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Monthly Archives: August 2022

Obsolete Occupations: 5 Jobs from the 1950s That No Longer Exist Today

Jobs, like everything else, change over time. For the most part, this is due to changes in technology. For example, no one’s applying to be a switchboard operator nowadays because telephone technology has moved far beyond that.

However, it’s still fun to look back through history to grasp how far we’ve come. This is most readily apparent in terms of workplace inclusion. Although there’s still plenty more progress to make, jobs (and the teams that complete them) are far more diverse nowadays than decades ago.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at five obsolete jobs from the 1950s.

1. Bowling pinsetters

In the early part of the 20th century, the pins in a bowling alley had to be manually reset every time someone bowled. That required a special person’s input, namely: the pinsetter. Usually, this was a job reserved for young kids and teenagers as it didn’t pay particularly well. In the 1950s, most of these pinsetter jobs disappeared as automatic pinsetters gained popularity and made the role obsolete.

2. Radio Actors

Although the radio was invented in the 1890s, it didn’t reach broadcasting capabilities until 1919. From then until the 1950s, radio dramas were hugely successful. Perhaps the most infamous one was Orson Welles’ 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds – it reportedly had people believing a Martian invasion actually happened!

With the rise of television in the 1950s, however, people were no longer content to gather around the radio. Instead, they wanted to see a show in black and white and then color. Many radio actors’ careers declined shortly thereafter.

3. Milkmen

​​The job of milkman – or, more accurately, milk deliverer – has been around for hundreds of years. Alongside milk, they also delivered eggs, butter, cream, and other products in the early morning. This was mostly due to the lack of refrigeration available in private homes. Deliveries started out on foot, moved to horse-drawn carriages, and then switched to motorized vehicles.

Nowadays, however, milk deliverers are far less common. Although there are still a few, the job largely became obsolete decades ago because most people have refrigerators that can do the job for them.

4. Switchboard operators

The job of the switchboard operator goes all the way back to the late 1870s, shortly after Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call. The job involved connecting different phone plugs into different jacks to connect the callers.

Alongside making the first phone call, Bell also hired the first female switchboard operator. In fact, women made up a bulk of the switchboard operators from the late 1800s up to the 1960s.

Although this sounds forward-looking, it was mainly due to two not-so-progressive reasons. The first was that women were seen to be more courteous. The second was that companies only had to pay women a quarter to a half of what they paid men.

5. Soda jerk

As anyone who has seen movies about the 1950s knows, all the cool kids drank sodas at the drugstore. Those serving the sodas were called soda jerks, and usually, they were men. Alongside regular sodas, they also poured ice cream sodas – a delicious (but not too nutritious) mix of carbonated water, syrup, malt powder, and a few scoops of your favorite ice cream.

As the 1950s wore on, fast food restaurants gained popularity. What they had on offer made the soda jerk role obsolete.

Although you’re unlikely to apply for any of the jobs above, it can be fun to take a trip through memory lane to see what the past was like – and how far we’ve come since.

 

3 Ways To Make Sure You’re Hiring The Best People For The Job

When you have an open position that you need filled within your company, your main goal should be to find the best possible person to hire for this job. However, weeding out the mediocre people from the best people can be hard to do during the interview process. Luckily, there are a few things you can try to help you better be able to identify those who might be the right fit.

To help you see how this can be done, here are three ways to make sure you’re hiring the best people for the job.

Have A Clear Understanding Of What You Need

Before you even begin the hiring process, you or whoever is going to be conducting the interviews should have a very clean understanding of what your company is wanting and needing from someone who will be filling this position. Otherwise, you can’t hope to effectively fill this position, as you won’t know what you’re looking for.

While it’s important to find someone that is a match for your company in their personality and company culture, if the person you hire can’t actually do the job that they’re hired to do, no amount of sparkling personality is going to make up for that. So if you’re needing someone to help with loading and unloading of freight, they better be able to physically be capable of this work.

Learn All You Can About Their Experience

To help you determine if your candidate has what it takes to excel in the role you have available, you should try to learn all you can about their past experience doing work similar and different from the role they’re applying for.

To help you tease out this information, spend some time asking the right questions and then speaking with their references about how they are as a worker. While you might not be able to get a lot of information from their references, especially if they are from an HR department of their former employer, even knowing things like if they are eligible for being rehired can help you to learn if they were able to gain the requisite experience from other positions.

