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.

[Jamestown1630]

LOL!

(Did they sell Playboy?)

[Larry Lucido]

Back when Woody Allen was still funny (a young Sylvester Stallone is in this clip too).

Not safe for work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InfGij1cVNI

[vigilence]

I started in the grocery business as a courtesy clerk (boxboy) in June 1964 and within a year moved up to apprentice clerk checking groceries after high school and JC for four years. We had older NCR registers with a department toggle bar and manual everything. We accepted cash and checks but you had better know those using checks! All items were price stamped with ink but we were always having sales so you had to know the sale items of the day and their sale price which we called out as we rang it up. We had an extensive offering of fresh vegetables that we never ate at home so that was an education in itself. In 1968 I enlisted for four years and afterwards used the GI Bill to finish college. In 1974 after graduating jobs were scarce so I returned to what I knew landing a Journeyman Clerk position with Safeway Stores. Checking for them was more difficult. The machines were newer but functioned essentially the same but with more departments. Plus we had to direct bag as we checked, planning as we went how to properly bag. We also had to touch check using the 5 key as home on the number pad and visualizing in our minds the full number being entered. I got pretty good at it and scored 8-5 shifts so I could man the quick check stand during lunch hour. Every day a dishevelled old man would come through my checkstand at lunchtime with chips and a cheap beer can. I would greet him the same as everyone else with a “Hi, how are you today” and he would mumble something incoherent in return. One day, after greeting him he said “every day you ask me how I am but you don’t really give a shit how I am”! Surprised and not really knowing what to say I blurted out “you’re right, I don’t really”! He burst out laughing along with me and everyone else in line and it became a running joke every day.

[BykrBayb]

Most items had a sticker with a price on it. They used a price gun to apply the stickers. This was a job usually done by a teenage boy, while stocking the shelves. Some of those guys went really fast. You could hear the clicking of the price gun three aisles over.

The produce had no labels. The cashier had to know what it was, or ask the customer. They had a notebook with prices for all the produce. If it was priced by weight, she had to weigh it at the register. Yes, she. There was rarely a man on the register, unless it was a manager filling in.

[Jane Long]

Yep.

I made my kids practice this, when they were young.

I said, you’ll want to be able to count what is owed BACK to you, in your head, before they hand you your change.

I guess most people don’t even use cash, anymore :-(

[Jane Long]

I’m so glad I read your story all the way to the end.

In addition to the history/walk down memory lane of grocery shopping, as a kid, with my folks....that last line gave me a good laugh.

Thanks for sharing. I had a friend, in HS, whose dad was a Safeway manager. Mom and I stopped in that store, one day, and he checked us out...and....sacked the items, as he rang them up. I remember being kind of impressed with that :-)

Appreciated it, even more, when I began my own shopping. Sacking groceries, properly, is a lost art.

[RightGeek]

Before the stickers we used a "rotary" with blue ink:

Changing prices was a real pain - we stole a can of hair spray and used it to dissolve and then wipe off the old price.

[Ronaldus Magnus III]

Some day I will write down all of my Safeway stories, in and out of the check stand. Probably the ultimate out of the check stand is the Toilet Paper End Display. The main boss told me to build certain end displays. One of them was the toilet paper going on sale the next day. Part of the marketing strategy for displays is to put something else, relating to the sale item, around it so the customer will purchase the regular priced item as well. So, if barbecue briquettes are on sale, you make big stacks on the end display, and barbecue lighter fluid, at regular price, around it. So.... After building a large toilet paper display, what do you think I placed all around the TP... Prune Juice! My coworkers said I could not do it, but I was in charge of the swing shift, so there was no one to make me stop. When I arrived the next day, the main boss acted like he was chewing me out, while at the same time laughing hard. I eventually told him that, hey, half of the prune juice had already sold.

[AnxiouslyWaiting]

And cashiers could make change without a computer.

[BykrBayb]

Did you have to use an ink pad, or was the ink somehow integrated into the device?

The price guns I remember were all metal, like the rotary stamp you posted. All I could find on the Internet were plastic models, and even they looked like antiques. I keep forgetting I’m that old.

