Around the same time frame, my brother rented some rooms in his house to people who had the occupation of actually delivering those phone books. (This was in a different country, but apparently the Yellow Pages existed everywhere.)
The delivery-people got overwhelmed and eventually just resorted to putting the stacks and stacks of phone books into piles and burning them. It took a long time until they got caught because nobody really misses a phone book.
I think dad wanted some extra money one year and he took my brother and I out and delivered 100s of phonebooks in our area.
i think we got a season pass to 6 flags out of it, but i'm not positive
I sure do! Calling all local contractors for a quote VS falling for the SEO king.
whitepages vs yellowpages
The mailroom of my apartment building in college in 1988 was full of phone books that were unclaimed. I took enough to make a platform for my futon.
As funny as these stories are it makes my environmentalist blood boil. Such ridiculous waste at scale for a product barely anyone actually wants.
Pre-internet the commercial phone book was actually fairly useful. The "problem" was that most people didn't need it updating as often as the phone book company would have liked.
I well stocked research library had phone books from all over.