11 everyday jobs from the 1980s that have almost completely vanished

One of the surefire signs of luxury back in the 1980s was an elevator operator: someone who controlled the speed, opened the doors and operated an entire elevator. Office buildings, department stores and fancy hotels would all employ one before automatic lifts made them a thing of the past.

However, in certain luxurious locations, including hotels and stores, you can sometimes still find someone who will take you to your desired floor.

Back in the 1980s, you didn't have to go down to the supermarket to pick up your milk as it would be delivered straight to your doorstep. At the time, it was believed that about 90 per cent of UK residents had their milk delivered.

The process was incredibly simple: just leave your empty bottles and payment outside, and by the morning, the milkman would have left fresh milk on the doorstep.

While milkmen still exist, you generally have to order your milk deliveries from niche companies.

One of the biggest businesses in the 1980s was video stores, allowing people to bring movies and TV series into their homes whenever they wanted, instead of relying on going to the cinema or waiting a whole week to catch the next installment of your favourite episode. 

Stores like Blockbuster, Hollywood Video and Major Video dominated the market, but have now become defunct thanks to online streaming platforms like Netflix and Prime Video sounding the death knell.

Independent video stores with clerks still exist, but they're hardly a high street staple anymore.

Creating a newspaper or magazine is hard work. Back in the 1980s, specialist typesetters and artists would need to manually create the layout before it was sent to the printers, using tools such as hot wax, exacto knives and photo-typesetting paper.

Nowadays, we use computer programmes to create the layout, meaning that physical paste-up artists are redundant.

When punters headed to the cinema back in the 1980s, a key staff member working behind the scenes was the film projectionist, whose job it was to splice trailers together on the reels, as well as making sure the movie played smoothly.

With films now sometimes landing on streaming services first, or large complexes opting for digital playlists, this is another job that's become a thing of the past. Arthouse and independent cinemas may still employ a film projectionist, however.

Needed to make a call, but you didn't know the number? At the time, you would call a directory assistance operator and after answering 'What city please?', you could find the number you were looking for. These workers were occasionally subject to abuse, with people calling for recipes or general information.

Thanks to the internet, finding out the number of a business is as easy as it comes. While the service is still in use, people now have to pay for it, making it far less popular.

Toll roads remain the bane of modern drivers. Before these became automated, you had to pay the fare to staff sitting in the booths. However, machines have now taken over this role, and it is very rare to see a booth with a human attendant these days.

Although they were fast becoming rarer, the 1980s still had filling station attendants who would pump the petrol into your car for you. This isn't all they did, as they would also clean your windshield and check the oil levels.

Now, petrol stations are nearly entirely self-service, and some even dispense with all human presence thanks to payment being taken via machine.

Back in the 1980s, one of the best ways to educate your child away from school was with a large encyclopedia. Purchasing the entirety of a popular brand like Encyclopedia Britannica's offerings could set you back over £1,000. This could be consolidated into monthly payments, with volumes arriving once they were paid for.

To seal the deal, an encyclopedia salesperson would be dispatched to your door in order to iron out payment details. However, this job is now entirely extinct, with children using online resources like Wikipedia instead of heavy encyclopedias.

A popular store on the high street at the time offered watch and clock repairs. The 1980s was the time of analogue timepieces, which were prone to requiring fixing by a specialist.

But as people started using digital devices, especially mobile phones, not only did the use of watches fall off, but so did the position of watch winder.

Many of us may write a quick note or record a voice memo when an idea strikes, but back in the 1980s, high-flying businesspeople had official typists to take down their thoughts. Some variations of the role also had them turning these musings into formal business papers.

However, with the rise of word processors, emails and personal computers, people started taking notes themselves.