How to Be an Effective Supermarket Checker

Out On The YouTube ^ | 1965

[SamAdams76]

Before barcode scanners, being a supermarket checker was a tad more complicated.

[SamAdams76]

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Whoa...she paid for those few items with a TWENTY and got some change back???

[SamAdams76]

Yes, but she had to give it all back to her husband when she got home.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

What's this? A COVID paper goods shortage in 1965? Did somebody go back in time and tell them there would be a run on paper towels?

[algore]

Candy bars were $.10

And cashiers memorized the codes/prices for produce items

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I remember Dad getting home from work around 1959 or 1960 and asking “Did you get a twenty today, hon?”

That’s about the same as getting 200 out of the ATM today.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Counting Change is a lost art.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Ten cents? You youngster, you. I used to pay 5¢ for a Hershey bar.

I’d get 2¢ for the coke bottles left at the construction sites and buy candy and comic books. No cigarettes, though.

[Jamestown1630]

My first and only foray into the retail business, they had already gone to (relatively primitive) computers. But I always wished I'd had a chance to play on something like this:

[Jamestown1630]

A coke at the soda fountain in the drugstore was 5 cents. (I guess a Vanilla Coke was a little more...)

[ProtectOurFreedom]

At 4:45, the checker talks about her daily inspection. She asks “Is it plugged in?”

LOL, so that’s the first question of Tech Support for 55 years!

[Flaming Conservative]

Candy bars were 5¢ for a LONG time. I remember in the 70’s, when they jumped up to 40¢, and Hersheys said, “we promise when prices for sugar and chocolate go down, so will candy prices. Hmm. I guess chocolate and sugar prices never went down...

[Flaming Conservative]

Can you imagine the carpal tunnel those magnificent beasts caused? Of course, they probably just called it arthritis.

[faithhopecharity]

“Kapitalist pig propaganda to train the workers into the joy of being exploited.” /s (Nice, though.. thanks)

[Responsibility2nd]

In 1986 I moonlighted one Christmas season at JCPenney. It was still pretty primitive with cash register tape and ink ribbons and like 100 different keys on the register. You rang up cash sales one way and credit card sales another.

Then at the end of your shift you had to balance out. And all of that was the easy part. The hard part was dealing with hundreds of customers during the Christmas rush. Never again

[Terry L Smith]

I was a supermarket checker 1969 to 1970, working after school and after I graduated high school, until I left for USAF BMT.

Everything was ‘keyed in’. We had books with the item code, in case we forgot! The prices were all keyed in by hand, and all the sales, tax, total functions were a huge palm heel motion key. We had to mentally figure totals of the same products, and the sales coupon discounts.

This was not a “chain supermarket”.

[Deaf Smith]

NCR

Helping dolts make iNCRedible mistakes.

*Mad Magazine

[Dr. Sivana]

I bet that NatCo coffee is really nasty... Chase & Sanborn nasty.

[Dacula]

Counting Change is a lost art.

Counting back correctly is a lost art.

[Dr. Sivana]

Counting Change is a lost art.

My fifth grade math teacher lamented that in 1974, and in 1981 when I was in the habit of counting change back at Pizza Hut people and my manager didn’t get what I was doing.