When was the last time you used a phone book?

I can’t even remember. Probably at least ten years ago, at my workplace.

At my cabin in rural Wisconsin…life seems trapped in a time where the internet was not a tool to promote your business and I find much more options of local choices in the yearly phone book than what I can find on the web. I use that phone book at least once a month.

Mimi has never used a phone book, so about 22 years ago for her.

Me, not too long before I got my first computer, which is about 14 years ago.

Edit: see below. ;-p

A long long time ago, in a reality far far away…

@Brian1946 I did use a phone book, but only once. Even back when the internet didn’t exist I still went around asking for phone numbers instead of hurting my eyes digging up in a big book.

About a month ago.

Less than a month ago. I’m so glad they’re still around. It’s like a card catalogue: sometimes what you want to see is the entries around your search target and not just an all-or-nothing landing on a specific entry.

A few weeks ago.

I also read a real newspaper just two days ago.

I live in a place that in some ways is like turning back time.

Does using one to start a campfire count? If it does than about five months ago.

I first go through it and clip the discounts, then I give it to my neighbor who uses it for tinder to start the fireplace.

Years ago. They still deliver them and then it sits under the hall table and nobody uses it.

Yesterday. I use the book because it has a street map.

Last fall for “Yellow Pages” ‘cause Google has a habit of finding places 5 hours away. OH those are paid ads.

About 8 years ago, when I moved into my current house. I wasn’t real familiar with the town yet and was still waiting for internet to be hooked up.

Last week I was looking for one. Couldn’t find it, so I used the internet. The White Pages online charges for information now.

Not for years and years, but without fail each year a new little flat one shows up on my porch or in the mail, and out of lifetime habit I check for my own name, stash it on a shelf and then throw the little old one away.

I kinda miss performing the same ritual with the big fat ones.

I put one down the backside of my pants when the saucy housemaid from below stairs spanked my bottom with a spatula, those things are getting very thin…it hurt…which was nice.

Just recently, but before I left the US, it was probably sometime around 2000.

They are still used here as if the internet never happened. Most people still use them on St. Lucia. Like @kritiper says, it’s better for local options.

They are an anachronism back home. I would use my annually delivered phone book as a door stop, or it would gather dust in the garage. Eventually I just picked them off the porch and threw them directly in the garbage. I hate clutter outside of my study.

Just before I left four years ago, I saw a pile of them that had been dropped off at an apartment house, had been there for quite some time, had been rained on and never delivered to the tennants. What a fucking waste of trees.

Not for at least ten years but I do get them in my mailbox now and then. I just got one last night, a small one, in the mail and I looked at it and was like “wtf?”

I haven’t seen a physical phone book in 10 years. BellSouth stopped distributing them then.

I went to their YP.com website and looked up some plumbers about a year ago. It was pretty awful. Lousy search algorithms.

It’s at least a decade since I opened one. The last ones I used were used to raise the height of the computer monitor. Now I use an open weave doll table so there’s no reason to bring the phone books into the house at all. The last few went straight from the steps where they threw them to the recycling box. They may have discontinued delivery.

Probably when I was about eleven, looking for a friend’s phone number. Funny, I found a phone book by my front door about a week ago and rolled my eyes. A waste of paper, in my case.

Phone books are recyclable in LA city.

When I get one, it goes directly into my blue recycling container.

We can recycle ours too. However, I do wish they would canvass whether people want a hard copy directory rather than printing a shitload and delivering them. It could even be on an opt-out rather than opt-in basis to cover those who might not use the internet (older or remote citizens who are most likely to use the directory). I’d be surprised if more than about 10% of users bother to engage with their print directory these days.

A couple of years ago I used a roll of plastic shelf liner for my kitchen shelves. The problem is that it curls up when you cut it to size. The phone book was helpful in holding it down until it wanted to lay flat.

It has been over a year. I know this because I was cleaning out the cabinet and found three (3) of them (two were given last year by different agencies) in there. I did not even remember they existed beforehand so I feel fairly sure it is as least that long. They are in the recycle bin right now.