Let's go shopping 1965 grocery store 'Checker of the Year' and more

[kimball455]

Hello Everyone ...

Let's go back in time and learn all of the techniques and tricks of 1965 grocery check out. A fun video.

Harry

http://https//www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJCj87WxIec

 

[Ultramatic]

 

 

 

Great vid Harry! Thanks!

 

[pulltostart]

Looks familiar.  I graduated HS in May, 1969 and went to work sacking groceries at Bruno's Store No. 20 in Midfield, AL.  I was thinking just the other day how different the grocery checkout was back then.  Before plastic bags.  Before barcodes.  Before credit cards, even!  One difference in what I was taught and what the video showed was it was the sacker's responsibility to empty the shopper's cart and "set up" the groceries properly, saving the check out clerk's time.  And it was always assumed that the sacker would take the cart to the auto for the shopper, hopefully for a small tip.

 

lawrence

 

[appnut]

Saw a box of Beads o Bleach at 12:45. 

 

[ea56]

I enjoyed watching the video Harry! As a matter of fact just this past Friday when I was doing our weekly grocery shopping I was thinking about just how much it has changed over the years. Most of the checkers now were born about 20 years or more after this video was made. They would flip if if the had to make change and count it back to the customer. And the old registers were a lot more work than scanning is. In 1977 when Raley's came to the town next door to me they had the first registers with scanners in Sonoma County. One of my neighbors in the apartment building I lived in was brought in from Sacramento to teach the other staff how to use the scanners. Also, notice how every thing was "she and her". There were very few male grocery checkers then, it was predominately a job for women. And the teased and sprayed hair! I too graduated from high school in 1969 and went to beauty college right after graduation an a scholarship. Those checkers were like the early customers that I had when I first started out in the business. They wanted those "hair don't's" to "stay" for a whole week, when they would come in for their next weekly, $4.00 shampoo and set! So you had to tease and spray it within an inch of its life. Then when they went to bed, they wrapped toilet paper around it. I'm sure many of us here can remember our mother's doing this. My Uncle Ray said that must be where the got the term "sh*t head" from, LOL.

Thanks so much for sharing this blast from the past!
Eddie[this post was last edited: 2/20/2017-18:17]

 

[circlew]

My mom didn't wrap toilet tissue around her hair, but she did wear a hairnet or cover to bed. When I was real little, she did her hair at home, but after I got a little older, she went to the salon to have it done once a week. The only time she would wash it in between was if she got it dirty working in the yard or housecleaning, or if my sister or I got food in her hair (my sister sometimes spit her baby food out if she didnt' like it).

 

[abcomatic]

What a great video. My mother, in the early '60s was a checker for the local Kroger store. I was amazed at how she could work the cash register without looking at it that much. She would come home crabby though most days. lol Happy shopping, Gary

 

[michaelman2]

This is such a great post...thank you for sharing.   The pride these women presented and extolled in excellent customer service is really missed.    

 

As for the hairstyles.   We used to call this "shampoo, set and insurance policy"...it did not move for a week.   

 

Some of the week old sets are more attractive than the freshly blown out hairstyles of late.  

 

Again, thanks for the great post....reminiscent of this site when it was lighthearted and fun.....

 

[mattl]

Looking at it today it really seems labor intensive, but back then it was a snap compared to earlier in the century when cash registers were even harder to work.  Funny, it's been years since I've used a checker at any of the large markets, I much prefer self checkout.  Only place I still have to use a checker is Aldi, and I wonder how long that will last.  Even Sam's Club has opened self checkouts, have not seen it at any Costco's I've been to though.

 

If you listen at 6:23 I think the background music is from Ozzie and Harriet's TV show.

 

[lordkenmore]

Interesting video! I can remember that era more or less. Manually entering prices was the standard when I was very young. I heard about scanner systems in IIRC early elementary school, and I think they sounded interesting. But I never actually saw one until a grocery store opened near our house ca. 1980. That had all the new technology, including scanners. The scanners needed several passes sometimes for something to register...the technology needed some evolution yet, probably.

 

Although in retrospect, the store my parents shopped heavily at one point seems more intersting now. They not only manually keyed prices in. But (presumably to save costs on shelving labor), the customers would mark their own prices, using a special grease pencil you'd grab on your way in!

 

Another fun quirk I can recall some places having was having the customer bag his or her own groceries. I think that hit the maximum use of cashier time at (IIRC) Fred Meyer where we shopped where the check stands were two sided. The cashier would ring up the lane (say) on the right, and then while that customer bagged groceries, and wrote a check, the cashier would ring up the customer on the left.

 

I first saw self checkout ca. 2000 at QFC. It was a fun novelty. But I have concerns about it taking jobs away. Even with those concerns, I've started using it a lot in recent months. I can get out of my primary grocery store faster, and I'm often on a tight schedule.

