31 Epic Responses To A Young Woman Asking If Pay Phones Were Actually A Real Thing

"momimoffworkcanyoucomepickmeuppleaseloveyiubye"

You could also do a person-to-person call, where it went through the operator and you didn't have to pay if the person you wanted to speak to wasn't there. You'd have it set up so the name you asked to speak to would convey a brief message, and of course the person you were asking for didn't exist.

Is this Bob Wehadababyitsaboy?

LOL, watch Dr WHo....yep they were, but sadly not bigger on the inside.

Yessssss this! Anytime we had to call someone that had long distance we would call collect and just say to call back but that was home phones. Would also do the things the OP said. Used payphone alot without having money lol

Arthur Waite

Arthur Waite

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When my Wife was in hospital for a two-weeks stay, the only telephone in her area was a pay phone - cells not allowed because of 'interference with medical equipment''. So, every time I came to see her I'd bring a couple of quarters and put one in the coin return as I passed. I heard from the nurses that people were charmed to be 'lucky'. Made someone's day.

I often found change when checking the returns.

As a kid I regularly "made the rounds" to about 6 or 7 payphones in the area looking for change in the coin returns. I usually found something in at least one of them. And then there was the one phone that , if you jiggered the coin return lever really hard and really fast , it would dump a couple of bucks of change into the coin return slot.

I can still hear that sound in my head. Wait til OP learns about rotary phones, or better yet, has an opportunity to try and dial (successfully) on one.

Hahahaha this for sure!! Totally agree 👍

LOL!!!!

MILKMEN!-YES!- I was born in '79, and I remember mum leaving the glass bottles out to be collected, and they'd be replaced with full glass bottles of milk with those little aluminium foil lids!

Jumping Jellyfishes

Jumping Jellyfishes

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Milk delivered to the doorstep in the 70s, but even better, we had Charles Chips (big can of potato chips) also delivered to the doorstep

60's kid here ... Chimes in with the Ice man in horse drawn cart, people still had wooden refrigerators loved the salt pellets. Coal delivery, Milkmen, Dry Cleaner, Bakery (Freihofer's), Farmer (fruits, veggies & eggs) All delivered!! Oh and NO pay phones and terrible TV NO COLOR ... lmao

I live in a popular Maine coastal town and we still have butchers and tons of family owned stores. I don't miss the milkmen though.

They were the only place we had to change into our superhero clothes.

My step son refused to believe phones were only in the living area, and you had to ask for who you were calling for.

I had occasion to call emergency services in the UK and I quoted the "whatthreewords" reference. The operator laughed and said it shows as a phone box. I replied that all that remains is a square of different coloured tarmac.

We still had pay phones in the dorms when I was in college. :) I'm 49.

The flip side of this, no pun intended - my friend had a Motorola brick phone back in the mid 80’s — people would literally stare at it as if it were an alien space ship. Nowadays, a pay phone might get almost the same attention.

OP mentioned two or three beside each other reminded me that in places like airports there would be much more than two or three. There would be long lines of them.

LOL.

Beepers had a short life, they were gone in only about fifteen years.

Road Runners were Beepers.

When I came along, a phone call was a quarter.

That's still "a thing", but the technology has changed. She would now book an Uber ride, and pay with a credit card (or even more outré technologies, but let's not get too crazy here).

Plus the demise of pay phones made any number of Rock songs obsolete.

There are still some pay phones in my city, Vancouver Canada. For people whose cellphones are out of order and for poor people. A lot of them are along the main transit routes. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more cities that still have pay phones!

Memorizing phone numbers, imagine the thought!

There's the "Bell" phone I was talking about! :) I actually just saw one just like this a few days ago in the Welland Ontario canada hospital

Is that supposed to the English translation of Montreal? (I know it is literally Royal Mountain but I think that one is taking the bilingual thing to an extreme)

France Langelier

France Langelier

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Metro Place Bonaventure in Montreal still had them last time I checked.

Well, it is Canada.

You are pretty young if you had payphones at school.

In the old “Superman” TV series, Clark Kent ran into a pay-phone booth to change into Superman. In the 1978 movie with Christopher Reeve, Clark Kent starts to run toward a pay phone, but realizes there’s no booth, just a phone on a pole like the one shown above. So resourceful Clark uses a revolving door to change into Superman.

They smelled like metal, plastic, dirt, old food, and pee. Not necessarily in that order.

And giant yellow phone books that got delivered to your house. We used that instead of Google. :)

I used to be able to get anyone within two clicks on a map with a compass thanks to Army training. Now, I can barely get to the store without google maps. LOL.

Actually, libraries are surging in popularity, especially among Millennial and younger generations. <3

OMG I forgot party lines!