ScionPI2005
Call Me a Cab
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- 2,335
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
V.C. Brunswick said:TV/Radio Repairman
Another occupation which has been rendered obsolete by the disposable society where even your fancy plasma screen TV is designed to be replaced rather than repaired. Once upon a time almost every town had a Fix It shop where all manner of household appliances were repaired.
I just have to return to this post made a few days ago. I know that there are repairman for different household items around these days, but it just seems like the repair job in general is slowly dying out. More items than just plasma TV's seem to be produced today with the expectation that they will be replaced if anything goes wrong with them.
I still like to use my cell phone as an example. Anyone who has one knows that cell phone service providers like to offer some sort of trade-in special or discount on a new phone upon the renewal of your plan every year or so. Also, I'm not overly abusive to my cell phone by any means, but have NEVER been able to get a cell phone of mine to work over a year and a half, to maybe two years. In contrast, I have a heavy duty black rotary dial telephone from the 1930's on my desk that still works like a charm. I replaced the cord going from the handset to the phone box several years ago, but aside from that, it still works, and I still use it.
I just feel most anything these days is made cheaply, and designed to fail after a very short time, forcing the consumer to upgrade frequently. Heck, a lot of the time, you can't even find parts for a product made several years ago even if you look for them.
Now, I do have a few repairmen around town that I know who repair my vintage watches, and have done work on my phonograph player. Still, I had to do a lot of hunting to find them, and they're about as non-mainstream as the rest of us here! I just believe that the repairman as a whole, and as a mainstream profession has vanished.