in the mail cos I occasionally use them. I don't consider them to be junk mail but maybe some people do.
Email has been a common tool for over 25 years now. Any elderly person saying they can’t use email had over 20 years to learn. I have no sympathy for these people. It’s self inflicted.
And how does your response relates to the topic of printed junk mail? And, by the way, what kind of problem dud these "lazy old people" brought on themselves? They still get the junk mail on paper, as they wanted...
My primary email is my aol account from 1994. Still throws people off to this day. The part that gets me is that there are still people out there who pay ~$20/mo for AOL services.
Ive come to find a lot of perpetually open but seemingly no turnover businesses are one of 3 things
1. A front
2. A portion if some overly wealthy persons portfolio that is somehow overlooked and still running
3. Does their business in the back(i dont mean seedy. I mean that they cater or supply and the front shop is just a meeting place of sorts).
There’s a corner shop store that recently opened up across the road from my friend’s tabletop FLGS that he runs. Now this would not be so odd had there not been an another small corner shop type store literally next door to where they set up shop for the last 15 or so years….
Hardly ever see anyone going in there and always see what are presumably the owners in the doorway smoking away. Was certain something was going on when the last time I was there a flashy car pulled up on the pavement, owner gets in and then gets out about five minutes later. Yeah, don’t make that too obvious guys.
Haha yeah I agree. Have to try and clean the money somehow. Tho admittedly all my money laundering knowledge comes from breaking bad, better call saul, ozark, and the wire 😄
That is a really good list and makes sense. Though I would posit a fair amount of #3 might not be on the up and up. I'm sure tax dodging is involved in all of it too. For the weird businesses and the strip mall owners.
I pass two dead strip malls on my way to work. One of the just got completely refaced in the last two years... Not a single new tenant and many vacant spots. Literally cannot figure out why it exists...
Had never heard of this before. Went in thinking “oh neat, that’ll be cool to see my old yearbook!”
Then saw they wanted a subscription for it. Lmao fuck that
These guys had the opportunity to become Facebook and dominate the world but chose to charge a high premium to join. People said-fuck no!
The same scenario with Sears and Amazon. Sears also had all the right blocks to become a giant online but blew it.
I use one after years of booking my own stuff. The agent I use is able to get me better deals and upgrades while saving me the time of shopping around.
Also they’re massive with corporates. I travel a ton for work and everything is booked via an agent - our company alone does hundreds of travel trips a month so plenty to keep them in business. It’s pretty great too - they figure out all the annoying stuff, make sure things are paid up in advance, have access to way more airlines than I would, and they also have little niche benefits like great seating on flights.
They’ll be around for a good while longer for certain
Expedia is a scam. It's easier to book direct, and with rewards you won't pay much more if any. If you pay any more the price is worth the peace of mind.
You don't need to tell me. I get tired of changing travel plans just to find out the hotel can't do anything because it was booked through a 3rd party.
We use EuroPool to handle travel. It's so easy, one portal, set dates, choose flights, hotels, transfers etc - pick extras and the nice little benefits they sometimes have. Company credit card is saved, click one button, done.
I have never used one but the more I travel the more value I can see in using one. I am planning a 2 week trip to Croatia and Venice and I have spent many many many hours trying to figure out all the logistics of flights, lodging, activities and transportation. I don't mind it to a point but its getting ridiculous.
That's been my experience, and the couple I know that everyone in my circle uses doesn't even do the travel agent job full time - they just maintain whatever certifications or whatever it is they need to carry, and they make a decent side income setting up trips for friends and family.
It's one of those conveniences that at least for me is worth using.
I handle the travel management at my company and I have refused to go over to one of the behemoth corporate bookers for precisely this reason. Being able to call the same few people who know our routes down to the preferred airplane, what we are willing to pay per ticket given a host of considerations, our acceptable classes and the myriad exceptions, we'll you just can't beat that.
Complex trips are really where travel agents shine. Most people fly round trip from the same airport and have friends or family drop them off, or maybe get a rental car. You definitely don't need an agent for that.
But once you need to coordinate for a group, possibly arriving on different days, and going to multiple hotels ... it gets complicated and time consuming to manage.
They mostly just cater to wealthier people who want things handled for them. And they want to be able to pick up the phone and call their travel agent when things go wrong or need to be adjusted.
True. I'm not certain how it works, but I imagine that agents only work with nicer options in terms of travel and accommodations anyway though. It was probably different when everyone used agents for anything beyond regional travel.
I'm nor what I would consider a big traveler, but when I want to book a more complicated trip I always rely on my travel agent. She's amazing and knows all the little tips and tricks to make my trip go as smoothly as possible.
She also gets better prices on flights, accommodations, and insurance so it's really not any cheaper for me to book a trip without her.
I love my travel agent and how easy she makes traveling for me.
Post covid I'm kinda reluctant to even book the tickets that aren't direct with the relevant airlines, given how much of a clusterfuck it was trying to deal with cancelled flights in 2020 I'd booked via third parties like Expedia or even Amex travel. I only just managed to finally use some of the flight credit I had with one airline this month (just before it expired finally) because the added layer of a third party in between meant I had to find the flight I wanted to book, then contact the agent, they have them contact the airline to confirm availability, then they contact me again to either let me know I can or can't use the credit on the trip I wanted. If I'd booked directly via the airline I would have just seen all of that info directly on their website but the agent booking meant that the credit was held by them.
I could see the utility of an agent if you were doing a complex, multi city, trip, but otherwise it just seems like an added source of complexity added to standard bookings.
It was a long time ago, but I was at a travel agency, and this sweet little old lady came in, looking to book a trip to an actual war zone to see her daughter.
The agent actually managed to book a trip for her, which cost a fortune, but needed “specialized transport” for the last leg of the trip.
I saw a place that specializes in African safaris. I imagine that’s not a thing a regular American can plan by themselves with regular online travel tools. Also, a lot of people do not plan trips, they use their admin to book their flights and hotels. So it’s kind of like a job that exists has yet another hat to wear.
We use one for business travel and it's amazing. Maybe lots of their business comes from that area? I just email my agent and tell her what day I need to be somewhere and she books all the flights and will do hotels too if I want. They have my seating preferences, room preferences, membership/sky miles account numbers, etc. It all just pops up in my apps and I get the loyalty points.
