Hello dears!
Today's post is not about deliveries – although it is still about self-employed courier jobs. You see, I've decided to talk about people who had your type of job back before it became so high-tech and high profile as it is now.
Yes, my darlings, believe it or not, there was a time when an Amazon was only a female warrior from ancient times - or maybe that rainforest in Brazil – and where a delivery meant a few cuts of meat from the grocer's, or maybe a letter from Aunt Bea in Scotland. I know some (maybe most) of you aren't even sure of what a letter is, let alone remember when people sent them; but I am and I do! And I also remember that back then, some people already held what could be considered self-employed courier jobs.
"letters" © 2006 muffet, used under a Creative Commons Attribution license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
Of course, in those days, they weren't called that. You were a delivery boy, or a paperboy. And you weren't exactly self-employed either: you did jobs for the butcher, or the news-stand holder, or whoever else happened to need things delivered. But the fundamental elements of self-employed courier jobs were already present: you could work part-time (which was just as well, since most of the people who took these types of jobs were young men) and you were sometimes employed on a job-to-job basis. That is what led me to say that these boys had what basically amounted to self-employed courier jobs, even before such a term was properly devised.
Nowadays, there are still traces of these kinds of professions – small take-away places that offer home delivery, and the like – but everything is much more advanced, of course.
Oh well – I shall stop rambling about the old days, and try to think of something interesting to come up with for next time! Until then, my dears!
Gertie
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