 

Plus, for those buying "embarrassing" products, self checkout may help minimize the embarrassment of a cashier finding out that you buy...the low cost margarine instead of butter.

 

[alr2903]

They did not mention the "carry out guys", remember the special little cart they used?   There were also bins inside for the returnable soft drink bottles.  I remember people saying "I had my bottles" at the check out.  There had to be some money involved older kids would pick up deposit bottles along the roadside and cash them in for some pocket change.  Thanks for a nice video!

 

[mayken4now]

Wonder did that right hand get worn out. Bet you didn't hear of carpal tunnel back then.

Thanks for posting

 

[wiskybill]

Blast from the past..

Crossroads Super-Market

My parents owned a supermarket from 1960 until dad
sold it and retired in 1982.

All six of us kids worked there from the day we turned 16
until we graduated high school and stayed for a while or went
on to something else.

This picture is from the early 1960's from a local paper.

Mom and Dad on the left, two of our checkers on the right.

 

[vacerator]

Very good thread!

Many don't realize the ingenuity and work it takes to run a supermarket.
Even in the 1980's, and early 90's, before labor was leaner, we were still having our people crisp leafy greens and even broccoli in the evenings for the next days sales displays. They were soaked in the large back room sinks in luk warm water to open the cells, then in cold water before being stored in plastic tubs in the walk in coolers overnight.
Some manual in store trimming wrapping was also still being done for cauliflower and broccoli. It came iced in waxed cardboard boxes.
The number of heads designated the size of the produce. 12 size cabbage is larger than 18 size. 24 size iceberg lettuce is larger than 48 size. The higher the number, more per case. Order books stated the sizes so department managers could estimate their sales needs. I still remember item line numbers. Bananas 02550, head lettuce 51411.
On the end of buying for an entire chain, you can imagine the calculating involved when dealing with entire pallets and truck loads. 38 pounds of bananas per case, or 24 hands roughly. 50 cases per pallet.
Then there is the control of shrink, or spoilage. Retail mark up is about 40% over cost for perishables. 50% in the deli depts. Only a one to two percent shrink ratio is profitable per an inventory period of a month, so you can imagine the importance of just on time ordering and delivering logistics.
The profit margins back in the day were under 3%, including overhead of labor, utilities, etc. They are better today, as labor is less costly, and logistics are more efficient.

 

[vacerator]

I saw one

A&P infomercial on youtube with Joan Crawford shopping with a ten year old girl.
Coca-Cola is the sponsor, along with Ford Motor Co., because she drives a 1969 Country Squire in it.

 

[kd12]

Labels

I was looking at an article on an old price-label maker catalog from the early 70s. I can remember when every item had its own price label and the stockers had to manually label everything. What a nightmare that must have been, especially if prices were constantly changing, as they were in the inflationary 70s. Not unusual to buy something with two or three price labels on top of each other in those days.

Making Office Supplies Sexy: The 1971 Monarch Marking Mate Catalog - Flashbak

Only in the 1960s or 70s would a label-maker catalog try to sex things up. This was an era where the "sex sells" approach was seemingly used for every single product on the market.

flashbak.com

 

[warmsecondrinse]

Yet again I'm on AW.org when I should be doing something else.... (sigh)

My first job was in a market place. I had an apron instead of cash register. All math had to be done in your head. To be fair, the sales tax was 5% so it was fairly easy.

First encounter scanners was at Sears in 1980/81. The scanners were so slow and inaccurate it was much, much faster and easier to ring everything by hand. I recall the ergonomics of the register was very good. The buttons most often used were closer to the keypad and larger than the ones less frequently used. As a result your fingers could fly with very few errors. I looked for a pic but had no luck.

 

[ea56]

Reply #10 comment about the bottles is so true. Back then you actually got your deposit back in full if you returned the bottles. The regular sized soda bottles got 3 cents and the large quart size got 5 cents. When I was a kid I can recall going door to door in our neighborhood with my brother and our friends asking if they had any bottles we could have. We'd collect as many as we could, walk to Safeway and cash them in and divid the profits between us. We usually ended up with enough to get a candy bar or some Hostess cupcakes and another soda for each of us. This was a fun past time during weekends and summer days.

Now, they still charge a deposit in Calif., but at the recycle centers they pay by the weight, so you never get you full deposit back. Somehow this doesn't seem right to me.
Eddie

 

[vacerator]

"Bottle returns"

providing the label and upc skew are still readable, most stores now have TOMRA (R) or equivalent refund machines. One for glass, one or more for plastic, and cans. You insert bottom first, and when finished push the total button an get a redeemable receipt for the check out.
A computers tracks the tallies so the store is correctly compensated by the recycler.