The price had to be visible
If you bought groceries in the Netherlands in the 1960s or 1970s, you saw them everywhere: little price stickers on jars, tins and packets. Sometimes the amount was stamped or written directly onto the item. The price went with the product, but the till could not read it.
That was the cashier’s job.
She picked up the item, turned it over if necessary, and looked at the amount. A few quick keystrokes followed. The product moved towards the customer, and her hand was already reaching for the next one.
With an experienced cashier, it seemed like one continuous movement. Look, enter, slide along. Sometimes her fingers moved so quickly that a customer waiting in the queue could barely follow which keys she pressed.
This story uses “she” because many Dutch shoppers remember a woman behind the supermarket till. Men did this work too, of course. Similar routines existed elsewhere, but the memories and examples here come from the Netherlands.
A till that could add, but could not recognise
Cash registers varied by shop and period. Older models had substantial keys and a distinctly mechanical sound. Electric and electronic versions followed. The way an amount was entered also differed.
But as long as a shop worked without a scanner, the central task remained the same: someone had to enter the price.
The cashier did not have to add up an entire shopping bill in her head. The till did that. Her skill lay mainly in transferring prices quickly and accurately, operating the machine and keeping track of what was happening.
Depending on the system, she might also have to identify the department an item belonged to. An incorrectly entered price required a correction. How that was done depended on the register and the shop’s procedures.
To the customer, it looked simple. For the person behind the keys, it demanded constant attention.
How much is this one?
The rhythm broke when a price label was missing.
A tin without a sticker. A label that had come loose during unpacking. An amount that was no longer legible. Suddenly there was something on the belt that neither the till nor the cashier could deal with immediately.
Sometimes she knew the price. Items passing her all day became familiar. But prices changed, and special offers made guessing risky.
Someone had to check.
A colleague went to the shelf, the cashier called a question across the shop, or help was summoned in another way. The solution varied, but the result for the queue was familiar: waiting.
You stood with your purse or wallet in your hand, looking at that one small packet. Small enough to hold easily, yet enough to stop the whole checkout process.
Remembering the special offer
Even an item with a price sticker could prompt a discussion.
“Aren’t those on offer this week?”
Perhaps the old price was still on the packet. Perhaps the discount applied only when you bought two. Perhaps the customer had picked up a different size from the one advertised in the leaflet.
The cashier needed to know what she could correct and when to call someone over. Those quick keystrokes required more than dexterity. They also required knowledge of the shop.
For other staff, the work began long before the groceries reached the belt. Many items had to be priced individually. A pricing gun applied little stickers, often as new stock was put on the shelves.
A price change therefore meant work among the shelves too. The amount had to be visible on the items the customer took away.
Bert Verhoeff / Anefo · Nationaal Archief · CC0 1.0
A receipt full of amounts
With many older till systems, receipts were much less detailed than we expect today. They showed amounts, sometimes accompanied by department codes, but not necessarily a recognisable product name on every line.
Checking what you had paid for once you got home could be difficult.
Was that 2.35 the cheese? Or did it belong to the biscuits? You tried to match the lines with the things you were taking out of your shopping bag.
If you suspected a mistake, it helped to watch while the prices were entered. Sometimes, though, the next item had already been registered before you had checked the previous one.
Trust in the person behind the till mattered.
“Have you got a quarter as well?”
After the prices came the payment. In the period described here, that often meant cash.
The cashier announced the total, the customer searched for money, and the cash drawer opened. A note was accepted, coins were gathered and change was handed back.
“Have you got a quarter as well?”
In the Netherlands, a kwartje was a 25-cent coin, worth a quarter of a guilder. Such a question could make giving change easier. For a bill of 14.25 guilders, a 25-guilder note plus a quarter could be exchanged for 11 guilders in change.
On some registers, the amount tendered was entered and the change appeared on the display. With other working methods, the cashier calculated it herself or counted upwards from the total to the amount paid.
Meanwhile, the customer might ask for savings stamps. Or there might be a bottle-return voucher to deduct. Checkout work did not end with the last price.
When the till began to beep
The change came with barcodes and scanners. In January 1977, the first product in the Netherlands to be scanned using a barcode passed through an Albert Heijn checkout in Heemskerk: a packet of Douwe Egberts coffee.
That did not mean every Dutch cashier immediately stopped typing in prices. The changeover was gradual. Shops needed new equipment, and products needed usable codes.
With an ordinary product barcode, the scanner did not simply read a printed price. It identified an item code, allowing the checkout system to look up the corresponding price.
The work behind the till changed as well. The cashier had to move the code past the scanner and check that the item had registered correctly. Increasingly, the price came from the system.
The sound of keys being pressed was joined by a beep.
The skill of fast fingers
Scanners did not make checkout work disappear. Helping customers, handling payments and solving problems remained part of the job. Manual entry was still needed when an item could not be scanned.
But one familiar sight faded into the background: the cashier ringing up a full trolley by entering almost every price herself.
Watching her work meant watching a skill built through endless repetition. Her eyes found the sticker; her fingers knew the keys. And while you were still finding room for the washing powder in your bag, she was already three items further along.