Throwback Thursday: cards from the past! #TBT

[#1]

It's Thursday!

Not too long ago, I was going through a small cedar box of "memorabilia". (Actually, a box that either me or my friend made back in 1988). Part of the stuff inside of this box were these cards :) One is an employee pass from a company in Iceland, where I used to work at. The other is a rail card, actually a rail discount card, that I purchased back in England in 1991. I know I had an ancient ATM card somewhere but cant find it atm - did you get the pun here?!?!

Sooooo, do you have some cards/passes/etc. from the past you wanna share with us? Or some stories about them?

Let’s make it a great Thursday!
KGM

[Anahit Sukiasyan]

Nice topic, @Kristján Geir Mathiesen ! :)

It's always great to look back on past workplaces, colleagues, and memories through employee pass cards.

I already have about 3-4 of them-all from the same workplace but for different positions! :)

[Stephen_Lugton]

I don't have them to hand to share, but I used to go scuba diving (until I got an inner ear infection and had to stop as I couldn't work out which way was up when it came to finding the surface!)  

For every training course you do you get a card, for most people this might be Open Water and Advanced Open Water.  But I also did speciality training in things like Deep Diving, Nitrox (Nitrogen / Oxygen diving with lower oxygen levels for deeper diving), Trimix (adding helium to the nitrogen / oxygen mix), Night Diving, Cave Diving, Wreck Diving, Ice Diving (the lake where we did training dives froze over and one of the people there that day was an ice diving trainer, so I got ice diving training!).  On top of this I progressed with Rescue Diver, Dive Master, Assistant Instructor, Instructor and Staff Instructor levels.  So all the cards from this training (and more) now live in a business card folder in storage.

I only normally carried my highest level card with me when I went diving, but one year we went diving in Malta (taking our own gear with us) and I took the business card folder with me (unintentionally, it was in a side pocket of my dive bag). 

We were staying at a hotel with a local dive school attached to it so that we could have a guide to take us to dive sites around the island, and when we first checked in we showed the dive shop owner our cards and he was happy that we could just go along for the ride and dive how we wanted.  

The dive guide with us was a very junior dive master who was really full of his own importance, and he spent most of his time fussing over some new divers (rightly so) since he had been told we could handle ourselves.

The first time he told us off was after a night dive in a shallow cove where we spent an hour playing with an octopus and friends, apparently he hadn't expected us to be able to stay under water that long and he wasn't happy that we'd kept everyone else waiting.

The second time was when he made all the new divers do safety checks on the road a hundred meters away from the water then insisted that they shuffle backwards wearing their diving fins over the rocky beach to the water, at which point we ran past them carrying our fins and not wearing masks etc. and didn't stop to put them on before jumping in.  It was only about 25 metres deep so I'd got my mask and fins on by the times I'd reached the bottom.  

When we got out he was apoplectic and told us in no uncertain terms that we were his students and had to do things his way; that was when I pulled out my business card folder and leafed through it saying "Which course are you teaching us? It can't be deep diving, I've done that.  It can't be cave diving, I've done that.  It can't be dive master, I've done that, and instructor, in fact here's my staff instructor card, oh and my speciality technical diving cards."  Meanwhile my friends were idly waving their instructor cards at him.  He turned pale (even under his tan) and never mentioned our diving again. 

[Stephen_Lugton]

Thank you for the wide range of Throwback Thursday topics @Kristján Geir Mathiesen , I sometimes think I haven't done much in life, but then one of these comes along and reminds me that actually I have been places, I have done things and I do have stories to tell!

[Barbara Szczesniak]

I still have my original Social Security Card that I got when I was about 12 (back in the days when you didn't need one at birth). I got another when I changed my name when I got married, and then again when I got divorced and changed my name back. There is quite a difference in my signature between age 12 and age 31. 

[Felipe Pérez _ServiceRocket_]

Hey @Kristján Geir Mathiesen

I have an old card—my college credential from when I first started. Sometimes, I come across it while rummaging through my closet, which always makes me smile. It's like a little time capsule, reminding me of a younger version of myself—someone who wasn’t quite sure about the future but held onto the hope that it would turn out well. And now, here I am, with a great job and building a career in the Atlassian ecosystem.

Thanks for bringing back these memories! 😊

[Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM]

I do have a drawer full of old cards, not by design. It started as a junk drawer and old IDs took over.

I will share a pic of my conference badges.  I started collecting them back in the 1990s.

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Wow, @Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM  what a collection! Very impressive.

Awe thanks, @Stephen_Lugton so much for very kind words. Makes my heart happy that I've managed to brightened your day. Thanks for your story.

@Anahit Sukiasyan  takk.

@Barbara Szczesniak wow, cool!

@Felipe Pérez _ServiceRocket_ very welcome :)

Takk all!

[Amanda Barber]

Not the most flattering of my teacher ID pics, but the easiest one I could find without digging out my box of teacher memorabilia. I was about 100 weeks pregnant (literally taken the day before I had my youngest, I believe!) The 9 years I was at Walker Elementary, I just kept adding the IDs to my little badge holder so it's a nice, big stack and fun to look through sometimes! 

Funny story, one year, the photo company gave us all a pack of pictures with our staff photo. It came with a bookmark. I jokingly gifted it to my mom who still uses it when she travels. I've gone all over the world with her. 🙃

[Kawan Diogo]

Wow, I think it’s amazing that in all my years of work I’ve never had an ID badge/pass, except during my intern days before the pandemic. After that, everything went digital, but now in return, I’ve started a collection of event credentials, I just don’t know where they are🤔.

[Natalie Beiler]

 There are badges from my years of working at the hospital I was at for 29 1/2 years and then several from my recent adventures as part of a vendor team supporting healthcare software. 

Thank you for giving me a reason to dig these out. 

@Stephen_Lugton I enjoyed your diving story!

@Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM My husband forbids me to keep all the show badges but it was fun seeing your collection. 

I do look forward to TBT's.

[Daria Kulikova_GitProtect_io]

I used to keep those cards from conferences as a reminder... but it was up to the momment when my daughter found them :) Now all I have is memories :) 

[vikram]

Hi @Kristján Geir Mathiesen 

Once again thanks for making us remember the old days.

I have atleast 8 old cards from different organizations and participations in different countries. 

My most memorable cards are from Belgium and Malaysia countries. 

Vikram P 

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Thank you for your stories and comments. Fun to read. And remember, you folks are excellent humans! The Community loves you and thanks you for all that you do for it.

[Tomislav Tobijas _Koios_]

I've been going through my 'box of forgotten' cards and found this limited edition public transport card (don't look at the headshot 🫣) which could be bought after FIFA World Cup 2018 where Croatia ended as runner-up after a final with France. As a nation, we can agree on pretty much anything apart from cherishing sports and our national teams ⚽😅

Apart from that, for a long time, I was actually collecting cinema tickets (not sure if those can be classified as 'cards' but they are in the same box as these old IDs) and ended up having more than 300 within 7-8 year period. Sadly, as everything is digitalized, they don't print out tickets anymore...