The 90’s have long since gone and this is now a very old Top Ten List. However many of the signs that you have had too much of the 90’s are still relevant today, except that technology has moved on a long way since then.
Maybe I should come up with a list of signs that you have had too much of the 2010’s. That ought to be interesting…
But for now, take a trip down memory lane and enjoy some signs that you have had too much of the 90’s:
- You try to enter your password on the microwave.
- You haven’t played patience with real cards in years.
- You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.
- You e-mail your work colleague at the desk next to you to ask “Do you fancy going down the pub ?” and they reply “Yeah, give me 5 minutes”.
- You chat several times a day with a stranger from South America, but you haven’t spoken to your next door neighbour yet this year.
- You buy a computer and a week later it is out of date.
- Your reason for not staying in touch with friends is that they do not have e-mail addresses.
- You consider The Postal Service painfully slow or call it “snail mail”.
- Your idea of being organised is multiple coloured post-it notes.
- You hear most of your jokes via email instead of in person.
- When you go home after a long day at work you still answer the phone in a business manner.
- When you make phone calls from home, you accidentally insert a “9” to get an outside line.
- You’ve sat at the same desk for four years and worked for three different companies.
- Your company welcome sign is attached with Velcro.
- Your resume is on a diskette in your pocket.
- You really get excited about a 1.7% pay rise.
- You learn about your redundancy on the 9 o’clock news.
- Your biggest loss from a system crash is that you lose all your best jokes.
- Your supervisor doesn’t have the ability to do your job.
- Contractors outnumber permanent staff and are more likely to get long-service awards.
- Board members salaries are higher than all the Third World countries annual budgets combined.
- It’s dark when you drive to and from work, even in the summer.
- You know exactly how many days you’ve got left until you retire.
- Interviewees, despite not having the relevant knowledge or experience, terminate the interview when told of the starting salary.
- You see a good looking, smart person and you know it must be a visitor.
- Free food left over from meetings is your staple diet.
- The work experience person gets a brand-new state-of-the-art laptop with all the features, while you have time to go for lunch while yours powers up.
- Being sick is defined as you can’t walk or you’re in hospital.
- You’re already late on the assignment you just got.
- There’s no money in the budget for the five permanent staff your department is short of, but they can afford four full-time management consultants advising your boss’s boss on strategy.
- Your boss’s favourite lines are: When you’ve got a few minutes….. Could you fit this in….. In your spare time….. I know you’re busy but….. I have an opportunity for you…..
- Holiday is something you roll over to next year.
- Every week another brown collection envelope comes round because someone you didn’t know had started is leaving.
- You wonder who’s going to be left to put into your ‘leaving’ collection.
- Your relatives and family describe your job as “works with computers”.
- The only reason you recognise your kids is because their pictures are on your desk.
- You only have makeup for fluorescent lighting.
- You read this entire list, kept nodding and smiling.
- As you read this list, you think about forwarding it to your “mates you send jokes to” e-mail group.
- It crosses your mind that your jokes group may have seen this list already, but you can’t be bothered to check so you forward it anyway.
The 90’s might seem like forever ago, but there are many of us who still feel like the era before the internet and technology took over our lives wasn’t all that long ago. In reality though it’s been a good 20 years since things changed forever and almost 30 since the first mobile phones were readily available.
I’m still amazed at what you can do on a phone now, from shopping and banking to HD video streaming and video calls to anyone anywhere.
Life may have changed, but I think many of us agree that while we might miss the Good Old Days, we would find it hard to live without some of the technology that we have today.
Image used under a Collective Commons License from: https://www.pexels.com/photo/90-90s-addiction-background-606655/
