Remember how department stores, other buildings had elevator operators?

[bobbieinok]

And between floors the operator sat on a little pull-down seat.

Didn't they call out each floor as the elevator came to it?

The operator was usually a middle-aged woman, white or black.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. I remember mostly older men, some black...

"Fourth Floor. Men's suits and shoes."

[cyclonefence]

2. And they wore a uniform

"sixth floor, bras and girdles" always got a giggle from me.

[CTyankee]

16. I remember the old joke about the elevator operator annnouncing

"Fourth floor, lingerie. Bras half off."

[cyclonefence]

17. Oh, you were a lot more sophisticated as a fourth-grader

than I was!! That's brilliant.

[NurseJackie]

23. Ground floor: Perfumery, stationary, and leather goods, wigs and haberdashery, kitchenware and food.

Ground floor: Perfumery, stationary, and leather goods, wigs and haberdashery, kitchenware and food. Going up...

First floor: Telephones, gents ready made suits, shirts, suits, ties, hats, underwear, and shoes. Going up...

Second floor:Carpets, travel goods, and bedding, materials, soft furnishings, restaurants, and ties. Going down...

First floor: Telephones, gents ready made suits, shirts, suits, ties, hats. Going down...

[jberryhill]

29. You'd better not say that in an elevator

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/is-this-old-lingerie-joke-harmless-or-harassment/559760/


Last month, during a conference for scholars who study international affairs, Simona Sharoni, a professor of women's and gender studies at Merrimack College, asked a crowded hotel elevator what floor everyone needed. Richard Ned Lebow, a professor of political theory at King’s College London, replied, “Ladies’ lingerie” (or, as Sharoni remembers it, “Women’s lingerie.”) Several people laughed. Was that sexual harassment?

[MyOwnPeace]

3. Yep, and

they had manual doors/gates that they had to open and shut before they could continue.

What about the gas stations that had 5 or 6 attendants "attack" your car when you pulled in? One pumped the gas, one checked the oil, one cleaned the outside windows, one cleaned the inside windows, and one checked the air pressure in the tires!

[bobbieinok]

4. Weren't there TV commercials showing how much faster their workers were??

[Lindsay]

5. One of my high school classmates

was an elevator operator in one of the department stores in Cleveland.

Which was considered one of the nicer summer jobs available.

[Basic LA]

6. And the joke was that they had to fire an operator ...

... because he couldn't learn the route.

[Harker]

26. The job has its ups and downs. n/t

[Basic LA]

34. LOL

We'll be here all week, folks.

[Harker]

35. Damn right.

Who else experiences that kind of upward mobility on a regular basis?

[GP6971]

7. My grandfather was the

administrator of a retirement home. The elevator operator's name was Peggy who was white and I'm guessing was in her late 50s.

The elevator control was a large dial with a handle . You got on and told her what floor you wanted and she moved the handle to the dial's numbered floor. And yes, she called out each floor.

[Runningdawg]

8. My great aunt was an elevator operator at the Tulsa Club when I was a little girl.

On Saturdays she only worked from 9-12 and she would take me to work with her. I had a little footstool and I sat between her and the controls. After work we would go to the Woolworth's lunch counter and then to Frougs Dept store to try on hats and gloves. Frougs and Woolworths are long gone and the Tulsa Club has been too for decades. But - Tulsa is in the process of renovating it, right down to the original elevators!!!
I WILL be one of the first guests.

[bobbieinok]

19. In 40s Gramma and I would walk downtown to Woolworths and eat at the lunch counter on Saturday

Loved Frougs!

Did you by chance go to Riverview elementary school? Gramma lived on Guthrie half a block down the hill from Riverview.

That whole area down the hill from the school is now a freeway. The school was torn down, and now there's a fire station there.

[bobbieinok]

20. Across the street from the station now is the Greek Orthodox Church of the big Greek fall festival

Before the freeway the church was in a small gothic-church style building at the corner of 11th and Guthrie.

There were many Greek families living in the neighborhood. The Greek kids at Riverview had to go to the church once a week after school for Greek lessons.

As an adult I've often wished my folks had asked if I could join the lessons. But no one at that time thought about taking the opportunity to learn an 'exotic foreign language.'

[Runningdawg]

25. I didn't grow up in Tulsa, I lived in Osage County

but my dad came to Tulsa nearly every Friday to pick up supplies for his business. He would drop me at my aunt's house where I would stay until after church on Sunday. She lived on N Atlanta and Pine, across the street from that school.
From 1983-1996 2 good friends lived on Houston(?) behind the church to the S.
I live downtown now, it's still one of my fav places in the world.

