in australia they’re still everywhere because when i government sold our state telco they mandated that they maintain the pay phone network at reasonable prices

that doesn’t sound particularly comment-worthy on its own so here’s the cool part: turns out collecting coins is more expensive than the money they got from it so they just stopped charging and now all our pay phones are not only still everywhere, but entirely free and have free wifi embedded in them

Not only were there public pay phones everywhere, but if you dialed zero, a person we called The Operator would immediately answer and you could ask them to look up a phone number for you or ask them to dial a number for you. This operator would pick up when you dialed zero from your home landline too.

Wait until you find out about all the free water fountains literally everywhere so if you were thirsty you could just stop and get an ice cold drink of water and go about your day.

I saw horses in Western movies, surely they could have just driven to the gunfight?

I used to give out a payphone number as my own back before i had a cell. It was close to where I hung out with friends, so there was a decent chance I would be there if you called.

There's a single payphone still standing at the end of the road in the town nearest me. It was disconnected when I found it, but I got phreaky and hooked it back up + bypassed the coin mechanism. Mostly out of nostalgia, partly for the love of fixin' stuff :)

There was a bank of five or six payphones in the common area at my high school. Someone found out there was a number you could call which, after you hung up would immediately generate a callback to the phone it was called from. It was not uncommon to have all the phones ringing constantly.

Oh my god, this is wild! You know who would like this meme? My friend, Tony

Operator, connect me to Tony, please

I worked for a company back in the '00s that made most of their money off of pay phones. Even 20 years ago pay phones were obsolete so I was somewhat mystified by this during my job interview. Turns out they managed pay phones in prison - which are still a thing.

Calling bullshit on this. I never received a telegraph, but I never assumed they were made up for the movies. This kid is either a troll or a moron.

Pay phones were cool. As teens, we used to go spend the summer camping with my friends in a super remote place and the only thing available connecting us with our parents was the pay phone. We'd go there twice a week to tell them we're still alive and will eventually come back home if we run out of food.

Somebody should describe the insane hack to these youngins where you can make a collect call to your parents from a pay phone and tell them your name is "HEY COME PICK ME UP!"

It's like you can send information to somebody across town without having coins in your pocket!

I remember trying to find quarters to call my mom to come pick me up.

I remember in NYC, I think once my dad's phone either ran out of battery or forgot to bring it... so he used the payphones, and the conversation had to be quick because otherwise you gotta put in more quarters. I think it was just to know where to meet up or something, cuz we lived in Brooklyn and some of our relatives were in Manhattan, and so we'd just meet like every so often especially like holidays. I remember being in that Chinese Restaunt near Canal St... like often.

Where I live, not only do they still exist, but they're also free to use and occasionally also offer free wifi. Why? No idea tbh, my guess is the government contract probably required the provider to keep them working for a certain amount of time.

Hang on, I'm getting a page.

Ah man. This kind of shit makes me feel old dammit.

I had a payphone booth close to my house that I somehow got the actual number of, meaning you could call that booth. I used it to communicate secretly with my GF at the time, to keep my parents from knowing (this was before cellphones).

You carry payphones in your pockets nowadays

Great, now I'm reminded of a project I abandoned and the pile of weird business cards I have in my junk drawer...

I set up a toll-free number a year or so back with the idea of finding (eventually) all remaining payphones in public spaces in my city, white listing the numbers and leaving a card inviting folks to call. I stopped after about a week and like 10 phones, meaning to get back to it and never did.

Did run into people legitimately using them while doing so though, which was slightly unexpected.

as a kid i had a phone card. they were introduced the year i was born and by the time i was eight, the payphones no longer took cash.

turns out, when living out in the country there aren't that many payphones either. i could call home from school, which was a few towns over from where i lived, or from the bus terminal which was in yet another town even further away. it was a strange time, but we made it work for like seven years.

You have a call from "mom come get me" would you like to accept the charges?

It turns out people like using the phone in their pocket more than the one used by strangers, tagged, with none of their numbers and a ripped up phone book attacked to a hard plastic case, that always makes your hands smell like metal after you dial.

Matt Damon aging meme.

In my city there is only 1 payphone (that I know off) and it is literally just used as a decoration. Like red box for 1 person. It probably had it's use in the past, but now is mere decoration in city centre.

Ive seen a couple in New York and several when I visted Palestine

Oh, Kiddy...

They're still pretty common in Japan