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September 2, 2024

— Martin Luther King Jr.

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Not doing that anymore

The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated as a local holiday on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City. Two years later, President Grover Cleveland signed a law making the first Monday in September of each year a national holiday.

Our Canadian friends and neighbors signed on a decade later. (Labour Day, with a "u," but still.)

We're all on "Team: Non-Date-Pegged Holidays Should be Mondays So You Get a Long Weekend," right?

Also, I think this shows us that if you want to be remembered for something positive as a president, no matter what else happens, be the one who signs a law giving people a day off once a year in perpetuity.

Anyway, a lot has changed since back then. For one thing, people back then never had to Zoom meetings, and nobody ever checked their emails. And the nature of work itself, and what people actually do for a living, has changed immensely.

With that in mind, here’s a ongoing list of interesting, obsolete, formerly commonplace jobs that I’ve compiled over the years. The folks at genealogy and DNA-testing company MyHeritage came up with a few of them, so I've added to it over time to create what’s below:

1. Elevator operator

We’ll start with this one, because my mom did this job in a department store when she was a teenager in Montreal. Other workers nicknamed the elevator operators “yo-yos.” I think she lasted one day, which sounds familiar. Also, at least one hotel in New York City still had elevator operators as of a few years ago, but I called to check last week, and they were phased out during Covid.

2. Knocker-upper

How did people know when to wake up before alarm clocks, but after everyone lived within earshot of a rooster? They paid someone to knock on their door or window in the morning.

3. Video store owner

Not many people still trying to make a living in this field. There is one remaining Blockbuster video store, in Bend, Oregon. I called them on Thursday as well; they're still open according to Google reviews, although the call went to voicemail. There’s also a Twitter feed—although it’s a parody, and it hasn’t been updated since 2022. (It’s funny but NSFW, so you’ve been warned.)

4. Breaker boy

“A breaker boy was a coal-mining worker in the United States or the United Kingdom,” according to MyHeritage. “He separated impurities from the coal by hand.”

5. Factory lector

Lectors read aloud to factory workers. They’re obsolete now of course because we have radios, the internet, headphones—and, come to think of it, a lot fewer factory workers.

6. Iceman

These workers cut large blocks of ice from frozen rivers and lakes during the winter and ultimately delivered them to customers. Obviously this was all before electric refrigeration.

7. Computer

Have you seen the movie Hidden Figures? Computers were workers, mostly women, who spent their days performing mathematical calculations—and then checking them. They were replaced by, well, computers.

8. Gandy dancer

“A gandy dancer was an early railroad worker whose job was to lay and maintain railroad tracks,” MyHeritage reports. “In England, they were called ‘navvys.’ Their nickname comes from the methodical dance movements of the railroad workers.”

9. Gas station attendant

I’m aware there are a few places where this job still exists. I even live in the only remaining U.S. state (New Jersey) where self-serve gas is legally prohibited. If I were in charge I'd get rid of that mandate; I'd much rather just do it myself and be gone than have to wait for the attendant.

10. Switchboard operator

Connecting phone calls once required people (mostly women) who manually moved phone cords into outlets. Additional Montreal-related trivia about my family: My grandmother did this job, working the switchboard for radio station CJAD, close to 50 years ago. Apparently some of the DJs or morning show hosts liked to bring her on the air sometimes.

11. Sleeping car attendants

In the days of overnight rail travel, attendants waited on long-distance rail passengers and set up their berths so they could sleep at night. It was hard work, and most attendants were African American men. It was also one of the few jobs reliably open to Black Americans in the Jim Crow era that offered a step up into the middle class.

12. Print journalist

Years ago, before the advent of the Internet, many journalists wrote exclusively for media entities that would print their stories on actual paper. These “newspapers” and “magazines” then had to be physically distributed to readers. Non-Montreal related trivia about me personally: This was my first job after college, at the New Haven Register in Connecticut.

13. Book peddler

MyHeritage: “Book peddlers were traveling vendors. Also known as ‘book canvassers,’ they went door-to-door selling books. For many rural Americans, this was their only way to obtain new reading material.”

14. Lamplighter

When streetlights were powered by oil, someone had to go out and light them at night.

15. Bobbin boy

“Bobbin boys worked in textile mills in the 18th and early 19th centuries,” according to MyHeritage. “Their job consisted in bringing bobbins to the women at the looms, and then collecting the bobbins that were full with spun cotton or wool thread.”

16. Hemp dresser

Again from MyHeritage: “Hemp dressers worked in the linen industry separating the coarse part of flax or hemp with a hackle. They were also known as ‘hacklers.’“

17. Scissors grinder

These folks went door-to-door, offering to sharpen scissors and knives. Now, well, I guess a lot of us just buy new ones, although at least in my little view of the world, I tend to see them at farmers' markets.

Oh, and we need a quote. I graduated from a Jesuit college, so here's a good one I found on a Jesuit reading list. It's by Martin Luther King Jr.:

Hope you have a good Labor Day. Let us know your worst job — or the one you had that no longer exists at all — in the comments.

We're remaining on Low Power Mode for today and perhaps tomorrow, and I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. Don't forget we have two newsletters now!

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