On January 26, 2006, Western Union stopped providing the service it became famous for: sending telegrams. The company officially got out of the communications business and shifted to financial services and money transfers. In 2005, the number of telegrams sent by Western Union was 1 percent of the number sent in 1929.
In 1985, my wife and youngest daughter traveled to London -- their first time out of country.
I decided to greet them with a telegram at the desk of their hotel. I called Western Union and dictated a telegram to the operator.
After completing the telegram, the operator engaged me in a conversation. Turned out she was based in Reno, I was the only call she'd fielded in over an hour...and she was the only person in the call center! Bored silly!!! We chatted for the better part of an hour before we finally clicked off. She didn't receive another call in the interim.
So, yeah, the telegram business was pretty slow...