# 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:** 3
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/41 "2017-11-20T14:58:07Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > My wife once worked at a clothing store. Once a year they had to do a complete inventory. Management would **close the store for a day** and the entire staff had to write down every item by hand… Back in the old days, closing the store for inventory day was a common event. I seem to remember special sales were advertised as “pre-inventory-day sale”. They reduced prices on older items in order to sell them and get them out of the store. The idea was to make it easier to count the main products, without having odds and ends and individual pieces laying around. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/42 "2017-11-20T15:04:12Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Not difficult at all. But when you’re in a hurry and your experience at the self-checkout is scan and go, and you know that there are definitely things it doesn’t handle, it’s not immediately obvious that there’s a mode of operation that says “I want to enter a manual code and then weigh something”. Why would you even assume that there’s a scale there? Agreed. I’m not exactly an idiot, but it had to be shown to me. I had no idea there was a scale there the first time I used it. Why would I think so? ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/43 "2017-11-21T21:37:35Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > Back in the old days, closing the store for inventory day was a common event. At the big box retailer where I worked, inventory was done overnight. That meant about half the staff had to pull an all nighter to hand count every item, place a handwritten tag on each bin/hanger/item/display detailing quantity and price (along with employee initials in case something needed to be verified). As the staff finished an aisle a manager would walk through and make sure each bin/item was tagged and spot check accuracy. After that was done another staffer came through, pulled the tags and marked the aisle “complete” - both by an indicator on the aisle itself and on the master store layout chart so we could make sure every aisle was counted. The inventory slips were taken to the back where another team hand sorted them into ascending numeric order for easier keying. The count and amount written on each tag was keyed into a large, glorified adding machine. The grand total was sent to corporate where they took the previous year on hand total, added the total of all inventory purchased during the year (less adjustments made by hand throughout the year for spoilage/breakage/theft/markdown), subtracted the current year sales and determined what the current year inventory total should have been. The difference between actual count and “should have been” was deemed shrinkage. Shrinkage of more than 1.5% affected the manager’s bonus, more than 3% could get him fired/demoted. More on hand than should have been is a dead indicator of fudging numbers, purposefully or otherwise, and would likely result in a full re-inventory. The week or so between counting and getting the shrinkage results from corporate was stressful for managers! ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/44 "2017-11-21T21:52:07Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Agreed. I’m not exactly an idiot, but it had to be shown to me. I had no idea there was a scale there the first time I used it. Why would I think so? Because it looks exactly like the scanner/scale at the checkouts manned by cashiers? Didn’t you ever wonder why the checker would put all your fruit and veg in the same spot right in front of them for a few seconds before sending them on down the line? ---
**Author:** ![purplehearingaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@purplehearingaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehearingaid)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/45 "2017-11-21T22:09:39Z")
Yeah I can recall life before barcodes , people were able to math in their head and know how much change to give you back . My dad would have the money in his hand before the cashier finish ringing up his food. I was at Market Basket once and a teenager cashier asked me how money I should get back and I was like WTF, it was a fifth grade math problem . I brought some red leaf lettuce at MB and it was on sale for 99 cent a head it rang up at $1.39 and it said it was ‘bok choy’ on the cash register . I told the cashier it was 'red leaf lettuce ’ and she didn’t believe me a woman behind also said it was 'red leaf lettuce too. It took 4 people to finally realize I was right, the cashier came back and her face was redder then my lettuce . Market Basket had run out the bands that wrapped around heads of lettuces and put a band on it saying ‘bok choy’ . The casher even looked the store flyer and there was pic of 'red leaf lettuce ’ and it looked just my lettuce and the fool said I had ‘bok choy’ ! UGH ! I think all this technology is making people too lazy to think ! People can’t even remeber phone numbers . ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/46 "2017-11-21T22:23:00Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Agreed. I’m not exactly an idiot, but it had to be shown to me. I had no idea there was a scale there the first time I used it. Why would I think so? > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Because it looks exactly like the scanner/scale at the checkouts manned by cashiers? Didn’t you ever wonder why the checker would put all your fruit and veg in the same spot right in front of them for a few seconds before sending them on down the line? Yeah. I’m confused by puly’s comment too. It is extremely intuitive that there’s a scale there, otherwise how are you expected to buy bulk products and a lot of produce? ---
