This video is a training picture from 1945
Look at all the customers coming in – both men and women – wearing hats. Not a very diverse society though? I did not spot any ethnic group other than white people. I love those hats though! It was a bit sexist and is condescending to women.
Have we lost the friendly smile and personal service of past years? Now of course we have ATMs and electronic payments and we do not have to dress up to go out and pay our telephone bills! Was it really like that? It’s really different eh!
The video is from the Prelinger Archives and is from the Public Domain.
Prelinger Archives was founded in 1983 by Rick Prelinger in New York City. Over the next twenty years, it grew into a collection of over 60,000 “ephemeral” (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. In 2002, the film collection was acquired by the Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Prelinger Archives remains in existence, holding approximately 4,000 titles on videotape and a smaller collection of film materials acquired subsequent to the Library of Congress transaction. Its goal remains to collect, preserve, and facilitate access to films of historic significance that haven’t been collected elsewhere. Included are films produced by and for many hundreds of important US corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, and educational institutions
This was previously posted on the Hat Nostalgia blog but I thought that my readers would like to see it and see how many hats they can spot. I am not keen on the attitude to women but I do like the smiles and the politeness. Everything seems so rude and fast now. Was it really like that I wonder – very Ozzie and Harriet.
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You find the coolest things! I worked from Southern Bell for one summer between high school and college. Their customer service attitude had not changed much between 1945 and my time with them. I don’t think it was really any more Ozzie and Harriet then or they would not have felt like they had to contrast the sweet teller with the rude one. Companies still try to teach their employees to treat customers well with varying degrees of success. Unfortunately, people now are so used to rude that they don’t expect polite.
Here’s a hat question for you? Which of the hats in the video were stylish in 1945 and which were, shall we say, less than stylish? One woman’s hat looked silly to me, so I wondered if women from the 40s would have thought the same.
Yes the video should be shown to young people for a number of reasons.
Well the important thing is that with a few exceptions (eg the girl who was thinking about – well you know what young girls think about?). The young boy who wanted to pay the electric bill at the telephone company was not wearing a hat I think? What was HE thinking about? LOL.
The older lady who complained about her phone bill did not seem to be wearing a forties style hat. It could have been a bit late Edwardian. I think that the hat perhaps was deliberately old to demonstrate a particular type of customer. Let’s not forget that 1945 was right at the end of the war and there was a lot of “Old hat” stuff around in any event from the thirties and even earlier People kept things longer then. As you can see it was a wonderful hat time at any rate. It was a very difficult time in Europe but people still wore hats.
I like this video and I have a few more to share with everyone over time from the public domain source.
Thanks for being an avid involved reader Teresa.
I will be looking forward to the other videos!!
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