See How The Feel In The Space They’d Be Working

If there is a candidate or two that you feel good about and think that they might be a good fit for your organization, it might be a good idea to take them around the space that they would be working in to see how they respond to it.

As you do this, look for people who ask questions about the space relative to the work they’d be doing. It’s also a good sign if they are open and friendly with your current staff, as this could indicate that they will fit in well.

If you’re determined to find the best possible candidate for the position you have open in your company, consider using the tips mentioned above help you get to this point.

Top Tips for Keeping Your Customers Happy

With the fiercely competitive climate in the business world, no business can survive, let alone thrive, without doing everything to keep their customers happy. While there are different approaches to accomplish this, there are some basic practices every business should adopt to make sure their customers are always happy.

Here are some top tips for ensuring your customers stay satisfied and keep coming back.

Get to Know Your Customers

One of the best ways to keep your customers happy is to get to know them. This way, you will be able to understand their needs and wants better and cater to them in a more personalized manner.

One effective way to get to know your customers is to create a customer profile that fits your main customer base. This should include information such as demographics, preferences, spending habits, and so on.

You can also get to know your customers better by engaging with them directly. This can be done through surveys, interviews, focus groups, or even casual conversations.

Offer Top Notch Delivery Services

Countless customers opt for delivery services. It’s simple, convenient, and sometimes even cheaper than transporting goods themselves.

So, another important way to keep your customers happy is to offer them top-notch delivery services. This means ensuring that their orders arrive undamaged on time, every time.

To do this, you need to have a reliable and efficient delivery system in place. This includes having the right personnel, vehicles, and infrastructure to support your delivery operations. For example, hiring an unloading service can help you ensure that goods are unloaded quickly and safely from the delivery truck.

You also need to have a system in place for tracking deliveries. This way, you can keep tabs on every order and also communicate with your customers throughout the delivery process. This will help build trust and increase satisfaction.

Focus on Quality, Not Quantity

In the race to increase profits, some businesses focus on churning out as many products or services as possible, regardless of quality. But this is a surefire way to lose customers.

Instead of quantity, focus on quality. This means ensuring that your products or services are up to par and meet the needs and wants of your customers.

One way to do this is to create products or services that effectively solve a specific problem for your target market.

You can also focus on quality by ensuring that your products or services are consistent. This means delivering the same level of quality every time, regardless of the circumstances.

Lastly, stand behind your products or services. Offer warranties or satisfaction guarantees to show your customers that you believe in what you’re selling.

These are some of the top ways you can keep your customers happy. By following these tips, you can be sure that your customers will always be satisfied and will keep coming back for more.

 

3 Tips For Talking About Engagement Rings With Your Future Fiancé

If you and your partner are starting to think about getting married, you’ll likely want to have a conversation about engagement rings at some point. And while this can be an exciting time, it can also be a time where you and your partner are having to deal with some real-life issues together that could set the tone for the rest of your relationship.

To help you in figuring all of this out, here are three tips for talking about engagement rings with your future fiancé.

Talk About Your Budget

For many people, purchasing engagement rings is going to be one of the biggest purchases they’ll make as a couple. So if you haven’t had many discussions about money or your joint finances before now, this is a good time to have this conversation.

The amount of money that you and your partner want to spend on engagement rings will be totally up to you. However, you’ll want to make sure that you’re on the same page with both your budget and your expectations. If you’re both expecting something glamorous but have a relatively small budget to work with, you’ll want to make sure that you know where concessions are going to be made. This way, no one will be put under undue pressure or be disappointed when the proposal happens.

Decide If You Want To Shop Together

Once you know how much money you’re wanting to spend on your budget for your engagement rings, you then have to decide who will be picking out the rings.

For some people, picking out the rings together is ideal. But for others, having the engagement ring be some sort of surprise is what they want. When deciding this, just make sure that you and your partner communicate openly about how you want the shopping process to work. Then, you can either plan a date to go look at rings together or you can pick out the perfect ring to surprise your partner.

Get On The Same Page With The Terminology

When the time comes to actually go shopping for the engagement rings that you’ll be buying, something that can be incredibly helpful is to get on the same page with what each of you wants. And to do this, you’ll want to be speaking with the same terminology.

Ideally, you should try to use the right terminology that the jewelers will be using at the store. This way, when you tell them you want something with a princess cut, you’ll know that you both have the same image in mind.

If you’re wanting to talk with your partner about getting married and getting engagement rings, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you with this conversation.