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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.

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.