In the old days, you’d get service with a smile.  Even if you didn’t get a smile, you’d at least know there was some human you could deal with, talk to, reason with, or just ask questions of.  Nowadays, it takes a special effort on your part to get past the computer question and answer system, and it’s rarely easy.  The slow march of time and technological process is making a lot of jobs obsolete and leaving a lot of skilled workers (like the elevator operators above) on the unemployment line.  Here’s a brief look at some great, obsolete jobs, some of which I knew about and a few of which I never knew existed.

The worst part for me of this whole article isn’t that I have some desire to be an elevator operator, it’s that I’m currently employed as a worker in a dying industry in both my day job and in my hobby job.   If there’s a dictionary definition of being caught in a rock and a hard place, I’m that picture.  Thanks to the change of time, my day job is dying out.  Thanks to the economy, my freelance work is drying up.  Welcome to the 21st Century, kids; never ever major in the liberal arts.

Tags: unusual jobs, obsolete jobs, jobs dying out, technology, humans replaced by technology, employment, dehumanizing technology

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