[mitch96]

9. Alas, another one of those jobs that went by the wayside

Like buggy whips... things change..
m

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

10. Yes, I remember.

When I was a little girl I hoped I'd grow up to be an elevator operator.

I recall being utterly fascinated and almost non-believing when I first rode a self-service elevator.

If every elevator still needed operators, well I don't know how many millions of jobs would be sucked up that way, but it would be a lot.

Similarly, when I first went to work for the Telephone Company in the mid-1960s, back when it was Ma Bell, I recall being told that if every single call had to go through an operator as was the case before dial phones came about, essentially every single adult woman in the country would need to be an operator.

Yep. Things do change.

[Sneederbunk]

11. I remember having to use the stairs ar a hotel because

the elevator operator was not on duty. Remember the fence and watching the floors go by? Watch your step.

[LAS14]

12. The Museum, Die Neue Gallerie, still has an elevator operator. I asked...

... her why that was and she just said "A variety of reasons." No gate or anything, just a regular elevator. So now I'm really curious.

[Codeine]

22. Maybe she wasn't an elevator operator

but actually a performance artist?

[JohnnyRingo]

13. At my local Sears.

It was only two floors in the days before shopping malls, but they had a manned elevator to take us up. My mom used it exclusively and I remember riding it when I was still young enough to hold her hand. I recall the fence they'd pull across and the lever used to activate it.

I especially remember one time in the '60s when my mom and I boarded and the operator informed her that she could no longer smoke on the elevator by law. My mother was livid, taking the stairs for the first time in outrage. On the way up I asked her why she was so upset about just that one place where she couldn't smoke. Her reply was "they're just trying to get their foot in the door" of anti smoking laws.

My mom, the prescient democrat with a libertarian streak.

[MyOwnPeace]

14. Ha!

Great story about your Mom!

[asiliveandbreathe]

15. OMG - Filene's Boston....I remember the old elevator with gate and attendant...to go to Filene's

basement was an exciting outing with Mom...back in the fifties..I still remember the mountains of lingerie and unmentionables on several tables where people were "like" (PU from my grandchildren) buying everything..I worked at Jordan Marsh Framingham in early seventies during holidays..linens...loved it..I hear they tore it down...

[Blues Heron]

32. Jordan's furniture

not to be confused with Jordan Marsh! lol miss Boston a lot.

[red dog 1]

18. When I was little, I actually wanted to be an elevator operator when I grew up.

As a kid, I loved elevators, even after they all became automatic

[IronLionZion]

21. The developing world still has a lot of elevator operators

it's common in India, usually a child's or elderly person's job, but it's probably not dangerous. In hospitals, it's a security guard who does it to make sure you are authorized to go to whatever floor you want to go to.

[needledriver]

24. I *was* an elevator operator!

One of my part time jobs in college (NYU 1970s) was to run the elevator at school. One of the school buildings was an old dance hall/bar mitzvah palace on the lower east side. Even then it was a creaky old fully manual elevator! I had to close the outer door and inner gate, then push the lever forward (for up) or back (for down). The tricky part was timing the stop so the floors would line up - no automatic leveler. No, I did not have a little seat, and I did not call out the floors. I got paid in cash in a small envelope with the amounts and deductions hand written on the back.

[frazzled]

30. You probably took me up at one time or another

Though I was there only in the very early 70s (1968-72)

My (future) husband's work-study job there was as nighttime library assistant at the Portuguese and German library, where no one ever came. It was above a bar on, I think, Waverly Place. All he had to do was shelve a few books, and then sit at a desk and get his studying done. Good job. This was before Main Library was completed, and there were lots of small collections scattered all over.

[needledriver]

31. I was at NYU from 1972 - 76

The elevator was in the design/theater/dance building on 2nd Avenue.

[democratisphere]

27. That was before the executive management and investors

had to have all of the company profits.

[nocoincidences]

28. I had a very short, like 4 ft. something friend,

in college and she used to tell me stories about things that happened to her because she was so short.

One of them was being on an elevator and having people tell her what floor they were going to because they thought she was sitting down, operating the elevator.!!

[Paladin]

33. Reminds me of Nanci Griffith's classic "Love At The 5 And Dime."

All about a romance starting at a Texas department store. In a live version of it, Nanci ends with a cheerful "Going up."

[SCantiGOP]

36. Last time I was in the Senate Office Building

They still had operators. I think the practice has been continued because by Congressional rule the operators have to be disabled.

[MrScorpio]

37. We used to have Hudson's Department Store back in the here in Detroit

My Mom used to take shopping there and I remember going up and down the wooden escalators.