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What are some antiquated things that most people still do out of a force of habit, or that are now unnecessary but have lasted culturally?
For example, I still leave my phone number at the end of voicemails. I'm aware the recipient has my number but...it just feels wrong not to leave it? Perhaps rude?
I still find myself saving twice before exiting a video game because my monkey brain wants to make sure the game cartridge actually recorded the data properly and that I didn't lose hours of progress. Even though, of course, the games are now digital and most of them have perfectly competent auto-save systems that often save automatically when you leave.
I almost always do this.. I will save, think for a moment, then think "did I save? Best to just save again"...
Then the next time I go to play, I'll hit the 'load save' button and there'll be saves like:
Looks like my Witcher 3 save list!
Yuuuuuuuuuuup. And then I just go Back - > New Game
Every damn time...
In a very similar vein, Photoshop and many other programs have auto-save now. But I've been using Photoshop since the early 2000s and developed the habit of constantly pressing ctrl+s in case it crashes.
I keep doing it now even when I don't have to. It just doesn't feel right.
Oh yeah, this was a fun habit when I started using Confluence. "Save" is identical to "Publish" in that system. 40-something versions later...
I don't like auto save. I want saving to be deliberate, so I can edit something and then choose whether I want to save it (or do save-as) or throw the chsnnges away. Having to manually duplicate files before editing them is an antipattern that I can't stand, because it makes nondestructive editing potentially destructive...which shouldn't be a thing with digital tools.
I completely understand. I have a habit of doing manual duplicate files too. But now I work off the cloud, so I sometimes just go back a few revisions instead of duplicating. But my workflow is a mix of the two, depending on the change I'm about to make.
What's messed up is at work when I get used to working in MS office, with it's fancy autosave everything feature with OneDrive, and I go back to my CAD (which has, as everyone knows, a UI from the early 2000s and the program stability to match) and have gotten out of the habit of saving after every operation; of course CAD crashes and I lose 2 hours of work.
Quicksave twice (or more), then again from the save menu for me! Had to add the save menu step because of the number of times I quicksaved right before certain death.
I've learned to wait a few seconds before quicksaving for the same reason.
"alright let me stop here, wait 1...2...3... alright nothing seems to be killing me, let me quicksave"
Then there are those of us who also don't trust quicksave and will open the menu to save the ol fashioned way.
I distrust my saves so much I set up git for my savegame folder.
I'm always amused when I see someone (invariably an older person) pressing the clear button on their calculator multiple times, be it in software or a physical calculator.
Oh damn I do this too. Hit the clear button like 3-5 times before starting a new equation.
I still do this with Excel files even though I use OneDrive and have AutoSave turned on.
We start emails with "Dear PERSON" and end it with "Kind regards, SELF" despite the metadata very clearly identifying both those bits of info for us.
I was told a decade ago by my then-manager that that was too formal and impersonal, and I should use "Hi PERSON" instead.
But, yes, identifying the recipient and sender inside an email isn't technically necessary. However, a case could be made for this still being socially required, because it makes the email seem a bit more like a personal communication and less like a bald dump of text into someone's inbox.
I actually start my emails with: "Good morning," "Good afternoon," or, "Hello."
It's casual enough to come across as friendly, but still formal enough to sate pretty much anybody. I've sent emails to every level in corporate hierarchy like that and haven't heard a complaint once.
Then again, I've worked in places where people don't really have time to just bitch about the header of an email. So that probably helps.
What if I open your morning email a few hours later - in the afternoon? Or, what if I'm in a different time zone to you and it's still morning where I am when you're wishing me a good afternoon? :P
(Someone on Tildes recently "discovered" that I'm a contrarian - as if that wasn't obvious! haha)
This is not really relevant to me as the sender. I give the greeting of the day at the local time at the time of sending. It's none of my business when you choose to open the email.
Exactly!
And that relates to the point I made in a child comment here.
You just have a need to explicate every edge case don't you. Are you annoyed by single word answer "depends. (Full stop)" ?
Yes. Welcome to me! :)
However, these aren't really edge cases: they're quite common situations.
And they could have the unfortunate effect of making the previous commenter's email greetings slightly less friendly, because it looks like the email sender isn't considering that the reader might be in a different place or condition than they're in.
I never really thought of it as less friendly to read good morning in the evening. Just a funny quirk of space and flow of time.
If they really wanted me to check on it in the morning, I feel like they'd call too. Mails are mostly on a "probably gets back to me in a few days" basis.
I account for this.
