# Life before barcodes **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 19, 2017, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130 "2017-11-19T22:45:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/21 "2017-11-20T02:34:36Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Oh and in the first case if I see them with the calculator and see a 20 dollar bill out and $13.87 and say 'hold up it’s 6…20…3, yup the change is $6.23, I’ll get a ‘how’d you do that’ from them and I’m like ‘uh, aren’t you the one in high school?’. The few times (post college) people have said ‘well, that’s because you’re a math major’ . . . $6.13 ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/22 "2017-11-20T02:57:43Z")
Touche!! ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/23 "2017-11-20T03:24:30Z")
Are y’all contemplating how all this was done in the Aulde Englyshe System, as discussed in [a nearby current thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=842330)? (…which, BTW, was listed sequential to this one in the thread list page.) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/24 "2017-11-20T03:25:35Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Funny now we have the same issue with the 4-digit part number on fruits & veg. If that little tag is missing from all of your kumquats, there’s no way the checker can ring them up. He/she probably knows the codes for russet potatoes and red delicious apples and that’s about it. “Hey mister, what is this?” is a question I still get fairly often in 2017. My grocery does not have bar codes on produce, but most of the checkers are veterans who know their stuff. Takes longer at self checkout. And the price is in the computer, unlike the old days. One of the Ramona books has her father working in a grocery part time, and complaining about the beginning of the week when the produce prices change and he has to memorize a new list. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/25 "2017-11-20T03:40:37Z")
I am such a lazy slacker, I work concession stand at ballgames, I have for 6 yrs refused to learn how to use the registers, of course nothing is barcodes or tagged. We have all the prices set so that we double our wholesale list, usually. So I do all the adding in my head, and the change returned. I am pretty proficient and fast. Some nights I go home with numbers swimming in my head. So far it has worked for my lazy ass. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/26 "2017-11-20T03:45:51Z")
The great fallacy of modern economics. Our system was created by economists who observed that there was more work than men, and who never dreamed otherwise. An economy in which there are more men than work is too terrifying to contemplate, violating every cultural principle of how to feed men and otherwise distribute wealth according to Calvinist Dogma. So the Bar Code is one of many artifices overlaid on our society in order to bloat the necessity for work when no work needs to be done. There is an Orwellian army of drones to administer and keep accounts of bar codes, who would otherwise have to be fed without justifying feeding them, in contradiction to the Calvinist model. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/27 "2017-11-20T03:55:12Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > My store still doesn’t use them. Our cash registers are basically glorified calculators. About half of the items are labeled (with a price gun) the rest of them the cashiers memorize. Most of them learn them within a few days, then it’s just a matter of keeping up with changes. A few of them, even after months of working their still have to rely on a cheat sheet. The people that write them all down, in most cases, are doing not because they can’t memorize them, but because (how to put it nicely) they’re not trying to. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen one of my cashiers frantically scanning sheets of paper trying to figure out how much something is just to say ‘uh, it’s $1.49/lb, but it’s also right there’. I always tell new cashiers not to spend too much time learning prices of things that can see from where they’re standing (about half the store). It just slows you down. It’s like that college teacher that would let you bring a note card into the exam. It’s a trap. If you spent all week trying to see how much you can jam on to it you don’t study and you can’t find anything on it. I worked in a store in the 90s that didn’t have a scanner. Everything was just priced with stickers. Produce and some other stuff like pop was just printed on a list. The store was like that until maybe 10 years ago when they got scanners, but I think a lot of the stuff is still hand-priced. I don’t shop there much anymore (they didn’t take credit cards until last year so I quickly fell out of any ability to shop there). **JoeyP** how do you do inventory? Do you just do it visually? I have no idea how our store did it, but they were never wrong (I mean I was never sent to refill anything that was already full). ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/28 "2017-11-20T04:23:14Z")
My parents owned a True Value hardware store from 1975 until 1983. 95% of the merchandise was bought from the main supplier to True Value stores (Cotter & Company); shipments would come with computer-printed sheets of price stickers (about 3/4" square). When a shipment would come in, it could entail several hours of placing price stickers on each item before it could be placed on the shelf. For items that we got from other suppliers, we had a couple of different machines (one that looked a bit like the “price gun” that Flo uses in some Progressive ads) to print price stickers, with adjustable dials to select the right price on the stickers. For certain items (such as cast iron plumbing fittings), on which stickers wouldn’t stay stuck, we’d write the prices on with permanent markers. Changing prices (such as when there was a price increase) was a hassle. The old price stickers would have to be removed, before putting on stickers with the new prices. (Lazy teenaged me wanted to just put the new sticker on top of the old one, but my father would scold me for that; he didn’t want customers to see the old prices.) It was even worse if we had to re-price those plumbing parts, as that required removing the old marker pricing with paint thinner. We had electronic cash registers, so at least those would calculate the sales tax and add it in automatically. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/29 "2017-11-20T04:27:45Z")
Radio Shack gave me PTSD. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/30 "2017-11-20T04:36:11Z")
