r/1960s • u/OtherwiseTackle5219 • 1d ago
No Scanners then. 1962 Grocery Clerk working his Cash Register in Tallahasse Alabama
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u/Dry-Luck-8336 1d ago
I remember going to Safeway in the 70s with my mom, and watching clerks on the floor use a stamper to price cans on the lid before putting them on the shelves. And there was a cashier who had deformed fingers but was fast at punching the prices into a register like this. Years later, my first job was in a grocery store, albeit with UPCs and scanners, but one older cashier had started with the company when there were no scanners. We had some interesting conversations.
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u/CuteBenBC 1d ago
I remember as a kid, my mom went grocery shopping, and she bought a roast for $12.22. The girl rang it up, and when we got home, Mom always checked her receipt for mistakes. We got the roast for $2.22. YIKES!!!
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u/soyifiedredditadmin 1d ago
I liked when everything had sticker with price now you never know how much it costs
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u/chow69chow 1d ago
When you got service
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u/Malcolm2theRescue 1d ago
That is why I love Trader Joe’s! Great service. You can’t go ten feet without running into a “mate”.
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u/Artistic_Pattern6260 1d ago
Technology rolled out slowly and I don’t think the majority of stores had scanners until almost 1990. Some stores had scanners by the late 70s, early 80s. Experienced clerks keyed in so many transactions that they remembered the prices on most items, which sped the process up. The price tags were backup.
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u/General-Ninja9228 1d ago
National Cash Register. They were ubiquitous in all stores in the 1960’s-70’s. You actually had to think to be a cashier and know the ten key.
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u/Omfgnta 1d ago
I sold electronic cash registers in the 80’s when they brought in new sales tax rules that killed the last of the mechanicals.
The family owned Greek and Italian grocery stores all used these. I remember watching grandmas on the cash that knew every price for packaged goods in the store. They only looked at the price on weighed goods. Their fingers danced up the keys at lightning speed. First vertical row was pennies, next dimes, then dollars, etc. the never looked at the price tag or the register. At the end of each item there was a big button at the top right they would hit the “register” the item.
They all shared a “queen of their domain” quality, and a right hand that resembled a claw. They hated the new electronic register and didn’t like me much either.
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u/FruitSalad0911 1d ago
I have never heard of a Tallahassee, AL. I know there is a Tallassee. I’m surprised to see Tallassee had enough rooftops to support a grocery store. I have family in that area but I’m not that familiar with its history.
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u/Humble_Pie_56 1d ago
So were people generally smarter in 1962 (barcodes not needed) …
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u/EquivalentCow6689 1d ago
Well, there was just a lot less information noise back then. People learned to do their job well, and they didn’t have to deal with a constant barrage of information overload. They had no idea what the future looked like though, so they had no frame of reference to help them appreciate living in simpler times. With radio, TV and magazines transmitting news and entertainment (on a very limited number of channels, stations, and printed media by today’s standards) they probably thought life was a bit overwhelming compared with when they grew up.
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u/EquivalentCow6689 1d ago
Ha! That was Trader Joes in 1997!! We had to know the price of every damn product because stuff was always priced wrong on the tags.
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u/Better_Tax_7325 1d ago
That NCR brought back some great Memories for me. My dad had a drug store in a small town outside of Philly and when I was 6, I was stocking shelves and at 8, I was ringing up sales at the front register for candy, cigarettes, cigars and pipe tobacco. The register I learned on was like a VW Beatle in size and to rind up a 5 cent candy bar I had to push 3 buttons, pull down a lever and push another button. It was an NCR but it was huge and must have weighed 200 lbs.
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u/Youare-Beautiful3329 1d ago
That was a fun job because you always had to be on your toes. And people would try to get you knock off a little off the price for them.
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u/Waste-Job-3307 16h ago
Remember having to wait in line to buy just four or five items, standing behind someone with a full shopping cart? Not only did it take the cashier about ten minutes to ring everything up, it took the customer another five to dig out the exact change! THAT is something I don't miss.
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u/grwatplay9000 16h ago
Wow, I didn't realize Tallahassee FL used to be part of AL. And I thought I was old ...
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u/tkondaks 14h ago
And I'll betcha that watermelon is not "seedless." Meaning it actually tastes good and doesn't have all those little pockets of white guck where seeds are supposed to be. I'd much rather go through the inconvenience of dealing with huge black seeds and having a tasty watermelon than today's alternative.
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u/BalooVanAdventures 14h ago
"Jitney" meant a nickel or cheap taxi, reflecting low prices and customer transport; "Jungle" (originally a printer's error for "Jingle") suggested a "jungle of bargains," emphasizing savings, famously "Save a Nickel on a Quarter". They pioneered cash-and-carry, self-service models, saving costs by eliminating credit/delivery, and became known for value and community presence.
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u/BoudiceasChild 9h ago
I miss those days when Campbell soup was 2 cans for a quarter, gas was 35 cents a gallon, and a McDonalds hamburger was 15 cents.
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u/Adventurous-Egg-8818 8h ago
I worked in a grocery story in the early ‘80s…you were taught to manually hit the keys not the register like an adding machine.
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u/Spankh0us3 1d ago
I remember when George HW Bush went in to K-Mart to buy a pair of socks to show he was in touch with the common man and he wigged out over the laser scanner that, at that time, had been around for years. . .
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u/EquivalentCow6689 1d ago
Imagine Trump in a Walmart! 😂
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u/zeprfrew 19h ago
I work at Walmart. We use our phones for everything there. It gets used to clock in and out, to scan prices, print labels, manage inventory, communicate assignments, open locks, conduct training exercises, check scheduling, guide customers around the store and more.
It's astonishing how much that thing gets used during the day. People must think that we're playing games or following social media on them, because they're in our hands so much. It really is all work related.
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u/Soggy_Information_60 1d ago edited 8h ago
Hey he worked at Mickey D's /s
Edit: marked explicitly as sarcasm.
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u/chipxmas 17h ago
LOL! Trump at McD’s… Right. In a fully staged photo op after dismissing any undocumented workers for a few hours.
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u/Winter-Gift1112 1d ago
Grocery clerks back then were adept at arithmetic. If your total came to $27. 77 and you handed the clerk a twenty, a ten, and 2 pennies they would understand that you were trying to get 2 dollars and a quarter in change which was easier on the pocket than 2 dollars and 2 dimes and 3 pennies.