I also have a handful of other conventions that I've developed through the years that would be horribly tedious to recount. They're more for my benefit than anyone else's, since I'm sure no one notices them. I can fall victim to blank page paralysis, so observing conventions helps get the fingers typing which gets me part that first hurdle.
This is pretty much my formula as well.
Good Morning Lisa,
Blah blah whatever.
Love Ya,
codefrog
Does "love ya" fly in any setting other than family?
You got me, I snuck that part in to see if anybody was reading LOL. I really go with either thanks or regards for the closing, depending on the situation.
Now I’m imagining C-Suite suits from different companies sending messages to each other with that sign off… thanks for the mental image!
It does help identify who you believe needs to take action on an email vs. who just needs to be aware of what you're emailing about. I'm often copied on emails that are just shotgun sent to multiple departments, so it helps me know if I can just archive the email or if a response is expected of me.
I don’t think the metadata identifiers are any more obvious that a return address was on traditional post. A salutation and valediction in a formal message is not only a sign of respect for the recipient, it establishes the gravity and decorum for all future communication between the parties. Of course they know who the sender is, but signing the message denotes a confidence in the message and acts as an invitation for the recipient to rely upon the content of that message.
Agreed on the decorum. It also defines the tone very well.
Kind regards = very polite and formal
Thanks, = we're coworkers and know each other well so ending in an informal but nice way
Regards = you have pissed me off but I can't say that to you directly
Commuting to work for 8 hours a day at a desk job that could be done more effectively from home. I’m glad COVID opened up everyone’s eyes to see how non-essential a lot of these work related staples really are, and how important a work life balance is.
There are some things I also do socially just out of habit that have changed contextually through the years. I grew up as a teenager who would spend hours hanging out with friends over the phone. Then phone calls turned to very informal “hey, question, answer, k thx bye” and text messages were the new email. “Call me when you get this”. Today, phone calls are reserved for damn near emergencies or planned events, and calling outside that threshold can leave the person you’re calling answering the phone wondering “what happened? I hope it’s not an emergency!” And messaging is the default way to talk.
I’m thankful that my colleagues are starting to see the value in just calling for a quick chat more often. It turns a 15 minute messaging affair into a 3 minute phone call and I love it.
"Hey, you. It's me. Just wanted to talk to you more about the thing the other day. Call me back." click
Thanks "Me" for leaving an entirely useless message. Don't expect me to call back any time soon because I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHO YOU ARE!
One of my coworkers numbers in my contacts is saved as "A or B or C?!??"because he would call and start talking about work stuff, and I have no idea which of the three possible engineers who would have access to the info he describes it is.
When they do that in movies it drives me insane. Nobody should be on the phone saying "it's me". The sound quality is so terrible don't make me guess!!!! >:E
And they always hang up without saying goodbye! Did you grow up in a cave?!
They're probably just used to talking to my mother on the phone. It takes about five good byes before I can hang up. That wouldn't make for compelling viewing lol.
Are you a sibling I did not know I had LOL. My mother is like that too.
Voicemail in itself is kind of antiquated I feel. I disabled mine recently because if somebody is calling me about something important enough to warrant a voicemail, they can leave a text if I didn't answer. Besides, I always call people back when I see they called 🤷♀️
What about services? Like i get a call .. ignore it thinking its spam then a pop up ("Hi its [service station] your oil change is done, come pick up your car, bye.") .. "oh right, forgot that was happening"
or "hi its the burough, calling about the permit you filed" etc. They don't text and i can't call back every local number (due to non stop spam calling)
For me as a male in law school, about to enter the legal profession: The necessity of neckties.
I can't stand anything close to my neck (I wear polos, unbuttoned dress shirts, and V-necks for a reason), but men are expected to wear a close necktie, whereas women can wear a modest V-neck, flat swoop collar, or other style and still be "professional." This seems like an unfair double standard, especially for those of us with sensory issues.
This has historically even to today been a massive problem in medicine.
Doctors would always wear ties, and despite it being obvious it took decades of research showing that ties are a massive vector for spreading infection across a hospital. Initially they stopped junior doctors, the consultants insisted they still wear ties. In particular surgeons (namely orthopaedic) had this whole elitism thing and insisted on wearing ties despite the research.
Finally (in the UK at least) it was banned in any clinical setting in the NHS. But sure enough you'll find consultants wearing a tie occasionally.
I remember my sister telling me about 10 years ago when she was just starting out as a junior Doctor seeing a consultant on the ward with a tie. She grabbed him and forced him to remove it immediately. My sister is a force of nature, I struggle to think of any man who would refuse her righteous request.
At least in Law wearing a tie won't literally kill people.
