GROCERY STORES BACK IN THE DAY (COMMENT). Long before Walmart and Costco, stores were shifting tasks to customers. Kids, when I was young, my mother would take us on a two-block walk to the grocery store. My mother would tell the clerk at the store what she wanted and he would get the items from the shelves. There were shelves near the ceiling, and he would use a long-handled tongs to fetch those items (usually light things like cereal boxes). When supermarkets came in, the task of getting the items from the shelves was shifted to the customers and fewer clerks were needed. The very high shelves and the tongs disappeared as well.
Categories
Archives
Recent Comments
- “A COMFORT BLANKET FOR THE SMUG”? (1)
- Nick: Further informing my perspective was that in the writings of classical Romans the middle-aged authors opined...
- ARE PEOPLE LESS VIOLENT? (COMMENT). (2)
- Dick Weisfelder: My prior comment was just in the context of sports. Whether or not from Pinker, I have seen the...
- erik: It seems doubtful that human nature has changed. The most likely explanation would be that modern culture gives...
- HOW BANKS PREPARED FOR A U.S. DEFAULT. (2)
- GREECE’S ADVANTAGE IN THE CHICKEN GAME. (2)
- Nick: That makes sense. It reminds me of the stories Pater Familias would tell me about how in Boston the person with...
- Dick Weisfelder: Greece seems to me to be playing a game that Karl Deutsch called “underdog.” While one...
- FOOTBALL PLAYERS DELIBERATELY CAUSING CONCUSSIONS? (3)
- Nick: It was my understanding that boxing gloves were to protect the puncher’s hands and not the...
- Dick Weisfelder: Remember the Roman arenas? Bare knuckled boxing? Such injuries were taken as natural and accepted in...
- Mary Jane Schaefer: This isn’t about football. Or even sportsmanship. Well, it is about sportsmanship. But what...
- A 25 % CHANCE OF A EURO DEFAULT? (1)
- Nick: The fact that this has gone on for so long is pretty perplexing. The Economist is referring back to articles it...
- DECIDING WHAT KIND OF PATIENT YOU ARE. (1)
- Dick Weisfelder: One can be very open to new technology, but also risk averse. The recent debates about how to...
- “A COMFORT BLANKET FOR THE SMUG”? (1)
Meta
In Sweden customers do all their own bagging.
My dad told me that when he was a child they sold sticks of dynamite at the store in Howardsville, VA. This blew my mind as a little kid. As for the self-bagging, one episode of the No Agenda podcast (featuring the great Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak) talked about this being the norm in Holland too. Apparently there are stores in California testing the bag it yourself model. Bagging my own groceries I can handle, but I’ll be damned if I want to battle that recalcitrant self-checkout scanner every time I go to the store. Annalisa can back me up on this.
Pingback: WHY DON’T AMERICANS BAG GROCERIES? (COMMENT). | Pater Familias