**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 21, 2017, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/47 "2017-11-21T22:50:44Z")
> [@purplehearingaid](#): > > … > I brought some red leaf lettuce at MB and it was on sale for 99 cent a head > it rang up at $1.39 and it said it was ‘bok choy’ on the cash register . I told the cashier it was 'red leaf lettuce ’ and she didn’t believe me a woman behind also said it was 'red leaf lettuce too. It took 4 people to finally realize I was right, the cashier came back and her face was redder then my lettuce . Market Basket had run out the bands that wrapped around heads of lettuces and put a band on it saying ‘bok choy’ . The casher even looked the store flyer and there was pic of 'red leaf lettuce ’ and it looked just my lettuce and the fool said I had ‘bok choy’ ! UGH ! I think all this technology is making people too lazy to think ! People can’t even \*\*remeber \*\*phone numbers . Bolding mine. Nor, apparently, can they remember how to type. 🙂 I for one was always a demon for remembering phone numbers. Hundreds of them. No problem, call me Mr. Total Recall. Now? Besides mine & my wife’s I can’t tell you a single one. Everybody else in the world is “look 'em up by name & press [call].” Our local Winn-Dixie has the same problem with produce bands. Red leaf, green leaf, and Romaine are banded at random with any of the three names. They’re all usually the same price, so I don’t get too excited. But I do have to watch them carefully when I’m buying any more esoteric produce. Any resemblance between what it is and what it rings as is a coincidence. Such fun. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/48 "2017-11-21T23:31:17Z")
I remember **Mad** magazine putting a giant bar code on their cover and captioning it something like “We hope this breaks every cash register for making us deface our covers with a bar code.” I don’t know if they still do this, but for a while, they had a funny cartoon or caption around the regular bar code. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/49 "2017-11-21T23:42:52Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > I remember **Mad** magazine putting a giant bar code on their cover and captioning it something like “We hope this breaks every cash register for making us deface our covers with a bar code.” > > I don’t know if they still do this, but for a while, they had a funny cartoon or caption around the regular bar code. I’m pretty sure that’s how I even learned what bar codes were! Thanks Mad! ---
**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 22, 2017, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/50 "2017-11-22T01:38:28Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > I for one was always a demon for remembering phone numbers. Hundreds of them. No problem, call me Mr. Total Recall. Now? Besides mine & my wife’s I can’t tell you a single one. Everybody else in the world is “look 'em up by name & press [call].” Do you remember all the frequencies of every airport you visit now? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/51 "2017-11-22T03:45:50Z")
When I worked at Spencer Gifts, they did inventory once a year. On Super Bowl Sunday. And they didn’t close for inventory, so we had to start at 5 pm. I stopped watching the Super Bowl back then (by the time we were done, it was the second half) and haven’t watched it since. When I first started out, our cash register didn’t add up items. We had a [mechanical adding machine](http://public.beuth-hochschule.de/hamann/burroughs/burro5/burro5.jpg) to do that. You’d press in the numbers and it would use gears to add things up. The keys were different lengths; the 9s were long and felt very satifying when they were pressed all the way down. When sales tax was added, we would have to calculate that manually. The cash register was neat: [it looked like this one.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/National_Cash_Register_%281946%29_for_Fort_Worth_Music_Store%2C_Museum_of_Making_Music.jpg/576px-National_Cash_Register_%281946%29_for_Fort_Worth_Music_Store%2C_Museum_of_Making_Music.jpg) Pressing the black bar opened it and closing the drawer cocked the spring. When we sold something over $100, we’d enter $99.99 for every hundred. It didn’t print out a receipt, but did register the information on a roll of paper. You can see it as that white square on the left. It allowed you to check the amount and also to write notes if needed. Eventually, we added one with an adding machine built in. We also used [this](https://img0.etsystatic.com/118/0/8391511/il_340x270.901536914_2mp0.jpg) when writing checks. We used the business size checks; this would imprint the amount on them. It would create an embossed surface that couldn’t be tampered with. ---