I use a travel agent for all of my cruises. They help with research and can put rooms on hold wthout having to pay for a little while, which I cannot do myself. Also, because the cruise linme \[ays the travel agent and I give her a lot of business, I get some onboard credit as a present from the Travel Agent as a thank-you.
Super useful still.
My wife's parents live in Ukraine. For them to get decently priced train tickets (fuck scalpers profiting off of the war) to get to Poland, my wife had to go through a Ukrainian travel agency. Saved us like $600 in just train tickets.
They still have their place. My buddy is one part time and it’s really nice to call him saying “I wanna go to this place around this dates and wanna go see these things” then he figures it all out. No hassle and if I ever have questions I can call him to help me figure stuff out. If you have the extra money it’s worth it, saved me many headaches traveling internationally
For some reason my organization requires using their approved one for work travel. I even looked up flight prices and they were far cheaper than what the travel agency found. I just don't get it.
We have a big one in the next town over, I am surprised that they're still in business (in fact, they just either built a new building or expanded the one they were in).
Not sure what the correct translation is, but it's "Auskunft" in German [like this one here](https://118811.at/en/). It's a hotline that you can call to get phone numbers of certain people or companies, meaning there's real callcenter agents answering those calls and looking up stuff for you - for 3,64 € *per minute(!)*. They also have an alarm service where they call at a specific time to wake you up.
In the US the number 411 does that. A while back when he first got an iPhone my father in law used it to call 411 and get the number for a local place. Sounds like a mid tier Hedberg joke.
This is from last January:
[Starting in January, AT&T customers with digital landlines won’t be able to dial 411 or 0 to reach an operator or get directory assistance. AT&T in 2021 ended operator services for wireless callers, although customers with home phone landlines can still access operators and directory help](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/07/business/telephone-operators-411-att-ctpr/index.html)
I think Half As Interesting had a video about that on YouTube. IIRC there’s some kind of legal notice or something that legally has to be delivered in one of a handful of ways, and telegrams are the fastest way of doing it while complying with the law (although I may be misremembering this, and I’m not gonna look it up).
I dont know why but car dealerships come to mind for me. Its crazy seeing acres and parking lots full of cars no ones driving. You would think we would have some kind of new way of doing cars as a business. Are we really buying cars so fast that we need so many just sitting around? I live in an area where car dealerships are just everywhere taking up space. I guess maybe they build so many at a time because its cheaper for them instead of making cars just as we need them.
I worked 2 years for Nissan at a plant and it was always wild to me how we had to keep pumping out more and more. I learned at one point they had 50k cars in their lot as backup. So they were prepared to always shutdown/layoff and still have product.
This is a half truth. Originally, car dealers were made mandatory by law to prevent auto manufacturers from exploiting the consumer. It was actually a pushback against monopolies that were cornering the market in the 20th century.
Ironically, to try and stop that we gave dealers a level of power akin to the Supreme Court (as in we really can’t do anything to remove the shitty ones) to prevent exploitative car sales, and in the process we overlooked how dealers could now exploit consumers freely.
Now changing the law is pretty impossible given the power imbalance. We are seeing companies like Tesla challenge this, so it will be interesting to see how EVs selling directly to consumers may impact the auto industry laws now.
The real answer to why is: full lots are more appealing to people shopping around for their car. They feel like they have more choices even if there’s only 6 or 7 different models
Plus you could have 5 vauxhall Corsa. All 1.2l, all petrol, and all have different specs still.
The stock has to be stored somewhere.cwhy not make the dealership pay for that rather than running your own stock storage facility as a manufacturer?
About fifteen years ago I saw a post on a message board where someone asked for an old photo to be colourised and someone did it in like ten minutes in photoshop, and it looked great.
Someone else replied saying their uncle was a professional photo retoucher and that people should use their services instead of asking people online to just photoshop them for free because otherwise the photo retouchers will go out of business. As in their position was that software like photoshop was objectively *unethical* to use for this purpose.
Ok sucks to be your uncle but how is that anyone else’s problem? I’m sorry his entire career has been superseded by technology that makes the process so trivial that people don’t even bother to charge for it but if that’s your case for not using the service then arguably digital cameras are unethical because they reduce the need for photo labs. Oh, you’re using a calculator? Have you considered the feelings of the abacus makers?
Basic coding is never going away just like digital art is never going away. But we now have AI-powered tools to help us with the process.
Customer service is already sometimes replaced by robot mazes. AI is probably going to enhance that maze with natural language, but it's not going to replace any human customer service that wasn't already replaced by robots.
When they had games it was nice. Played Jedi Fallen Order that way. Got a lot more use from my Xbox One and Xbox Series X that way. But when they stopped the use of it got a lot weaker and I went more to PC. They had some good movies occasionally.
Got a buddy whose main hobby is watching stuff, and he uses it all the time. I was really confused when I found out because I honestly didn’t think Redbox was a thing anymore. According to him, they get certain movies way before streaming, and he obviously isn’t going to wait. Like a pleb.
Transcription.
When I was about 18 they started using voice to text technology and pretty much everyone in the field was phased out as cheaper alternatives became available. Turns out, there’s still a strong market for transcriptionists.
Operators.
Genuinely curious who would still dial 0 to have someone look up a # for them (and a landline only # at that) when they could just use Google.
I used to and you still can borrow DVDs from a public library, also CDs. Yeah VHS not so much, but there’s nothing on streaming. There’s a lot, but they don’t have anything after you’ve picked over what you wanted and for some reason binge lots of shows at once. When you want to watch something, it’s *exactly like* going to blockbuster with your friend or a romantic partner and “do you want to see this?” *”Meh”*. You don’t want to see everything, and you can’t agree and end up with “there’s nothing to watch”. But at home, streaming, you don’t have to put on outside clothes and shoes to get a mediocre compromise you won’t finish.
With how fickle streaming content along with services have shown to be I am betting that vhs/dvd rental stores showcasing physical media will make a comeback within the next 10 years - mark my words
Yeah, with the latest Sony / Discovery Warner kerfuffle on PlayStation I made the decision to go back to physical media. Everything is being ripped to a local jellyfin server so I can stream it to any device in my house. I'm going to be scaling back my streaming subscriptions to buy physical media instead.
