Folks, we're on Low Power Mode for a few more days, which makes it difficult to try to do the normal "Free for ALL Friday" edition. We'll be back to that next week; thanks for your patience. In the meanwhile, I've got one of my favorite Labor Day-adjacent posts to share. Thanks for reading, and we'll back to a normal schedule in a few days.

Work is changing quickly. With that in mind, I have a list of interesting, obsolete, formerly commonplace jobs that I’ve compiled over the years. The folks at genealogy and DNA-testing company MyHeritage came up with a few of them, so I added to it over time to create what's below.

Here are 17 jobs nobody (or almost nobody) has anymore.

1. Elevator operator

We'll start with this one, because my mom did this job in a department store when she was a teenager in Montreal. Other workers nicknamed the elevator operators “yo-yos.” I think she lasted one day, which sounds familiar. Also, they’re not 100 percent extinct, at least as of a few years ago.

2. Knocker-upper

How did people know when to wake up before alarm clocks, but after everyone lived within earshot of a rooster? They paid someone to knock on their door or window in the morning.

3. Video store owner

Not many people still trying to make a living in this field. There is one remaining Blockbuster video store, in Bend, Oregon. There’s also a Twitter feed—although it’s a parody. (It’s funny but NSFW, so you’ve been warned.)

4. Breaker boy

“A breaker boy was a coal-mining worker in the United States or the United Kingdom,” according to MyHeritage. “He separated impurities from the coal by hand.”

5. Factory lector

Lectors read aloud to factory workers. They're obsolete now of course because we have radios, the internet, headphones—and, come to think of it, a lot fewer factory workers.

6. Iceman

These workers cut large blocks of ice from frozen rivers and lakes during the winter and ultimately delivered them to customers. Obviously this was all before electric refrigeration.

7. Computer

Have you seen the movie Hidden Figures? Computers were workers, mostly women, who spent their days performing mathematical calculations—and then checking them. They were replaced by, well, computers.

8. Gandy dancer

“A gandy dancer was an early railroad worker whose job was to lay and maintain railroad tracks,” MyHeritage reports. “In England, they were called 'navvys.' Their nickname comes from the methodical dance movements of the railroad workers.”

9. Gas station attendant

I'm aware there are a few places where this job still exists. I even live in one of the two states where gas station attendants are legally required. So they're not quite 100 percent gone. Enjoy them while you can still occasionally find them.

10. Switchboard operator

Connecting phone calls once required people (mostly women) who manually moved phone cords into outlets. Author trivia: My grandmother did this job, working the switchboard for radio station CJAD in Montreal, gosh it has to be nearly 50 years ago.

11. Sleeping car attendants

In the days of overnight rail travel, attendants waited on long-distance rail passengers and set up their berths so they could sleep at night. It was hard work, and most attendants were African American men. It was also one of the few jobs reliably open to Black Americans in the Jim Crow era that offered a step up into the middle class.

12. Print journalist

Years ago, before the advent of the Internet, many journalists wrote exclusively for media entities that would print their stories on actual paper. These “newspapers” and “magazines” then had to be physically distributed to readers.

13. Book peddler

MyHeritage: “Book peddlers were traveling vendors. Also known as 'book canvassers,' they went door-to-door selling books. For many rural Americans, this was their only way to obtain new reading material.”

14. Lamplighter

When streetlights were powered by oil, someone had to go out and light them at night.

15. Bobbin boy

“Bobbin boys worked in textile mills in the 18th and early 19th centuries,” according to MyHeritage. “Their job consisted in bringing bobbins to the women at the looms, and then collecting the bobbins that were full with spun cotton or wool thread.”

16. Hemp dresser

Again from MyHeritage: “Hemp dressers worked in the linen industry separating the coarse part of flax or hemp with a hackle. They were also known as 'hacklers.'“

17. Scissors grinder

These folks went door-to-door, offering to sharpen scissors and knives. Now, well, I guess a lot of us just buy new ones.

Here’s to a nice weekend off, and not becoming obsolete too soon.

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Reminder, while we’re running on “low power mode” this week, we’ll be skipping the “7 other things” we normally run. I expect to be back on full power (with a big surge coming, knock on wood) shortly after Labor Day. See you bright and early tomorrow.