Many of the things that were done in the 80’s are a bad idea to do today.
The first is giving bad service in customer service. Your picture, name, and store location could all be on the internet with a bad review before the customer even leaves the store. Good luck finding another customer service job with another company that has the internet.
One bad day could mean a lifetime of unemployment. Nobody wants to be famous for telling a customer to go to hell in a short video that goes viral, breaking a keyboard over their knee in a security video, or appearing in an extraordinarily creative and well-written Yelp review.
In the 80’s you could have a bad day and insult a customer. Maybe they would speak with the manager. Maybe they wouldn’t. However, you would never need to worry about someone writing a letter about your poor performance, bad attitude, and hygiene, then allowing anyone with a phone to view the letter about you, with a quick search, for a long long time.
In fact the letter, or copies of it, would then exist forever with no possibility of it being deleted.
Back then you could make a promise to someone, to trick them into a rehab center that was located in the middle of nowhere where they could not leave. (The rehab center will market the location of the cult as "distraction-free" as opposed to nearly inescapable.)
In the 1980's everyone involved in a intervention could be called by the addict demanding what was promised, until the family decided to block that person’s number or just not answer when they came up on the caller ID. Maybe they could get a restraining order if it got really annoying. Maybe they could try to get a book published about the family that wronged them or the treatment center. Now it takes minutes.
There is no stopping a Yelp review or stopping someone from writing an insultingly true block-chain blog about that person (or family) and their unethical and/or illegal behavior.
Want to cheat someone in business? Better get off the social media first. Signing up for Linked-In could be the worst mistake you ever made. It is a really bad idea to cheat on your spouse when you are on Facebook. Don't expect to fornicate with anyone else who knows anybody who knows anybody that is also on Facebook. The victim of infidelity cannot be expected to not contact the cheaters' friends, potential girlfriends, and co-workers to warm them about dishonesty, unfairness, or sexually transmitted diseases that fester within the heart and privates of the cheater.
In the 1980's you could get away with stranding someone, verbally abusing someone, lying to someone, cheating on someone, and tricking someone. As long as you didn't break the law, you could keep doing it. Moving to different towns and causing new frowns, for decades.
It is important for people to know that in 2018 you either need to do everything right, or make sure the people you treat poorly, cheat on, steal from, or provide anything less than exemplary customer service to, do not have a computer or cell phone. The other option you have is to murder them or make their life so impossible that meeting their basic needs takes up their entire day, and they simply have no time to warn the entire world about you, which only takes about a half hour.
Don't risk it. Treat people honestly and fairly. If you realized you have made a mistake, correct it before they get to their phone. Remember this isn't 1985. Their phone is in their pocket.