**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 22, 2017, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/52 "2017-11-22T12:50:49Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Do you remember all the frequencies of every airport you visit now? Many, not all. There’s such a vast number at each end and in the middle. It’s made easier since the fleet I work now only has about 10 destinations and I usually visit only 3 or 4 in any given month. If I was visiting 30 airports a month from a list of 100 it’d be a lot more of a blur. Back in the day we all knew almost all of the VOR freqs but had to look up some of the identifiers. Nowadays we know all the identifiers, remember fewer of the names, and almost none of the freqs. Some freqs just come bubbling up from the depths unbidden, but with one exception (Canarsie CRI 112.3) it’s been close to 2 decades since I dialed up a VOR. Even then it’s more \*pro forma \*than real; we’re flying the purple line or looking out the window and following the road. ---
**Author:** ![Shinna\_Minna\_Ma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f08c70/32.png) [@Shinna\_Minna\_Ma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shinna_Minna_Ma)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/53 "2017-11-22T17:27:01Z")
> [@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 believe it’s $6.13. Here’s the extra dime you gave me. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/54 "2017-11-22T18:00:30Z")
> [@Rhiannon8404](#): > > I really only have one memory regarding this… > > I was probably in junior high when stores in my area started using barcodes and scanners. I remember my friend’s mom was deeply suspicious that the scanners were going to rip her off and charge more than the tag price. At this point most everything still had a sticker tag on them as well as the barcode. One time we were with her at the grocery store and like two teenage girls are likely to do we are chattering away. Her mom looked at us and told us to shut because she had to concentrate…she wasn’t going to let this computer rip her off…and she said it loud enough that everyone heard. She checked every item to make sure the scanner got it right. The clerk rolled his eyes and we were so embarrassed. When Giant Foods in the Washington area introduced bar codes, they widely promoted the fact that they were also providing grease pens in all the aisles so suspicious people could mark the price on their purchases. Sometime in the early 90s, when bar codes were new and not widely used, A&P supermarkets advertised that they were opening a “store of the future” in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Intrigued, I stopped by the store one day, assuming that they would have converted exclusively to bar codes. I was shocked that all the products still had price stickers and they weren’t using the codes at all, which was hardly my idea of “the future”, and I was unable to determine what it was that made the store futuristic. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2017, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/55 "2017-11-24T17:34:07Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > 4068 for the onions and 4688 for the red peppers. Just FYI. Are these codes standardized across the grocery industry? ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2017, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/56 "2017-11-24T17:44:38Z")
[Yes, they are](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_look-up_code). ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2017, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/57 "2017-11-24T18:19:24Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > Yeah. I’m confused by puly’s comment too. It is extremely intuitive that there’s a scale there, otherwise how are you expected to buy bulk products and a lot of produce? OK, I guess I’m an idiot, then. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2017, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/58 "2017-11-24T20:18:19Z")
Store cashier here. There are still people who bring two items to the register “I want this one, but it didn’t have a price on it, so I brought this one so you can see the price.” Uh, who even looks at prices? We scan. And people who put a lower price sticker on an item and then insist the bar code is wrong. NOT! ---
**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 24, 2017, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/59 "2017-11-24T21:12:39Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > I remember **Mad** magazine putting a giant bar code on their cover and captioning it something like “We hope this breaks every cash register for making us deface our covers with a bar code.” I absolutely remember that cover! 😃 [![](https://i.imgur.com/iOwh2nW.jpg) ](https://i.imgur.com/iOwh2nW.jpg) ---
**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 24, 2017, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130/60 "2017-11-24T21:19:33Z")
BTW, I’m visiting my parents for the holiday weekend, and I was talking with my dad about the hardware store that we owned. He reminded me that, when we first bought the business, in 1975, the cash registers at that store were pretty low-tech, and they didn’t calculate sales tax. We had reference cards at each checkout, with pre-calculated sales tax amounts (at that time, the sales tax in Wisconsin was 4%, IIRC). So, the cashier would have to ring up a sub-total on the register, look up the tax amount on the reference card (though, in practice, we all had the amounts memorized, for small sales), and enter that tax amount manually before having the register calculate a final sale. In 1979, we sold the first hardware store that we’d bought, and built a brand-new one in another part of town. As part of that, we then got the newer cash registers, which could calculate the sales tax automatically. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-before-barcodes/802130.md?page=4)