That’s so interesting because I have rarely seen a doctor in clinic that I can remember that wasn’t wearing scrubs! I’ll meet with my pcp via video and she will do video only appointment days and those days she won’t enter the clinic so she will wear business casual attire, but in clinic everyone is scrubs only. The only doctors I’ve seen in clinic that wear business casual/professional attire are therapists and psychiatrists.
Thinking back I think maybe my pcp as a child wore a suit and tie? But even then I remember my last appointment with him before he retired, he wore scrubs. I remember because they were bright purple.
I'm not sure what country you are from, but modern surgery was developed in the UK and it is basically a continuous lineage to today.
Over here they have to go through the many, many years to become a Doctor and be addressed as Dr. Then following several more years to become a surgeon they are finally granted the title of Mr.
Male surgeons can be really, really sensitive about this. If you call them Dr Something, they will always correct you sorry its "Mr Something". They also have to pay a fee every year to be a Mr and not a Dr. I'm friends with quite a lot of orthopaedic surgeons and the stories they tell. Those guys are the worse of the worst. Proper old boys club.
So these Mr men will want to wear suits and a tie to show their prestige.
They will justify violating NICE and general NHS guidelines by saying they are not patient facing. They are doing consultancy and only during surgery do they need to be in scrubs.
It is total bullshit. It doesn't matter if you don't see any patients that day. You will be meeting many other doctors, interacting with them, shaking hands. Each time you adjust your tie it is soaking up pathogens ready to pass on for the next meeting.
Then when they get brought down onto a ward during an emergency suddenly they are in their suit and tie spreading disease. Luckily people like my sister will grab them and force them to take it off, arrogant gits.
Fortunately even among the worst offenders it is become a rarity these days, John Snow was what, only two centuries ago?
Wait, so they go from Mr. Smith, to Dr. Smith, back to Mr. Smith again? Or is it short for Master Smith or something like that? (Even though I think the shortened form of "Master" is M.)
Yep that is exactly the progress. They go Mr->Dr->Mr and are EXTREMELY protective of being a Mr. It isn't short for master or anything else. Becoming a surgeon and a Mr is a point of pride.
Bizarre right?
This is an interesting and bizarre quirk of your system. Here in the US you become a Dr. when you get your MD. You can go on to become a surgeon, but you’re still an MD (and go by Dr.).
If you called a surgeon Mr. here, you’d get the same response as calling them a Dr. there!
As I mentioned before, modern surgery started and developed in the UK. It occurred entirely independent of modern medicine and the idea of a modern Doctor.
Surgeons were not Doctors and did not go through the same educational pathway. They also took pride in not being a Doctor but a surgeon. We are talking 250+ years ago.
As modern medicine advanced, Doctors and Surgeons merged such that they had shared education and training with later specialisation. But the surgeons held on to that historic idea of being distinct and a Mr.
As silly and benign as it all seems it is indicative of the elitist horrible all boys club found in surgery, particularly orthopaedics. That elitism prevents change and maintains the status quo.
Yeah, as someone whose wife is an orthopedic surgeon, I’m well aware of this part at least.
My uniform in secondary school (age 11-16) included a tie for the girls. When my sisters went 10 years before me, it was ties for boys but not for girls. In the spirit of equality they decided on ties for both rather than the (much more sensible) idea to scrap them completely. Ties are a bizarre clothes item, I agree. Uncomfortable and pointless
Additionally for women in the legal field: skirt suits are considered more appropriate in the court room than pant suits.
The legal field is just stupidly antiquated in terms of what is deemed professional.
Too add onto this, British courts always makes me laugh, I mean look at this nonsense lol
Serious question: I would think your profession would be one of the first to not make assumptions about people's genders and not to force not-illegal things on people?
I was watching a short documentary about transitioning ladies who hire styling coaches, and one of the ladies is a lawyer, and one of the segments is about choosing outfits for work. :)
But even for men, really, it's still mandatory? Or is it "your colleagues may not care but your clients would" kind of thing? Can ladies wear pants?
Based on my legal education (watching My Cousin Vinny once a year) the issue is actually that the judge will hold you in contempt of court and then your hot fiance has to bail you out, but she's running out of money because she beat a guy at pool but he's refusing to pay up on their bet.
I think I might be ready to take the bar.
my dad's a lawyer and he showed a scene from it to our mock trial team as education... absolutely one of my favorite movies 😁
My knowledge is limited to Futurama's Single Female Lawyer Ally McNeal, and Phoenix Wright.