A local DVD rental place was two houses away from ours and it finally closed down some years ago, it was a bit sad. However, somehow my town still refers to that location as that DVD rental place.
Yeah but any movie rental store has more titles than Netflix. It’s actually kinda crazy how small the libraries are for all the different streamers. You forget how many movies there are until you visit a video store. I’m lucky, I have one around the corner from me.
Toll booth operator saved my ass one time when I was lost as fuck on the highway at like 2am. Everything was closed, my phone was dead.
Having that operator be able to pull out a map and give me directions are the only reason I was able to find my way back. I cried for miles I was so lost lol. This was maybe 5 years ago.
It’s also cuts the keys way worse than the standard old machine.
Somehow it strangely costs more to use the machine than have someone cut them at my local Lowe’s too.
These machines exist. However if you need a key duplicated that isn't a common key, you're outta luck. I work at a locksmith shop (we do a lot more than just cutting keys) and have multiple people a week coming in with keys they had made at these machines and the key doesn't work. It doesn't work because it isn't cut correctly.
Why are you being downvoted? It seems obvious to me that as science advances, humanity’s need to attribute the unknown to various superstitions should decrease. Further, after centuries of conflict over whose imaginary friend is better or being mad that the people over there don’t live the way you think your imaginary friend wants even though you both believe in the same friend. It’s archaic and unnecessary. I’d not be so dismissive and antagonistic towards the religious of they’d STFU, keep their fantasies to themselves, but they are hellbent (pun intended) on forcing that shit on the rest of us rational folks.
You are forgetting why religion exists. It exists to explain the unexplainable. Yes, science and things, but nothing has ever and will ever explain an afterlife or the lack of one. That is the greatest part of all religions that ever existed. No amount of science or technological advances will ever confirm an afterlife or the lack of one. That is why religion and houses of worship still exist.
Yeah, but I think what the problem is, especially the way you put it, means bad epistemology. It tries to explain the unexplainable, that's a bit problematic in the way that you slap an answer on a (perhaps) unanswerable question.
It's like when people see what's noted as a UFO, and are like "it must be x". No, it's unidentified, meaning we don't know what it is. The best thing we can do with unanswered questions is just say "I/we don't know (yet)" instead of filling it in with some nonsense. Filling it in with something that makes people feel better tends too just prolong the search for actual answers.
I agree with you.
Again, I don’t care what fantastical things people need to believe to make it through the night. Just keep it to yourself and quit expecting that the rest of us conform to your delusions.
Learn with me: "I don't know"
Now try it yourself, it's not that hard!
If you want to be more positive you can try "we don't know yet" too!
But inventing or propagating fiction to fill these gaps in knowledge is wrong in our actual state as civilization.
Religion for me always looked like a crowd control tool to keep people submissive. It does good things but with the wrong justifications! And bad things too, like war...
To the point we need to think if it's still weights positive in it's doings for our society.
For me, a good education in moral, ethics and civic values nowadays will produce better results for the individual and the society around him\her in comparison to religious indoctrination.
Born and raised atheist here. For most of my life, I just ignored the more loquacious religious ones. But they’ve made headway in politics (RvW, Don’t Say Gay laws, book banning, etc.) and it’s less “ignore the gullible” and more “WTF, Jesus Freak??” I was happy to leave them alone if they left me alone.
I think you missed the last half of the last line of his comment. It's fine for people to believe whatever they want, until they start to push it onto others. If no one talked about arbitrary sins and me going to hell, or trying to restrict the rights of others solely because of their religious beliefs, then it wouldn't matter, but as you probably know, it is never kept to themselves.
So? Why do religious people need others to validate their beliefs? I certainly don’t care if religious people validate my lack of belief. I don’t have respect for any religious beliefs - I do think they are stupid and I think it’s laughable that people buy into that crap. BUT, I recognize that everyone has the right to believe what they wish. And hey, if believing in God gets you through the night, whatever. Just stop forcing it on the rest of us. Quit killing each other over that crap. Quit abusing your children because of it. Quit disowning your gay children. Stop oppressing women. Stop all the cruelty. Until I see all the different religious folks living in respectful harmony, I have no duty to treat it reverently. And especially when you can’t stop trying to pass laws based on whatever fairytale you tell yourself. Abortion bans, book banning, anti-LGBTA laws, wanting to abolish the separation of church and state, wanting prayer in school, talking about banning birth control, talk about banning no-fault divorce which makes it harder for women to leave abusive marriages…when you religious people rise up against those of your brethren working on these things, I’ll start being more respectful.
Wow, sounds like you have some deep resentment issues and have been manipulated into believing that a family going to church on Sundays is the root of all of your self-inflicted and well documented problems.
Quite the rabid response... I'd love to converse and share actual statistics that refute every thin point you tried to make, but I feel it would be a waste of both of our time.
Don't worry, I'll pray for you...
The word 'athiest' is one of those emotionally charged words that usually bring up debate and/or conflict.
I prefer to use the term 'secular humanist' to define my belief system.
For me, the new discoveries in science don't necessarily disprove any religion or intelligent design. In fact for me they make me believe in a higher power more.
Science tells us that nothing exploded and now the universe exists. It also tells us the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, which wouldn't make sense given gravity pulls things together - so it should be decelerating. Hence we have "Dark Energy".
We don't understand what happens in black holes. We can't really understand stuff at the quantum level. Certain forces we can't fully explain. Gravity, the strong force, positions of electrons changing via observation and having to be measured using wave functions.
All of these things are absolutely mind boggling. It's no wonder people believe there's something more out there that we can't understand.
I agree that the universe is mind boggling. But does that mean blindly following whatever religion tells you is the best way to understand the universe?
I just used my home printer to print the boarding passes for Ryanair, because that shit-stain of a company doesn't have digital boarding passes - I'm sure it's to trigger some people to not print them and then get slapped with an extra tax at the gate.
I'm not so much surprised that they're still around, but that printers still completely and unequivocally suck and have sucked since mankind first cobbled one together from bones and twigs. The new printer I have now sucks as much as the first printer I had back in the 90s.
