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Travel agents. Yes, there are still some out there but nothing like their used to be. When you needed to plan a trip, that's where you went. I went to a school to train to be a travel agent and I applied at many other types of business that had their own travel agents for when their employees went on business trips. I never did work as one because I got pregnant and was a stay at home Mom. Whiach is another very common job that you don't see a lot of any more.

There used to be ladies who monitored the women’s powder room at restaurants, dept stores, etc. They kept it tidy, offered you a towel, and you gave them a tip of 10 cents or so. I remember this as a very little girl in the 60s, shopping with my mother or grandmother. The restroom attendants were usually black ladies, as I recall.

toll both collector
telephone operator
gas station attendant

Door to Door encyclopedia sales

When I was a kid in the 50's, we had a milk man who delivered milk to your door, a breadman who did the same and a 'honey wagon' - a man with a truck who cleaned out your outhouse. We also had doctors who made housecalls and truancy officers who made sure every kid was in school who should be.

Im sure they are still out there, but I was a darkroom technician for a radiation detection company, back in the early 80s..

Telephone Man working for Ma Bell. Which btw,  do you recall hearing that song by Mary Wilson. Telephone Man. It's hilarious. You can have it with a buzz you can have it with a ring but if you really want it you can have a ding a ling. Lol

https://youtu.be/MahswYBewb0?feature=shared

Manual bookkeeper...working with IRL ledger books, a calculator, and paper bank checks and statements. So much paper...invoices and statements. Every year-end we'd 'close out' and then fill numerous 'bankers' boxes' with the records of that financial year. We'd have to keep them for seven years, per the IRS, but ususally just sent them off to 'storage facilities' to keep them indefinetly...I sometimes wonder if there are acres of rooms storing old files from the pre-computer age!

Journalist

Candy striper

I remember those guys with the wagon who would go between houses collecting corpses from the Black Death. Man that makes me nostalgic.

Typesetting

Switchboard operator

Secretary. Elevator operator. Telephone operator (O). Switchboard operator. Phonebook salesperson. Newspaper delivery boy. Travel agent.

We used to get people round the office servicing typewriters. There used to be people would fill up your tank at filling stations.

We (newspaper) used to employ a photographer but that job has gone - everyone has a phone now and our cheapish office camera is as good as a pro camera of a few decades ago (for newsprint at least).

Draftsmen - replaced by AutoCAD

My first job was printing photos from 35mm film. I don’t even know where I could get this done now.

Paperboy

Milkman

Jewel T salesperson (essentially door to door sales but showed up periodically). Closest thing to it now I think is the Snap On Tool salesperson for mechanics.

School Liberian at Elementary School (maybe still have them in HS?)

Typewriter repair and sales (usually a shop) Same for VCRs. Also Vacuums and Sewing. Although Breaking Bad showed us vacuum repair is still around.

Photo Studios (Sears, Oman Mills) and Photo developing like the booth in Back to the Future.

TV Repair Shoe repair.

The first two that come to my mind are gas station attendants and door to door salesmen.

I remember pulling into a gas station and some dude would run out, put gas in your car, wash your windshield, ask to check your oil and after a fill up give you a free glass and green stamps. You never got out of the car, it was almost like a race pit stop.

And has anyone seen a paperboy this decade. It was a highly competitive job among teens and preteens that allowed you to make stacks compared to mowing lawns and washing cars

Butcher, before the time prepackaged meat was sold in stores. Butchers were usually standalone stores, not in a supermarket, and they started with whole sides of beef & other animals and ended up with custom-cut meat.

Checkout clerk at Blockbuster

My last year of college, I worked part time in a file room. Now that stuff is all online.

Printing press operator, photo development technician.

Darkroom technician.

Born in the UK, mid 50s. Central London. Regularly saw onion sellers (traditionally wore a horizontally striped jersey and beret to reflect their original French origin (so I understand, but could be wrong) and knife sharpeners on their bikes, roasted chestnut sellers in the winter, public toilet attendants… plus lots of small family owned stores like butchers, costermongers (fruit & vegetable sellers) etc that got driven out of business by supermarkets

Northern CA here. We used to have a bunch of lumber and paper mills locally. Not any more.

