If you wanted to play with a friend, you went to their back door and hollered their name until they came out, or until their mother came to the door and told you they couldn't come out. Parents arranged nothing.
Somehow it all worked out.
If someone tried to call you on the phone and you were out, you were out. They'd call back. If someone in your home picked up the call, they might actually remember at some point - typically after the person who was trying to reach you called back - to tell you that so-and-so had called.
Somehow it all worked out.
If you were meeting someone, you arranged the time and place to meet, and, ideally, both of your ended up there at the right time and the right place. If not, if you had picked the meeting spot well, there was a pay phone and you could try to call the person you were meeting to see what was up. If they were home to pick up the phone, you knew you'd gotten your signals crossed. If they didn't answer, you waited a while, shrugged, and got on with your life.
Somehow, it all worked out.
If you wanted a dinner reservation you called and made one. Or you stuck your head in when you were walking by to see if you could book something.
Somehow it all worked out.
If you wanted to buy a gift for someone, you went to the store and picked it out. Or you ordered it from a catalogue. If you wanted to buy flowers, you went to the florist. If you wanted to send flowers, you went to a florist that had FTD and ordered the carnations in the ceramic baby shoe.
Somehow it all worked out.
If you needed a plumber, and you couldn't make the fix yourself, you called the plumber you always called. If you didn't have a plumber you always called, you found one in the Yellow Pages.
Somehow it all worked out.
If you wanted to watch your show on TV, you stayed home. If you missed an episode, you missed it. It would be re-run during the summer and you could catch it then. Or you could wait a few years and see it on a crummy UHF station.
Somehow it all worked out.
If you wanted concert or theater tickets, once the concert was announced, you went to the venue's box office and bought them there. For a movie, you went to the theater and stood in line. You figured out quickly that it wasn't worth trying to see a movie on the day it opened.
Somehow it all worked out.
If you wanted tickets to a game, I really don't know how you got them. Most of the games I went to as a kid - Red Sox games, Holy Cross football games - you just walked up and got the ticket day of. There was such a thing as purchasing a ticket in advance. I know you could walk up to the box office, as I did to Boston Garden for a Celtics playoff game back in the early seventies. But I just have no experience with how it worked if you were from out of town. Did travel agents in Worcester sell Red Sox tickets? Sporting good stores? Or did you - get this - write away for them.
Somehow it all worked out.
If you wanted to fly somewhere, you used a travel agent. Or you went to the airline offices and got your tickets and boarding passes there. Most of the airlines that flew in and out of Boston had offices in the Statler Building. So there you'd go.
Somehow it all worked out.
If you wanted to drive somewhere, for local jaunts, you had an street atlas on the floor of the back seat. It you needed a map, you could pick up a map at the gas station. If you were going on a long trip, AAA would map your route out for you and send you a TripTik with all the directions and maps you needed. When my friend Joyce and I drove cross country in 1972, we traveled with an AAA TripTik. (Wish I'd hung on to that one.)
Somehow it all worked out.
If you needed money, you went to the bank. Or cashed a check at the grocery store. If you were traveling and didn't want to carry a lot of cash, you used American Express Travelers Checks. ("Don't leave home without them!")
Somehow, it all worked out.
Now, thanks to technological advances, all of the above is handled using smartphones, going online, downloading apps.
And yet, for all the conveniences of being able to take care of everything you could possible think thanks to better-living-through-technology, life today is somehow just a fourteen-karat gold, non-stop pain in the patootey.
I'm 95% retired, with almost all the free time in the world, yet sometimes I find myself just overwhelmed with the time pressures. How am I going to be able to get to the hardware store for the recycle bags I'm about to run out of. In another month or so. There goes the day! And my niece's birthday is just three weeks away and I don't have a card yet! Oh, I suppose I could Amazon things, but that would mean waiting a day to receive them. Plus I like to patronize local stores. The pressure is killing me!
I can only imagine how super-charged and ultra-pressured life must be if you have a full-time job, a full-time spouse, a full-time kid. No time for anything!
Unto the breach, dear friends, have sprung apps and services do all the hassle stuff for you.
One of them is Stuff.
For $50 a month, its mobile app gives you instant access to a network of personal assistants around the United States. They handle tasks such as sending flowers, finding a plumber, or booking the perfect rental home for a family ski vacation. You communicate with them via Stuff’s app — which feels similar to text messaging.
...your request to find a guitar teacher for your daughter or the best beachfront hotel in Santa Monica is categorized and sent to an agent in the United States who is available to work on it right away. (Stuff focuses on personal tasks, as opposed to business-related ones.)
Some agents may specialize in finding great accommodations; others on recommending gifts, or helping you negotiate with the cable company to get lower pricing.
Agents are paid a minimum of $15 an hour, though Elhelo says there are ways to earn bonuses that add to that, based on customer ratings and how quickly an agent works. Because of the pandemic, there’s lots of interest in the freelance, home-based work that Stuff provides its agents, [CEO Ohad] Elhelo says.(Source: Boston Globe)
The company - Boston/Israeli - has attracted a goodly amount of funding. Hoping, no doubt, for the next Uber.
Is $50 a month worth it? I guess that depends on how many small tasks you have a month.
Even though getting tickets and making reservations are mostly off the table for the near future at least, Stuff does promise that they can do a lot of stuff. (Along with the brand promise that, with Stuff, you can live like LeBron, Beyonce, Elon, Marissa* ("even if you're not a billionaire.")
Personal Stuff "...please find a moving company..."
Purchasing Stuff "...can you find this LEGO set..."
On the go Stuff "...I'll need two beds in the room..."
Bills and Stuff "...see if they owe me a deposit..."
Booking Stuff "...book a table for four..."
Finding Stuff "...someone who can mount a picture to my living room wall..."
Travel and Stuff "...need an airbnb in Boston..."
Fun and Stuff "...recommendation on the best dinner..."
Really Annoying Stuff "...schedule a blood test..."
Kind Stuff "...send a bottle of wine..."
Administrative Stuff "...any day but Friday..."
Random Stuff "...we have a mouse..."
All good stuff, and I suppose if you're really busy, $50 a month is nothing. But why are we all so damned busy that so much of the stuff of life is beyond our ability to handle?
You know, back BT (before [such pervasive] technology), we had stuff to do. We had blood tests. We had mice. We went out to eat.
Somehow it all worked out.
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Okay. I'm officially stumped. LeBron, Beyonce, and Elon I know. Who's Marissa?
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