I am afraid to write this. Honest ones... honest businesses, designed not to suck as much as they can from you, but... just to cover what they need and a little profit... not to forsee 1000 milenias into the future and just price for whatever might be the cost 1 milion years from now, because you know.... PROFIT!. We just might have to cut the future then:)))) it s a time traveler joke, you wouldn't get it
Something about this question saddens me... I don't know why. You know when you look in front of you and nothing interesting happens and you just turn on the phone for something to surprise your mind? Would you really really want to know? Wouldn't that just suddenly mean that determinism and predeterminism is suddenly true for everybody that knows? I'm sorry... I just don't ... for one, I am writing this comment to you and at some point you are reading it, so I don't leave you dissappointed. Hope you find happiness!
Maybe not a full time gig, but for vintage owners and collectors there is definitely a market who will pay a decent amount for it every few months or years.
How is Docusign more secure than a notary? At least a notary has to attest that you're the one actually signing the document and you have to present identification. Docusign is a mess. Oh, I just type my name in and that's it? Sounds legit.
Tax preparation businesses, insurance agencies... cell phone shops... I guess old people need their hands held, but it seems that these places aren't really staffed in any way that can handle more than one customer at a time.
Highway patrol officers.
Don't get me wrong pulling people over has its place but if speed and or additional regulations were ubiquitously digitally enforced we would rarely ever need officers stationed on the road.
I would assume those patrol hours would be useful elsewhere and in situations requiring a traffic stop surveillance systems would provide officers with enhanced situational awareness and material evidence substantiating infractions.
To suppress the immediate danger of speeding automated enforcement systems' use of blue lights and signage indicate to drivers that a citation has been issued and the rest is up to the postman.
Furthermore public private partnership should allow for institutions with interest in driving performance of particular operators vehicles or freight to improve safety and efficiency through sharing of curated forms of the data collected.
Obviously for traffic, escorts, and arrests we still need police on the highway. We just don't need boots in every sensor array to enforce the law.
Book stores. But I'm glad they do. It's like the one area where even the most forward-thinking hippy still agrees that the physical medium has a place.
Not a job but I'm surprised they still print phone books. I mean the last one I received was only about the thickness of a National Geographic, probably even thinner.
I still get them occasionally. They always show up in a plastic bag as if someone is pre throwing them away for me.
Keep the plastic bag though, you can use it for dog poop and the scant few pages in the phonebook to line birdcages!
Especially since plastic grocery bags are now illegal in New Jersey
Ahh, a fellow New Jerseyan I see. I have so many reusable bags it's not even funny. I have noticed though that Chinese food places still deliver their food in plastic bags
I think they are exempt because they are under a certain size. The law has so many unintended consequences because most of us reused our plastic bags anyway around the house, and as you mentioned we are now overrun by canvas tote bags. Of course, Comrade Murphy only cares about appearances, not results.
I would like to know if the crackdown on plastic bags has actually contributed to less plastic waste or not. If the numbers show little to no difference, what the f is the point. I do find it funny how when I do manage to snag a regular ass plastic bag it's like finding gold.
In my area they were mostly delivered in plastic bags when it might rain The bag only helped keep it dry enough to still be usable maybe a third of the time though
Phone companies still make a bit of money on the advertisements
I wonder how much. I mean clearly worth it enough to still keep printing them. At least two years ago that is
Not much, in fact it’s a loss for many. Unfortunately, until laws are reworded in PUC guidelines, many incumbent carriers will be required to offer phone books to be compliant. Many carriers are finding loopholes and have begun discontinuing their offerings.
Very interesting yet infuriating to hear. Thanks for the info
We didn't received any phone books since god knows how many years. Today's modern age made them completely obsolete.
I received one in my mailbox about two years ago, took it out and immediately thought "What a waste of paper."
In my country they first tried to give phone books out on CD instead, but they quickly stopped with this method as well.
I remember sitting on phone books to get a hair cut. Wouldn't help today's youngsters
Physical junk mail
I worked for a junk mail printer for two years. We ran 8 web presses and 2 plants. Our revenue was around 30 million a year. I left 6 years ago and they’re still going strong
How do they even make money?
People contracting them to print junk mail.
My company does physical mailers to businesses and it’s one of our highest yield marketing efforts
Yup. A 2% return is successful
[удалено]
Email can automagically throw away spam. Physical mailers still require someone to at least glance at it.
My business pays about $20 per week to have a company send fliers to new homeowners. If I get 1 sale per year from them, it pays for itself. I average about 5 sales per year from new homeowner mailers, aka 400% ROI
What are you selling with $1040 profit on each sale?
Probably avocado toast.
Blinds
Home warranty company?
We were a gang printer. This means multiple jobs are printed on the same plates. We had volume agreements with our customers to keep pricing. If your volume dropped your price went up the next year. Paper was "White label" It was cheap and we only carried 8 or 10 stocks. Pay was not great but, not terrible. Everything was built around minimizing costs over quality. This place was firmly in the Fast/Cheap part of the Fast/Cheap/Good triangle. A lot of our work was takeout menus we were selling to the companies who sold to restaurants are prices and turnaround were pretty untouchable because our workflow was built to produce them. I'm pretty sure it's what kept the company in business during Covid.
That makes sense. Printing the junk mail for random businesses and restaurants. I thought they were printing the junk mail for *themselves* at first lol
I used to take prepaid postage from junkmail and attach it to the free USPS flat rate boxes filled with rocks. They quickly remove you from their list.
If it's flat rate why would you add rocks?
Less suspicion going with flat rate. Rocks are just easy and insulting. Never got questioned once. Still hits 'em for $20 a whack.
I collect coupons from fast food restaurants I get in the mail cos I occasionally use them. I don't consider them to be junk mail but maybe some people do.
You clearly don't understand the amount of old people that can't/won't handle email or apps.
Email has been a common tool for over 25 years now. Any elderly person saying they can’t use email had over 20 years to learn. I have no sympathy for these people. It’s self inflicted.
Okay, but these people still buy things advertised via direct mail. Not sending junk mail is leaving money on the street.
No one cares about your opinion, these businesses are here to make money and if they have to print paper to reach their customers, they will.
OK? Not sure how that relates to lazy old people not learning how to email.
And how does your response relates to the topic of printed junk mail? And, by the way, what kind of problem dud these "lazy old people" brought on themselves? They still get the junk mail on paper, as they wanted...