"could you repeat that?" - "Single Female Lawyer 🎵 fighting for her clients 🎶 wearing sexy mini skirts 🎵and being self reliant 🎶
Your honor, I'm just a simple Hyper Chicken from a backwoods asteroid, but I feel like you've forgotten someone on that list.
What about lawyers in england w/ the powdered wigs?
Personally I like ties and would wear them if it wasn't awkwardly over-formal for my profession. But I certainly understand what you mean, it's like being gently choked all day long.
I leave my name and number at the beginning and end of voicemails. I was always taught to make sure it was at the end of the message, but if it needed to get replayed make sure it's the first thing you could hear.
It’s definitely the best way to do it. I get calls at work all the time without a number, or they say it too fast or unintelligibly, so I can’t call them back.
While typing, I find myself double spacing after a period even though I know it's an antiquated way of doing things. It's because we were the last class back in high-school who were taught to type on typewriters before they moved everyone to computers.
I understand this, but as a former typesetter it drove me nuts.
Also, HTML (which includes email) does not natively support double spaces. Instead, one space is replaced with a non-breaking space character (&tbsp), which can throw off things when trying to typeset a column that was submitted in the body of an email (by an older gentleman who double-spaced and used his own manual carriage returns. Formatting that stuff for publication in InDesign still gives me PTSD.
Could you not simply replace all period-space-space with period-space?
That's basically what I did, but it's tricky when it includes non-breaking space characters, unless I obliterated them all and added them back in where necessary (for dates and the like).
Same for me! One of my younger friends (an English major) gives me crap about it.
Can't believe you've done it again!
How come this habit has stuck with you? It's gotta be at least 30 years since it was relevant or useful
I was taught to type like this in the 90's and it was indeed the standard format for a lot of schools until the mid naughts, even for companies.
I also double-space basically all the time. It just feels natural, since a period is a longer pause than a comma.
I had a professor in college (a decade ago) who would call me out on it, but they were the only ones who ever cared, and so I never broke the habit.
I double space after a period in everything I write and no one has ever mentioned it as an issue. I didn't even realize this was a change.
I've seen some of my colleagues do it. I haven't said anything, but think it's annoying af
Not always, we don't!
When external parties call me at work and leave a voicemail, our work phone system has no record of the number that the call came from. Sometimes, the caller doesn't leave their phone number, and I'm left to trawl through our records trying to find it.
So, keep leaving your phone number on voicemails!
I like referring to people as Mr/Mrs so and so, and Uncle Auntie if they are closer. :/ I'm kind of sad this has nearly completely gone away, such that people feel somewhat offended when I do.
I have found that using last names for professionals tends to bring out the worst in already negative or straight up harmful people. While most cooperative, professional people don't mind.
Antagonistic or harmful people seem to take an instant dislike to me when I do that, and I find that to be valuable information!
I started using last names to adress all kinds of public servants many years ago, despite last names being practically unused in a formal way where I live. It was a tip from someone that had lots to do with different public agencies and departments on behalf of health care patients.
By using last names, or even going as far as talking about their workplace/department rather than personal name, it makes it easier to keep things objective whenever they can't do something you'd like them to. It's about their professional position and not them as private individuals, after all.
Using last names when talking about (or to) kind, regular humans that aren't willfully antagonistic always eases tensions if something isn't going perfectly to plan. They appreciate the professional distance.
Knowing that someone is hateful and will make things difficult lets me make informed decisions about maybe "stepping around" them to solve things. Or maybe set up meetings with several people present at once. That way they are held accountable by other professionals instead of just me. Better to do that from the get-go, than bang my head against a wall because they straight up refuse to cooperate.
May I ask where you're from? Using Mr/Mrs for strangers is definitely still super common in the US, especially for kids, but using Uncle/Auntie never was so I suspect you're not from there?
Oh how interesting!
@sparkbet, FeloniousPenguin's area is a black people thing, but I'm actually East Asian: as far as I know, Taiwanese, Hong Konger (me), Japanese and Korean people usually get their kids to call close adults uncle/auntie, and if they're not close then always Mr/Mrs/Professional title.
I remember my highschool teacher didn't want me calling her Mrs X anymore after I graduated, and it was so awkward because calling her by her first name is (still) unthinkable!
@FeloniousPenguin I've heard that that's why, in Black Panther, the antagonist, Killmonger, addressed the king mother as "Auntie" ironically, when he showed up in Wakanda as challenger to the throne: he's literally her nephew, but also it's a statement of his African American identity.
