PJ Vogt

That's the knocker-upper, here to get you up for work.

We're in the 1800s, before the invention of the adjustable alarm clock.

The knocker-upper is a job.

The knocker-upper walks the neighborhood with a long stick and taps it on the windows of people's houses early in the morning to wake them up for work.

Who wakes up the knocker-upper for work?

Nobody knows.

But this is a job, a job that'll actually exist for another century.

Outside, the gas street lamps are still burning.

The lamplighter lit them the night before.

He's supposed to come at dawn to extinguish them, but it's so early that he hasn't yet.

Your lamplighter is one of those neighbors you have a deep fondness for, a fixture.

Every day, you watch him make the rounds at dusk with his ladder and his light.

You yourself are a driver.

Professional driver, 200 years ago, is also a job.

You're a person who sits on a coach and holds the reins of a horse.

You take passengers where they wanna go.

You start your work day.

Okay, hypothetical over.

Two of those jobs are obviously so long disappeared that most people don't know about them.

The knocker upper is your iPhone alarm.