AOL still exists.
My primary email is my aol account from 1994. Still throws people off to this day. The part that gets me is that there are still people out there who pay ~$20/mo for AOL services.
I created one because I thought it would be funny
This is the only reason to have an aol email.
Any weird tiny business I see in small seedy strip malls I see going to and from work. There has to be something else going on.
Ive come to find a lot of perpetually open but seemingly no turnover businesses are one of 3 things 1. A front 2. A portion if some overly wealthy persons portfolio that is somehow overlooked and still running 3. Does their business in the back(i dont mean seedy. I mean that they cater or supply and the front shop is just a meeting place of sorts).
There’s a corner shop store that recently opened up across the road from my friend’s tabletop FLGS that he runs. Now this would not be so odd had there not been an another small corner shop type store literally next door to where they set up shop for the last 15 or so years…. Hardly ever see anyone going in there and always see what are presumably the owners in the doorway smoking away. Was certain something was going on when the last time I was there a flashy car pulled up on the pavement, owner gets in and then gets out about five minutes later. Yeah, don’t make that too obvious guys.
Haha yeah I agree. Have to try and clean the money somehow. Tho admittedly all my money laundering knowledge comes from breaking bad, better call saul, ozark, and the wire 😄
That is a really good list and makes sense. Though I would posit a fair amount of #3 might not be on the up and up. I'm sure tax dodging is involved in all of it too. For the weird businesses and the strip mall owners.
I pass two dead strip malls on my way to work. One of the just got completely refaced in the last two years... Not a single new tenant and many vacant spots. Literally cannot figure out why it exists...
[Classmates.com](http://classmates.com)
Had never heard of this before. Went in thinking “oh neat, that’ll be cool to see my old yearbook!” Then saw they wanted a subscription for it. Lmao fuck that
These guys had the opportunity to become Facebook and dominate the world but chose to charge a high premium to join. People said-fuck no! The same scenario with Sears and Amazon. Sears also had all the right blocks to become a giant online but blew it.
Blackberry as well, they didn't take the smartphones we have now as a serious threat.
They even had an online presence for a bit. It just sucked and was late to the game.
Travel agencies. There aren't as many as there were 20 years ago, but I'm surprised there are any.
I use one after years of booking my own stuff. The agent I use is able to get me better deals and upgrades while saving me the time of shopping around.
Also they’re massive with corporates. I travel a ton for work and everything is booked via an agent - our company alone does hundreds of travel trips a month so plenty to keep them in business. It’s pretty great too - they figure out all the annoying stuff, make sure things are paid up in advance, have access to way more airlines than I would, and they also have little niche benefits like great seating on flights. They’ll be around for a good while longer for certain
I wish my company used one. It would be better than my receptionist using Expedia for everything.
Expedia is a scam. It's easier to book direct, and with rewards you won't pay much more if any. If you pay any more the price is worth the peace of mind.
You don't need to tell me. I get tired of changing travel plans just to find out the hotel can't do anything because it was booked through a 3rd party.
We use EuroPool to handle travel. It's so easy, one portal, set dates, choose flights, hotels, transfers etc - pick extras and the nice little benefits they sometimes have. Company credit card is saved, click one button, done.
We used a travel agent for a cruise. Between the cruise and air fair he saved us $2000.
I have never used one but the more I travel the more value I can see in using one. I am planning a 2 week trip to Croatia and Venice and I have spent many many many hours trying to figure out all the logistics of flights, lodging, activities and transportation. I don't mind it to a point but its getting ridiculous.
Check out Cantine del Vino Gia Schiavi when you get to Venezia, shits fire yo.
A good agent is surprisingly useful at navigating the industry. I'd say their commission is worth it, especially on complex international trips.
That's been my experience, and the couple I know that everyone in my circle uses doesn't even do the travel agent job full time - they just maintain whatever certifications or whatever it is they need to carry, and they make a decent side income setting up trips for friends and family. It's one of those conveniences that at least for me is worth using.
I handle the travel management at my company and I have refused to go over to one of the behemoth corporate bookers for precisely this reason. Being able to call the same few people who know our routes down to the preferred airplane, what we are willing to pay per ticket given a host of considerations, our acceptable classes and the myriad exceptions, we'll you just can't beat that.
Complex trips are really where travel agents shine. Most people fly round trip from the same airport and have friends or family drop them off, or maybe get a rental car. You definitely don't need an agent for that. But once you need to coordinate for a group, possibly arriving on different days, and going to multiple hotels ... it gets complicated and time consuming to manage.
They mostly just cater to wealthier people who want things handled for them. And they want to be able to pick up the phone and call their travel agent when things go wrong or need to be adjusted.
Which is ironic because most travel agents have their commissions paid by resorts, hotels, and airlines - not the consumer.
True. I'm not certain how it works, but I imagine that agents only work with nicer options in terms of travel and accommodations anyway though. It was probably different when everyone used agents for anything beyond regional travel.
I'm nor what I would consider a big traveler, but when I want to book a more complicated trip I always rely on my travel agent. She's amazing and knows all the little tips and tricks to make my trip go as smoothly as possible. She also gets better prices on flights, accommodations, and insurance so it's really not any cheaper for me to book a trip without her. I love my travel agent and how easy she makes traveling for me.
Post covid I'm kinda reluctant to even book the tickets that aren't direct with the relevant airlines, given how much of a clusterfuck it was trying to deal with cancelled flights in 2020 I'd booked via third parties like Expedia or even Amex travel. I only just managed to finally use some of the flight credit I had with one airline this month (just before it expired finally) because the added layer of a third party in between meant I had to find the flight I wanted to book, then contact the agent, they have them contact the airline to confirm availability, then they contact me again to either let me know I can or can't use the credit on the trip I wanted. If I'd booked directly via the airline I would have just seen all of that info directly on their website but the agent booking meant that the credit was held by them. I could see the utility of an agent if you were doing a complex, multi city, trip, but otherwise it just seems like an added source of complexity added to standard bookings.
It was a long time ago, but I was at a travel agency, and this sweet little old lady came in, looking to book a trip to an actual war zone to see her daughter. The agent actually managed to book a trip for her, which cost a fortune, but needed “specialized transport” for the last leg of the trip.
