‘What’s a now obsolete job from history that sounds made up?’ – 23 roles that will stop you from complaining about work forever

There are lots of job titles that are commonplace nowadays that our great-grandparents would not recognise, like ‘artificial intelligence content trainer’ or ‘influencer’. But what about when you look at it from the other direction and consider jobs from the past that sound bizarre to us?

They’ve been chatting about this on the AskReddit page after user newyork-or-nowhere posted this:

What’s a now obsolete job from history that sounds made up now?

Which drew lots of answers from people who couldn’t believe that anyone ever had these now completely outdated professions.

1.

‘It’s possible this still exists in places, but a relative of mine used to work as an office tea lady – her whole job was walking around an office with a trolley that had a tea urn, biscuits, sandwiches and cigarettes. I think the tea was free and the rest was stuff you could purchase. She and her kind have been replaced by vending machines and instant hot water dispensers.’
–rocketscientology

2.

‘Night men who collected the pisspots from large cities and sold it as manure to farmers.’
–tamtamdanseren

3.

‘My friend who is 94 was a telegram boy in his youth.’
–Zippy-do-dar

4.

‘Computer. Before referring to a machine, a computer was a person who did computational tasks.’
–TheLeastObeisance

5.

‘I forgot the name of the occupation, but there used to be people you could pay to come round and correct the time on your clocks.

They’d usually have a very exact watch, and every morning they’d go round the city hall, or the main train station, or wherever the local time was kept, and set their watch to that time. And then they’d go round the city to check the time on their watch to the time on the clocks and correct the clocks if necessary.’
–ConstableBlimeyChips

6.

‘Ice man would bring giant blocks of ice to homes that had ice boxes instead of electric refrigerators.’
–Double-Two7065

7.

‘Mudlarks. In Victorian London they would comb through the exposed riverbed of the Thames looking for anything valuable (coins, coal, etc) that they could sell. The poor would actually make a very meagre living, but still a living, off of the job.’
–scipio0421

8.

‘Telephone switch board operator. My mum was one in the telephone exchange in the Liverpool in the 60’s. If you were rich enough to have a phone in your house you’d just pick it up, and my mum would instantly be on the other end, you’d tell her who you wanted to speak to and she’d put the jack plug relating to your phone in the socket relating to who you wanted to talk to.

She’d press a button to ring the recipients phone and then introduce you to the recipient and leave you to it… and then listen in to the conversation for gossip ammo with the other switchboard girls.’
–Normal-Ad2587

9.

‘A knocker-upper. In Victorian England people would go around hitting people’s windows with long sticks to wake them up in the morning.’
–LouBarlowsDisease

10.

‘Wasn’t too long ago that there were people who stood by a conveyor belt and picked out the burnt corn flakes. I helped install the optical sorting machines that replaced them.’
–TheeFryingDutchman

11.

‘TV control room operator. I used to cue up video tapes, adjust levels, roll commercials, all analog, all in real time.’
–charliedog1965

12.

‘Tinker. Used to repair pots and pans door to door. Also a knife sharpener. I remember seeing one as a kid, he had a pushbike that converted into a grinder that was pedal powered.’
–Used-Journalist-36