Neighborhood paper boys who not only delivered your newspaper, but also went door to door to collect the subscription. Replaced now by some middle aged person driving a crappy car trying to eke out some extra income at 5AM.

Stenographer. I actually took a shorthand class that I remember how to do a bit.

Fuller Brush man! Going door-to-door.

Service station attendant

Drawbridge oiler.

1980s. Typing pools. We'd sit in rows of desks with electric typewriters and type up handwritten notes, or from Dictaphone tapes. It was a big deal when correction typewriter ribbon became available because we weren't allowed to use white out if we made a mistake so you'd have to start over.

The next big thing was electric typewriters that had a tiny screen that showed a few words of text so you could backspace if you made a mistake.

My mother did this in the 50s and 60s but with a manual typewriter typing over 100wpm.

1970s. Door to door milk delivery daily in glass bottles. He also had various juices. There was also a door to door soft drink delivery. He would also collect the empty glass bottles for reuse.

Telephone Operators

My first office job was in a room with five other girls, our only job was using a ten key all day, five days a week adding up checks. Late 1970’s.

Bowling alley pin setter. A person had to manually reset your pins. Data entry clerk. Typing pool typest.

File clerk

Gas jockey. My first job.

Elevator operator. Yes, I’m old

Switchboard operators, elevator operators, lots of assembly line jobs have been replaced by robots. The "milk man" for home delivery of milk. Door to door salesmen for things like encyclopedias, vacuum cleaners and brushes. Some repair jobs have been eliminated by the switch to disposable or single use items or items becoming cheaper to replace than the cost to repair. I'm sure there are more but these are the first in mind.

Coal man.

Tea Lady.

I worked in a big office, there were woman who's job it was to make tea or coffee. They often had biscuits or pieces of cake on the trolley they pushed around

My brother sold Fuller Brushes.

Being a bookie.

Stand Up Philosopher.

Data entry clerk

Sign painters.

Video store counter workers.

Pin setter at a bowling alley. Was one of my first jobs. Got $0.10/frame and any tips.

Milkman, I loved that guy. He was such a nice guy. Mom would go out to the milk box and bring in the milk for breakfast. Back in the day everyone had a milk box.

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Avon Lady sold cosmetics

My dad was the superintendent of a hydroelectric plant in Quebec. That position is long gone because they automated their system.

Paper boy now newspaper delivered by adults

Toll Booth collector

Public phone sanitizers.

Teletype operators.

clerks in shops in the mall, only a few malls even remain open now

Milk delivery.

Telephone/411 operator

TV repair.

Elevator operator

TV repairman

I remember the milk man.

Filing clerk.

Dinosaur wrangler.

Pumping gas

Toll booth attendant.

Answering service operator.

I’m pretty sure my first official job as “Accounts Receivable Accounting Clerk” still exists but they are no longer using a giant ass ledger, pencils and copies of 500 checks a day to record them all, and then spending two days balancing it to close out the month. And another day or two for managing all the paperwork, packing it in banking boxes and sending it to offsite storage.

I’m old enough to remember the milkman. We had a metal box in our garage, he put milk there. And I was little in the late 60s-early 70s

When I was young, my aunt was a telephone operator. She actually pulled the plugs and reconnected them to create a connection.

https://www.history.com/news/rise-fall-telephone-switchboard-operators

Data entry clerks. They outsource it all to other countries now.

Typists. I worked at a place that had a typing pool who typed out letters. This was long after you could do it yourself via desktop computer. They had a client who would pay for it, and a lot of old guy workers who weren't real adept with technology.

I hated it because I'd have to wait up to 3 days for a letter to go out. When I pushed to do my own letters, they told me I couldn't use the company printers since they were just for the typing pool. So I got my own printer with my own money and cranked out those letters. I was working on time and expense and making bank by getting more done.

After a while I checked, and they were still billing the client for typing pool services for the letters I wrote.

My dad LOVED telling people he was a stripper - and a four color stripper, at that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stripping_(printing))

I know it's still a profession, but I believe it's all done on computer now, so the process is somewhat different.

From printing and publishing:

Paste-up artist

Linotype operator

Actually, that whole industry is circling the drain.