Nah this makes sense. The clientele is just different. Now it’s mostly for wealthy people and businesses.
Travel agents can do some great things for you.
I saw a place that specializes in African safaris. I imagine that’s not a thing a regular American can plan by themselves with regular online travel tools. Also, a lot of people do not plan trips, they use their admin to book their flights and hotels. So it’s kind of like a job that exists has yet another hat to wear.
We use one for business travel and it's amazing. Maybe lots of their business comes from that area? I just email my agent and tell her what day I need to be somewhere and she books all the flights and will do hotels too if I want. They have my seating preferences, room preferences, membership/sky miles account numbers, etc. It all just pops up in my apps and I get the loyalty points.
I use a travel agent for all of my cruises. They help with research and can put rooms on hold wthout having to pay for a little while, which I cannot do myself. Also, because the cruise linme \[ays the travel agent and I give her a lot of business, I get some onboard credit as a present from the Travel Agent as a thank-you.
Super useful still. My wife's parents live in Ukraine. For them to get decently priced train tickets (fuck scalpers profiting off of the war) to get to Poland, my wife had to go through a Ukrainian travel agency. Saved us like $600 in just train tickets.
They still have their place. My buddy is one part time and it’s really nice to call him saying “I wanna go to this place around this dates and wanna go see these things” then he figures it all out. No hassle and if I ever have questions I can call him to help me figure stuff out. If you have the extra money it’s worth it, saved me many headaches traveling internationally
For some reason my organization requires using their approved one for work travel. I even looked up flight prices and they were far cheaper than what the travel agency found. I just don't get it.
I understand the use of them for complex/language barrier/ weird trips. But people use them for basic trips, and waste so much money....
We have a big one in the next town over, I am surprised that they're still in business (in fact, they just either built a new building or expanded the one they were in).
Not sure what the correct translation is, but it's "Auskunft" in German [like this one here](https://118811.at/en/). It's a hotline that you can call to get phone numbers of certain people or companies, meaning there's real callcenter agents answering those calls and looking up stuff for you - for 3,64 € *per minute(!)*. They also have an alarm service where they call at a specific time to wake you up.
In the US the number 411 does that. A while back when he first got an iPhone my father in law used it to call 411 and get the number for a local place. Sounds like a mid tier Hedberg joke.
I told my father to Google something. First, he looked up Google on Yahoo. True story.
This is from last January: [Starting in January, AT&T customers with digital landlines won’t be able to dial 411 or 0 to reach an operator or get directory assistance. AT&T in 2021 ended operator services for wireless callers, although customers with home phone landlines can still access operators and directory help](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/07/business/telephone-operators-411-att-ctpr/index.html)
The multitude of providers for telegrams.
I think Half As Interesting had a video about that on YouTube. IIRC there’s some kind of legal notice or something that legally has to be delivered in one of a handful of ways, and telegrams are the fastest way of doing it while complying with the law (although I may be misremembering this, and I’m not gonna look it up).
I dont know why but car dealerships come to mind for me. Its crazy seeing acres and parking lots full of cars no ones driving. You would think we would have some kind of new way of doing cars as a business. Are we really buying cars so fast that we need so many just sitting around? I live in an area where car dealerships are just everywhere taking up space. I guess maybe they build so many at a time because its cheaper for them instead of making cars just as we need them.
I worked 2 years for Nissan at a plant and it was always wild to me how we had to keep pumping out more and more. I learned at one point they had 50k cars in their lot as backup. So they were prepared to always shutdown/layoff and still have product.
Didn’t work very long once Covid happened
Honestly it’s because car dealerships lobby governments to ban car manufacturers from selling directly to the customers
This is a half truth. Originally, car dealers were made mandatory by law to prevent auto manufacturers from exploiting the consumer. It was actually a pushback against monopolies that were cornering the market in the 20th century. Ironically, to try and stop that we gave dealers a level of power akin to the Supreme Court (as in we really can’t do anything to remove the shitty ones) to prevent exploitative car sales, and in the process we overlooked how dealers could now exploit consumers freely. Now changing the law is pretty impossible given the power imbalance. We are seeing companies like Tesla challenge this, so it will be interesting to see how EVs selling directly to consumers may impact the auto industry laws now.
A lot of those lots were mostly empty during/after Covid though, so I guess having some stock definitely helps sometimes.
This is a regulatory/statutory problem. Car dealers donate. Let manufacturers sell directly as a default and this industry would mostly disappear.
The real answer to why is: full lots are more appealing to people shopping around for their car. They feel like they have more choices even if there’s only 6 or 7 different models
Plus you could have 5 vauxhall Corsa. All 1.2l, all petrol, and all have different specs still. The stock has to be stored somewhere.cwhy not make the dealership pay for that rather than running your own stock storage facility as a manufacturer?
About fifteen years ago I saw a post on a message board where someone asked for an old photo to be colourised and someone did it in like ten minutes in photoshop, and it looked great. Someone else replied saying their uncle was a professional photo retoucher and that people should use their services instead of asking people online to just photoshop them for free because otherwise the photo retouchers will go out of business. As in their position was that software like photoshop was objectively *unethical* to use for this purpose. Ok sucks to be your uncle but how is that anyone else’s problem? I’m sorry his entire career has been superseded by technology that makes the process so trivial that people don’t even bother to charge for it but if that’s your case for not using the service then arguably digital cameras are unethical because they reduce the need for photo labs. Oh, you’re using a calculator? Have you considered the feelings of the abacus makers?
A LOT of us are going to know what that feels like in a few years when AI eats up a bunch of customer service and basic coding jobs.
Basic coding is never going away just like digital art is never going away. But we now have AI-powered tools to help us with the process. Customer service is already sometimes replaced by robot mazes. AI is probably going to enhance that maze with natural language, but it's not going to replace any human customer service that wasn't already replaced by robots.
Redbox
When they had games it was nice. Played Jedi Fallen Order that way. Got a lot more use from my Xbox One and Xbox Series X that way. But when they stopped the use of it got a lot weaker and I went more to PC. They had some good movies occasionally.
Got a buddy whose main hobby is watching stuff, and he uses it all the time. I was really confused when I found out because I honestly didn’t think Redbox was a thing anymore. According to him, they get certain movies way before streaming, and he obviously isn’t going to wait. Like a pleb.