Also, I should add: while our hardware store accepted credit cards, we probably didn’t do more than one or two credit card sales a day. We had the [old-fashioned “flatbed” credit card machine](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61qKJ-6bzVL._SL1200_.jpg), with which we’d take the customer’s credit card number, and imprint it on a credit sales slip, which would then get sent in to the bank. We would also have a paper booklet of known “bad” credit card numbers (i.e., stolen cards), sent to us by the credit card company, and we were supposed to check each card against that booklet. While we didn’t do many credit card sales, we did sell a lot of stuff on credit. Regular customers could open a credit account with our store directly, and we’d write up the sale on a slip, and file it. At the end of each month, my mom, who handled the books, would mail an invoice to each holder of a credit account, for them to then pay us (either by mailing back a check, or coming in to the store to pay us). ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/31 "2017-11-20T05:20:35Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Funny now we have the same issue with the 4-digit part number on fruits & veg. If that little tag is missing from all of your kumquats, there’s no way the checker can ring them up. He/she probably knows the codes for russet potatoes and red delicious apples and that’s about it. “Hey mister, what is this?” is a question I still get fairly often in 2017. At my store our registers have a list of UPC’s built right in, so if you can identify it you can find the code. Of course, that assumes the checker actually can identify it - I’m pretty good with most vegetables and fruits now, to the point some of the younger folk will ask me what something is. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/32 "2017-11-20T05:23:11Z")
According to Snopes, the [story](https://www.snopes.com/history/american/bushscanner.asp) about Bush and the scanner was a fraud made up by a New York Times reporter who wasn’t present at the event. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/33 "2017-11-20T05:23:47Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Every customer his own cashier! Eventually I might get to be like the really good ones and actually remember the codes for green onions and red peppers! 4068 for the onions and 4688 for the red peppers. Just FYI. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/34 "2017-11-20T05:28:47Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Funny now we have the same issue with the 4-digit part number on fruits & veg. If that little tag is missing from all of your kumquats, there’s no way the checker can ring them up. He/she probably knows the codes for russet potatoes and red delicious apples and that’s about it. “Hey mister, what is this?” is a question I still get fairly often in 2017. > > I recall everyone poking fun at George Bush Senior at some campaign photo op at a grocery store showing his “Ordinary Joe” skills. He’d never seen a grocery store UPC scanner and was amazed by it. Although they’d been deployed nationwide for 5+ years by then. Sheltered rich life much? I worked at Walmart for 4 years. At first, yeah, you don’t know the produce codes. But all the common ones you memorize pretty quickly, just from dealing with them literally every day. And most of the semi-common ones you memorize not too long after that. And by the way–the one code that EVERY cashier and former cashier knows is bananas – 4011. It’s been 13 years since I quit Walmart, and I will remember that number as long as I live. The George Bush story is a malicious myth. The reporter who started the lie wasn’t even present at the event. > [@](#): > > Then the details of the story started to dribble out. Andrew Rosenthal of The New York Times hadn’t even been present at the grocers’ convention. He based his article on a two-paragraph report filed by the lone pool newspaperman allowed to cover the event, Gregg McDonald of the Houston Chronicle, who merely wrote that Bush had a “look of wonder” on his face and didn’t find the event significant enough to mention in his own story. Moreover, Bush had good reason to express wonder: He wasn’t being shown then-standard scanner technology, but a new type of scanner that could weigh groceries and read mangled and torn bar codes. > **[Was President George H.W. Bush 'Amazed' by a Grocery Scanner?](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bush-scanner-demonstration/)** > > What it all came down to was that President Bush became the scapegoat for an economic recession. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/35 "2017-11-20T05:37:35Z")
To this day, MAD magazine occasionally works the bar codes into their cover art. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/36 "2017-11-20T05:56:00Z")
I do remember looking at barcodes and wondering what they were, because at the time nobody had the technology to use them. I think that started to change in the early 80s, though only in big city supermarkets, not at the quaint country stores we went to locally. This really wasn’t all that long ago. ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/37 "2017-11-20T08:46:24Z")
Before bar codes you or the salesman had to count the stock on the shelves. Now, when the register rings something up, it also updates the inventory. And when the inventory reaches a certain level, the computer will add it to the “Order today” file. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/38 "2017-11-20T08:54:34Z")
Even though it was the '90s, I started work in a gift shop with no barcode reader, everything was price tags or memorise the prices, with an old school till that didn’t work out change. Had one of those manual card readers as well. Incidentally, most grocery store employees in the UK wind up memorising one barcode; 5020 1600, Cadbury’s Creme eggs, 'cos they never scan right. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/39 "2017-11-20T13:30:41Z")
When I was a kid and my mom would haul the 4 of us to the A&P in the Radio Flyer wagon, I was fascinated with the guy who would handstamp the prices on the canned goods in purplish ink with the price insde a little circle. Always thought that was a job I wanted to do when I grew up. (Either that, or the guys who walked around the parks picking up trash with pointed sticks!) What a letdown, to fail to achieve either of these callings! ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/40 "2017-11-20T14:32:05Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > The great fallacy of modern economics. Our system was created by economists who observed that there was more work than men, and who never dreamed otherwise. An economy in which there are more men than work is too terrifying to contemplate, violating every cultural principle of how to feed men and otherwise distribute wealth according to > Calvinist Dogma. > > So the Bar Code is one of many artifices overlaid on our society in order to bloat the necessity for work when no work needs to be done. There is an Orwellian army of drones to administer and keep accounts of bar codes, who would otherwise have to be fed without justifying feeding them, in contradiction to the Calvinist model. The fact bar codes and other automation techniques greatly \*reduce \*the headcount required to operate a logistics system makes the rest of your comment incoherent. Although you’re right that if/when we do enter a world where most peoples’ labor is economically unnecessary an awful lot of the rest of society will be turned on its ear. Society will adapt, but at what rate and what human cost? > [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > According to Snopes, the [story](https://www.snopes.com/history/american/bushscanner.asp) about Bush and the scanner was a fraud made up by a New York Times reporter who wasn’t present at the event. > [@Flyer](#): > > … > The George Bush story is a malicious myth. The reporter who started the lie wasn’t even present at the event. > > [Was President George H.W. Bush 'Amazed' by a Grocery Scanner? | Snopes.com](https://www.snopes.com/history/american/bushscanner.asp) Thank you both. I won’t be repeating that ignorance again. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130.md?page=3)