[SamAdams76]

We are probably around same age. I remember when the Marathon bars went to 15 cents because they were about a foot long. They even had a ruler on the back to prove it. Most of the other bars were still a dime. Things like York Peppermint Patties and Reeses Peanut Butter cups were still a nickel.

[SamAdams76]

I took two years of typing in high school. The first year, we were on the manual typewriters. The second year, we had the IBM Selectrics. I did like the electric typewriters a lot better.

Not many boys took typing in school. In the second year, I was the only boy left. Got ragged on a little for being in that class as it was clearly meant for girls who wanted to be secretaries but that's the one skill I learned in high school that I still use today.

[SamAdams76]

When I worked at a supermarket chain in the late 1970s, they were moving away from those price stampers to label guns that shot out stickers. It was considered high tech at the time and if the price changed, you just put the new one on top of the old.

It was a big responsibility to price product in those days. You had to be a full-timer out of high school to even qualify to have one of those pricing guns and they had to be checked out and checked back in every shift. If you were issued one and let it out of your sight for even a minute, you were fired. Anybody else who even touched one was immediately fired.

Still a few years away from bar codes - that changed everything.

[SamAdams76]

I forgot all about that movie! Classic. I like how they put the National Review in among all those porn mags. These days, that’s where it actually belongs.

[SamAdams76]

Sacking groceries, properly, is a lost art.

In fairness, those plastic bags they use these days make proper bagging very difficult. Paper bags were all I had to work with in the 1970s and I became very good at it. Cans on bottom, boxes along the sides that provide a space for more fragile items in the middle. Sometimes I'll get behind the register if the cashier is by herself and will amaze her by having everything bagged by the time she turns around. It's been over 40 years since I bagged groceries for a living but it's like riding a bicycle.

[RightGeek]

The picture doesn't make it clear, but that thing that looks like a crossbar just above the number dials was a cup that held an ink pad.

In "resting" position, the numbers you set on the dials were flush against the pad getting inked. When you wanted to mark something, you pushed down on the handle and the numbers rotated 180 degrees (hence a rotary) to face the bottom and mark the item.

My career as a grocery clerk (a summer job in the late 60's) ended before the price labels arrived.

[RightGeek]

I had a summer job at a grocery store in the late 60's. I guess the manager trusted me because I was one of the few who got to put out cigarettes and beer (they were kept in a locked cage).

LOL! It just occurs to me that I was not old enough to drink legally. Not sure about smoking.

I also recall I had a "tax stamp" (rubber stamp) to put on the bottom of cigarette packs that I took out of cartons and put in the cigarette machine. Wonder if that was legal!

[outofsalt]

My mom would write a note for me to go to the drugstore and get her cigarettes and one candy for me. BUT, ONLY ONE

[ProtectOurFreedom]

In the video, you see that all the checkers are women and the script is clearly written for women. There’s a scene where a horde of women each with a full shopping cart is descending on the checker.

In ONE scene, you see two men shoppers. The other 100 shoppers shown are all women.

[ridesthemiles]

There NO CODE for produce in those days...NONE. ...We had to walk the produce section before our shifts & memorize the prices/use a price sheet.

Not hard with bananas.

There were over 59 different kinds of plums when I was a grocery checker in the 60’s. THAT was crazy. They didn’t all have the same prices!!!

We had to read the prices stamped on every item out loud and ring every item on the keys of the cash register.

I was a checker for over 2 years.

I was out of balance ONE TIME in all that time-—by 25 cents.
AND-—we had to count out the change to our customers. Starting with the total bill & counting forward to the amount the customer had handed us. The amount the customer handed to us was on the shelf of the register until the transaction was over....as proof of what money the checker had received.

I remember one instance when a customer claimed that she was short changed by the checker next to me. $20...alot of $$$ in those days. That check stand was IMMEDIATELY shut down & the checker—customer—manager & a witness all went to a back room & balanced the register out completely. The checker was correct...the customer was trying a scam. IIRC, customer was politely asked to n o longer shop in those stores.