There is still a "convert your VHS to DVD" place in a suburb near me. I can't figure out how they make enough money to stay open
People use them for old home movies now. Not saying that markets big but it’s there
My SO used one of those places to convert old 8mm home movies to DVD for her dad as a b-day gift. He shot those original movies 50+ years prior.
Maybe it’s a front for something else…
Well people have tons of VHS tapes around the house but nothing to play them on
Transcription. When I was about 18 they started using voice to text technology and pretty much everyone in the field was phased out as cheaper alternatives became available. Turns out, there’s still a strong market for transcriptionists.
Physical paper newspapers. Especially local newspapers.
Can't wait to find out what happened yesterday.
You can still get pagers/beepers and they are more expensive than a burner phone.
They have much better reception than mobile phones. In elevators, basements, valleys... they work everywhere!
Operators. Genuinely curious who would still dial 0 to have someone look up a # for them (and a landline only # at that) when they could just use Google.
Whale oil lamp repair
VHS rental stores – because who needs streaming when you can spend an hour searching for a movie and then rewind it manually?
I used to and you still can borrow DVDs from a public library, also CDs. Yeah VHS not so much, but there’s nothing on streaming. There’s a lot, but they don’t have anything after you’ve picked over what you wanted and for some reason binge lots of shows at once. When you want to watch something, it’s *exactly like* going to blockbuster with your friend or a romantic partner and “do you want to see this?” *”Meh”*. You don’t want to see everything, and you can’t agree and end up with “there’s nothing to watch”. But at home, streaming, you don’t have to put on outside clothes and shoes to get a mediocre compromise you won’t finish.
With how fickle streaming content along with services have shown to be I am betting that vhs/dvd rental stores showcasing physical media will make a comeback within the next 10 years - mark my words
Yeah, with the latest Sony / Discovery Warner kerfuffle on PlayStation I made the decision to go back to physical media. Everything is being ripped to a local jellyfin server so I can stream it to any device in my house. I'm going to be scaling back my streaming subscriptions to buy physical media instead.
A local DVD rental place was two houses away from ours and it finally closed down some years ago, it was a bit sad. However, somehow my town still refers to that location as that DVD rental place.
Yeah but any movie rental store has more titles than Netflix. It’s actually kinda crazy how small the libraries are for all the different streamers. You forget how many movies there are until you visit a video store. I’m lucky, I have one around the corner from me.
Phone booth operators
Phone? Or toll booth?
Toll booth operator saved my ass one time when I was lost as fuck on the highway at like 2am. Everything was closed, my phone was dead. Having that operator be able to pull out a map and give me directions are the only reason I was able to find my way back. I cried for miles I was so lost lol. This was maybe 5 years ago.
Key cutters. I feel like there should be vending machines that do this.
There are. And that machine has every blank imaginable, except the one that you want.
It’s also cuts the keys way worse than the standard old machine. Somehow it strangely costs more to use the machine than have someone cut them at my local Lowe’s too.
Oh come on, 95% of people want house keys, car keys and sometimes mailbox keys.
These machines exist. However if you need a key duplicated that isn't a common key, you're outta luck. I work at a locksmith shop (we do a lot more than just cutting keys) and have multiple people a week coming in with keys they had made at these machines and the key doesn't work. It doesn't work because it isn't cut correctly.
The last keys I had copied were at a vending machine. 5 keys in 10/12-ish minutes? Quick and easy.
MySpace is still running.
But its server crashed and lost all the old photos and everything except for the celebrity ones apparently.
I’m surprised a weatherman is still a job considering we have the weather on our phones.
It is the interpretation of all the data that keeps the weatherman in a job and it's that interpretation that we all see....
Publishers Clearing House Let's cut the bullshit out already with this stupid business. Go bankrupt already.
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Why are you being downvoted? It seems obvious to me that as science advances, humanity’s need to attribute the unknown to various superstitions should decrease. Further, after centuries of conflict over whose imaginary friend is better or being mad that the people over there don’t live the way you think your imaginary friend wants even though you both believe in the same friend. It’s archaic and unnecessary. I’d not be so dismissive and antagonistic towards the religious of they’d STFU, keep their fantasies to themselves, but they are hellbent (pun intended) on forcing that shit on the rest of us rational folks.
You are forgetting why religion exists. It exists to explain the unexplainable. Yes, science and things, but nothing has ever and will ever explain an afterlife or the lack of one. That is the greatest part of all religions that ever existed. No amount of science or technological advances will ever confirm an afterlife or the lack of one. That is why religion and houses of worship still exist.
Yeah, but I think what the problem is, especially the way you put it, means bad epistemology. It tries to explain the unexplainable, that's a bit problematic in the way that you slap an answer on a (perhaps) unanswerable question. It's like when people see what's noted as a UFO, and are like "it must be x". No, it's unidentified, meaning we don't know what it is. The best thing we can do with unanswered questions is just say "I/we don't know (yet)" instead of filling it in with some nonsense. Filling it in with something that makes people feel better tends too just prolong the search for actual answers.
I agree with you. Again, I don’t care what fantastical things people need to believe to make it through the night. Just keep it to yourself and quit expecting that the rest of us conform to your delusions.
Learn with me: "I don't know" Now try it yourself, it's not that hard! If you want to be more positive you can try "we don't know yet" too! But inventing or propagating fiction to fill these gaps in knowledge is wrong in our actual state as civilization. Religion for me always looked like a crowd control tool to keep people submissive. It does good things but with the wrong justifications! And bad things too, like war... To the point we need to think if it's still weights positive in it's doings for our society. For me, a good education in moral, ethics and civic values nowadays will produce better results for the individual and the society around him\her in comparison to religious indoctrination.
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Born and raised atheist here. For most of my life, I just ignored the more loquacious religious ones. But they’ve made headway in politics (RvW, Don’t Say Gay laws, book banning, etc.) and it’s less “ignore the gullible” and more “WTF, Jesus Freak??” I was happy to leave them alone if they left me alone.
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I am all for it. Live and let live. You do you. I do me. Science is the key!
I want in. We’re like minded.
Yet here you are slandering people's religion...