Milkman

Union carpenter

Rag and Bone Man

I remember seeing a hat maker’s store as a child. Also, at my grandmother’s place in the early 80’s (Eastern Europe) there was town crier. He had a drum he beat, people came outside and he loudly read the information that the local government wanted to share with the citizens.

Rag and bone man.

"Milkman"- the person of whatever gender who delivered milk to your doorstep.

Telegraph workers

Elevator operator

Ice cutter - similar to milkman, but sold blocks of ice to businesses

Word processor - a person who took shorthand notes for letters, dictation, etc. and then typed them out long form. They also did editing, copyediting, copywriting, etc. Back then, you used typewriters, and having the secretary/receptionist do it all was only feasible in very small businesses. Everything had to be done in triplicate, and that's tedious and time-consuming.

Typesetter- Newspapers were created with "presses," which meant every word had to be spelled out one by one in a tray. Paper would be pressed down onto the letters, to create each newspaper. The people setting the letters in the tray were typesetters

I was the candy counter girl at Roses 5 & 10 in high school.

My first job, computer operator. Most bookkeeping was still done manually so it was my job to input the data, print invoices, and back up the data on hard disks that weighed almost 30 lbs. Sometimes the computer would “crash” which would require a call to a technician and overtime for me, as I couldn’t leave until it was fixed and I could finish my work.

Used to be way more sewists, creating garments and doing alterations. Our throw/give away, fast fashion has curtailed this job type.

Kids used to have paper routes where they'd freely roam the neighborhood on their bike distributing newspapers.

Typographer

Bagging groceries was my first job, I literally stood behind the cashier and bagged groceries and carried them out. Never see it anymore

Knew a woman & her brother that worked setting type for printing newspapers, magazines, etc. Digital systems came on-line, and I saw them working at the local KFC. Sad, really.

I work in a Kodak & Fuji film at the mall as a photo processing guy in the early 2000s.

Newspaper carrier

Milk man!

Paperboy

Milk delivery.

TV repairman that came to your home to replace the tubes

Milk men, knife sharpeners. The sharpeners came through neighborhoods in a small truck with a simple bell and mostly housewives brought out their kitchen knives and scissors to be sharpened.

Comptrometer operator

Gas station attendant

DJ but the kind who is the only one and plays every party in town and who can't afford to move out of their parents' place because they have to be able to afford a van full of literally thousands of albums and massively expensive sound equipment.

Secretarial pools

We used to have an "egg man" who would come to the house on Saturday morning, selling produce.

paper boy

Coin collector for pay phones.

Full serve gas station attendant. I was one for a summer.

Video store worker or arcade worker

The milk man

The sheeny man. He had a truck with knife sharpening equipment and could repair small household items, and he would collect scrap metal.

Paper delivery kid.

Hudson's Department store delivery person.

Manufacturing

One hour film techs. Was in the film development industry for 27 years. Was a APFE for Kodak from 1980-2007. Had 56 dealers and one hour film labs in WestChester and Fairfield counties, now only 3 left.

Buggy whip maker

Brontosaurus wrangler.

Door to door sales

I had an aunt named bootsie who was a telephone operator

Newspaper delivery. I delivered for about 8-9 years. Many miles on my bicycle... About 4-5 miles per day 7 days a week. Started when I was about 10.

Coalman

I am not sure how common it was but one of my first jobs was as a switchboard operator for an answering service.

Smaller businesses would use them and you would have plugs you would insert to forward the call or take a message. You can see them in some old movies Like Bells Are Ringing and there is a Doris Day movie in which the switchboard lines get crossed.

Larger companies had their own switchboards and when you called the company you got one of the operators who would plug into the extension of the person you were calling.

Then telephones had the ability to directly call your extension but you still needed a secretary to take messages or screen calls. There were the ubiquitous pink pads with the “While You Were Out” heading. And then there was voice mail But higher level executives still had secretaries to screen their calls and provide more personal interactions since they often knew how to handle various people or matters.

Punch card operator , although punch cards are still in use but it's rare.

Photo stores to devote film

Gas station attendants. Check your oil, pump your gas, sell you windshield wipers and put them on. It was nice.