Ah that makes sense! I studied Mandarin Chinese in college so I learned about calling people those terms in Mandarin but never connected it to the English words in the same way lol
I would never call my high school teachers anything but what I called them in high school though, using their first names sounds so weird. At the same time though, I'm very American so I call(ed) tons of my college professors by just their first names lol
Ah that makes sense. I'm a white Northerner and I grew up calling a couple of my parents' closest friends Uncle/Aunt, but it was very limited to a few specific individuals who I was introduced to that way as a kid.
Within our age group (30-40), most of our friends who have had kids are having their children call close friends Uncle/Auntie. We have that title from a few.
As @chocobean already mentioned, Asians and islanders use familial terms for people they're close with. Adults closer to their parents age will be Aunt/Uncle. Friends that the same age or slightly older may be brother/sister. (In their language of course) This culture tends to carry over wherever we live (E.g. America, Europe, etc.).
I've found that in the U.S. most people are very technical with their familial terms. 3rd/4th cousin twice removed, etc.
We had a neighbor for Texas growing up that had her boys call all the parents "Mr and Mrs (enter first name)". All the parents loved it and they all started using it. We moved to a wealthier neighborhood after a few years to get into better schools and all the parents were pretty strict about using Mr/Mrs + their last names. I disliked most of the new parents, they felt like they were missing the warmth of the old neighborhood. So I think I'm somewhere in the middle.
Handshakes, I think. It might have originated as a means of showing peaceful intent. Its spread has been so powerful that it's transcended cultures and now is a very common form of greeting in many parts of the world. Possibly Covid19 has had an effect on its prevalence now but it's still pretty common.
I think we have written history of handshakes going back 3000 years. Demonstrating peaceful intent wasn't the original use as far as I remember. Or at least it wasn't common to all cultures using it.
It is thousands of years old, it being common across the world is expected.
The issue is with today's modern knowledge of bacteria/viruses shaking hands is a huge vector for infection. This isn't a new thing, far deadlier pandemics have occurred long after germ theory took hold. It would have made far more sense if we phased it out during smallpox last century.
In some cultures kissing is a common greeting, or a type of hug. They are even worse for infection.
It is antiquated only in it is dangerous and spreads disease. The meaning behind a handshake as a form of greeting is still as important as 3000 years ago. We just need to socially accept alternatives that don't involve physical contact.
I disagree. Greeting someone with a handshake is a nice, informal-yet-personal, complement to a hello. There is a minority that would rather fist bump or wave, which is fine. The majority won't be going away from handshakes. No chance Westerners bow to each other like the Japanese do either
Hand written signatures. Outside of certain documents for which a wet ink signature is absolutely required (which also usually then requires notarization), it seems ridiculous that we still use signatures. Easy to scan, easy to forge. Yes, it’s an indicator that some kind of social contract is being adhered to, but it has no true weight anymore. Even those e-signature platforms let you pick your name in some cursive font and somehow because you opened it in your email, it’s binding.
As someone who handles voicemails as part of my job, thank you for leaving your phone number. You would be amazed at how many people have a different phone number than the one left on the caller ID.
Some (many?) men still open doors for women, or let women go first, even though we no longer (officially) assume that women are the weaker sex. However, this sexist practice continues. (We should all be showing this consideration to all other people, regardless of our or their gender - and especially so in the case of infirmity or disability.)
In Canada we do this for everyone so I've actually completely stopped thinking it was a gendered thing at all. :/ It would be so rude if I stood there holding a door for her, and then decide to slam the door in his face?! What if a man is carrying something?! Or is pushing a stroller??
That doesn't even make any sense. I hope this practice goes away in favour of holding door for everyone soon.
I audibly gasped at the "joke", having never heard that before. >:E
I wonder if this falls under the "I live under a rock" category or if it's not common in my area / era
Big c and little c conservative have different meanings?
I hold the door for everyone, unless they're being a dick. Gender has nothing to do with it
I don't see it anymore but there was this weird period of time where people would ask you for directions even though they have a smartphone. You would pull out your own phone to show them the location on the map and suddenly they realize that they also have a smartphone.
And just today, an older gent was telling me verbal directions on how to go somewhere unprompted when I said I was going there and it's a new route. Please stop talking. You're very kind but I have a phone and verbal directions super suck and I just want to get going now please. Please.
I get asked directions around town several times a year still. I think part of it is that in some places GPS will get you close enough but in my own there are lots of things in back alleys that aren't obvious.
Ha, voicemail
I called t-mobile and had them disable it on my phone account. I’ve got text and email for checking messages — voicemail is so slow and annoying! Besides, there’s a missed call notification anyway too.
Another antiquated thing: I separate my whites and bleach them. I’ve heard nobody does that anymore.