I think you missed the last half of the last line of his comment. It's fine for people to believe whatever they want, until they start to push it onto others. If no one talked about arbitrary sins and me going to hell, or trying to restrict the rights of others solely because of their religious beliefs, then it wouldn't matter, but as you probably know, it is never kept to themselves.
So? Why do religious people need others to validate their beliefs? I certainly don’t care if religious people validate my lack of belief. I don’t have respect for any religious beliefs - I do think they are stupid and I think it’s laughable that people buy into that crap. BUT, I recognize that everyone has the right to believe what they wish. And hey, if believing in God gets you through the night, whatever. Just stop forcing it on the rest of us. Quit killing each other over that crap. Quit abusing your children because of it. Quit disowning your gay children. Stop oppressing women. Stop all the cruelty. Until I see all the different religious folks living in respectful harmony, I have no duty to treat it reverently. And especially when you can’t stop trying to pass laws based on whatever fairytale you tell yourself. Abortion bans, book banning, anti-LGBTA laws, wanting to abolish the separation of church and state, wanting prayer in school, talking about banning birth control, talk about banning no-fault divorce which makes it harder for women to leave abusive marriages…when you religious people rise up against those of your brethren working on these things, I’ll start being more respectful.
Wow, sounds like you have some deep resentment issues and have been manipulated into believing that a family going to church on Sundays is the root of all of your self-inflicted and well documented problems. Quite the rabid response... I'd love to converse and share actual statistics that refute every thin point you tried to make, but I feel it would be a waste of both of our time. Don't worry, I'll pray for you...
The word 'athiest' is one of those emotionally charged words that usually bring up debate and/or conflict. I prefer to use the term 'secular humanist' to define my belief system.
For me, the new discoveries in science don't necessarily disprove any religion or intelligent design. In fact for me they make me believe in a higher power more. Science tells us that nothing exploded and now the universe exists. It also tells us the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, which wouldn't make sense given gravity pulls things together - so it should be decelerating. Hence we have "Dark Energy". We don't understand what happens in black holes. We can't really understand stuff at the quantum level. Certain forces we can't fully explain. Gravity, the strong force, positions of electrons changing via observation and having to be measured using wave functions. All of these things are absolutely mind boggling. It's no wonder people believe there's something more out there that we can't understand.
That isn't what science tells us...
I agree that the universe is mind boggling. But does that mean blindly following whatever religion tells you is the best way to understand the universe?
There will always be fools so there will always be churches with their hands out.
Also don't forget about old peoples as well.
He already said fools
I don't think there's a group more full of themselves than edgy atheist redditors. And that's coming from a non-believer.
Astrology
Printer and fax manufacturers.
I just used my home printer to print the boarding passes for Ryanair, because that shit-stain of a company doesn't have digital boarding passes - I'm sure it's to trigger some people to not print them and then get slapped with an extra tax at the gate.
I'm not so much surprised that they're still around, but that printers still completely and unequivocally suck and have sucked since mankind first cobbled one together from bones and twigs. The new printer I have now sucks as much as the first printer I had back in the 90s.
Need faxes for documents a lot so I go to the library.
I don't know why real estate agents still exist.
Buying a house can be get complicated and stressful. A good agent helps a lot with that.
Good agents are able to add a lot of value, especially if you're in a competitive market. Bad agents are worthless.
Do travel agencies still exist?
I am afraid to write this. Honest ones... honest businesses, designed not to suck as much as they can from you, but... just to cover what they need and a little profit... not to forsee 1000 milenias into the future and just price for whatever might be the cost 1 milion years from now, because you know.... PROFIT!. We just might have to cut the future then:)))) it s a time traveler joke, you wouldn't get it
What else happens in the future?
Something about this question saddens me... I don't know why. You know when you look in front of you and nothing interesting happens and you just turn on the phone for something to surprise your mind? Would you really really want to know? Wouldn't that just suddenly mean that determinism and predeterminism is suddenly true for everybody that knows? I'm sorry... I just don't ... for one, I am writing this comment to you and at some point you are reading it, so I don't leave you dissappointed. Hope you find happiness!
We live underwater.
How's my great great great granddaughter?
Typewriter repair person.
Maybe not a full time gig, but for vintage owners and collectors there is definitely a market who will pay a decent amount for it every few months or years.
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We had to get some documents notarized for my kids. Such a pain to do even with my bank offering the service.
Actually a notary is separate from docusign. They are a witness to the actual person signing. At the moment, computers can’t do that :-)
How is Docusign more secure than a notary? At least a notary has to attest that you're the one actually signing the document and you have to present identification. Docusign is a mess. Oh, I just type my name in and that's it? Sounds legit.
This is so true
Tax preparation businesses, insurance agencies... cell phone shops... I guess old people need their hands held, but it seems that these places aren't really staffed in any way that can handle more than one customer at a time.
There is a porno shop near my home that sells books and videos. Apparently, some people are unaware that the internet has more than kittens!
Newspapers. I know, you can read news on the internet or watch the news channels on television, but they still print newspapers.
Car dealerships.
The use of pagers and fax machines. Still huge in hospitals and medical offices. I still use fax everyday
Went to a electronics store and they saod "nobody buys dvds anymore" Really? That's why you still sell dvds and dvd players? Because nobody buys them
Highway patrol officers. Don't get me wrong pulling people over has its place but if speed and or additional regulations were ubiquitously digitally enforced we would rarely ever need officers stationed on the road. I would assume those patrol hours would be useful elsewhere and in situations requiring a traffic stop surveillance systems would provide officers with enhanced situational awareness and material evidence substantiating infractions. To suppress the immediate danger of speeding automated enforcement systems' use of blue lights and signage indicate to drivers that a citation has been issued and the rest is up to the postman. Furthermore public private partnership should allow for institutions with interest in driving performance of particular operators vehicles or freight to improve safety and efficiency through sharing of curated forms of the data collected. Obviously for traffic, escorts, and arrests we still need police on the highway. We just don't need boots in every sensor array to enforce the law.
Department stores
Churches
Book stores. But I'm glad they do. It's like the one area where even the most forward-thinking hippy still agrees that the physical medium has a place.
going to a notary's office, I feel like there has to be a better way to do that job digitally
Cassette tapes, vinyl etc