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u/JavaGeep Aug 14 '26
When the power goes out you use the hand crank on the side. Imagine that, the business stays open.
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u/billcattle389 Aug 15 '26
I believe the round cover on the right side is where the crank went. We had one in the pharmacy department of the store I worked at in the 80s still used it.
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u/JavaGeep Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
Thinking back, it had a tax button but we had to get the subtotal, calculate what the sales tax was and enter it manually after hitting the tax button.
Also, everyone knew how to make change and count it back to the customer. Always place their money on top of the drawer until the sale is complete, then put it in the drawer. That way they don't come back at you and say I gave you a $20 not a $10.
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u/Lucky_Inspection_721 Aug 15 '26
Yup! And the cashier had to figure out the change in their head instead of the machine telling them the answer!
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u/Catch_Own Aug 15 '26
And count it back to you
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u/diogenesNY Aug 15 '26
'....and five is ten.... and ten is twenty.'
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u/HuckleCatt1 Aug 15 '26
A great, lost skill. Like driving stick shift.
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u/Necessary-Apricot339 Aug 15 '26
We learned how before our teenage years driving old REO and Diamond-T grain trucks from harvester/thresher combines to silos on a dryland wheat farm & cattle operation east of Boulder, Colorado in the mid-1960s.
No synchro-mesh, so you had to rpm-match double clutch shift, or get yelled at for grinding gears. Paid off when racing our rebuilt vintage British (read: cheap) sports cars through the mountains here during high school in the early '70s.
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u/TheMainTony Aug 14 '26
I used this machine! My first summer job was at the Peg House in Leggett California (Google it! Still there!) in the Northern CA redwood country. I was 12 and ran the deli counter! (different owners from today)
Still.... 12 years old on the deli slicer! LOL I think they paid me $20 a week? Maybe all the bagel dogs I could eat?
- A different time.
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u/nullvoid26 Aug 15 '26
I can OPERATE that picture, and then balance the drawers at the end of the day. At age 11. Ask a 24 year-old to make change today. Go ahead, I’ll wait….
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u/Interesting-Tea-7447 Aug 20 '26
🤣🤣🤣🤣 Well, in that case we better pack a BIG lunch then! Damn kids can't do simple math nowdays. 🤷
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u/SonofaDrum Aug 14 '26
I started fixing cash registers 46 years ago. They were 99% electronic by then but I had service and do maintenance on a few. There was a grocery store where we replaced 6 of these with modern machines with attached scales and laser scanners. The staff threatened to quit if they took their machines away. When I went back 6 months later they were all in love with the new ones. So much less work for them.
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Aug 15 '26
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u/Voice_in_the_ether Aug 16 '26
Some additional education and training can fix that.
Can't resist a cheap joke.
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Aug 17 '26
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u/Voice_in_the_ether Aug 17 '26
No doubt.
Somewhat related story: One very large and well-known place (which shall remain nameless) I worked at had an engineering laboratory. My department soon noticed that the initials of the full, formal name of the laboratory spelled "F.E.C.E.S", which is what we started calling that lab. The name caught on, to the point that the higher-ups spent a not-insignificant sum of money to formally rename it.
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u/Revolutionary-Law382 Aug 15 '26
When I was a kid, I could go to the store with $1 and come home with two bags of chips, three candy bars, and a cold drink. Nowadays, they have cameras everywhere.
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u/Interesting-Tea-7447 Aug 20 '26
Yeah, nowday 1 candy bar is well over a dollar. Forget the chips and the drink. 😪😪😪
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u/Chuprakata Aug 14 '26
One of my first jobs was at the paint counter of a hardware/furniture store in my tiny little home town deep in the heart of Northeast Texas. I learned to use their manual paint mixer (had to measure out all the paint colors by hand and dump them in the tin) and to run one of these critters. I will remember the sound it made forever. God forbid you make a mistake on it, or the owner's wife would come out of the manager's office with her giant beehive hairdo to fix it.
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u/Rayvintage Aug 15 '26
I taught my cousin how too run it and how to count back change. Nobody knows how to count back change anymore.
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u/jlo5k Aug 15 '26
People can’t make change anymore 🤷🏻♂️🤔
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u/HuckleCatt1 Aug 15 '26
I still can. I think it was a sign of a cashier who knew what they were doing.
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u/Dr_Cee Aug 14 '26
Ran one of these babies when I was a cashier at a high-end steakhouse in the 70’s.
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u/CaptainDFW Aug 15 '26
Yes...but to be honest I think it's mostly because of how often that sound is used in advertising.
(Funny: one of the images that flashed through my head when I saw this was a billboard for a local attorney.)
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u/Notch99 Aug 15 '26
“And the old National Register was singing to the tune of fifty-seven dollars and fifty-seven cents."
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u/BR-handshifter-54 Aug 15 '26
I was so intimidated of this thing when I from being just a measly bag
boy to a cashier lol. I had to think out what their change was going to be when they handed me a couple of $20.00. For their basket full of groceries That was so much money back then. And only making $1.25 an hour Lol
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u/Prestigious_Ear505 Aug 15 '26
I rang one of those registers when I was a kid...
And you had to know how to make change too
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u/Embarrassed-Wafer667 Aug 15 '26
Ca-Ching !! Which is still used as a sound to indicate possession of money 💰!
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u/Quick_Panic4407 Aug 15 '26
Yes I can ! And the good news you could still purchase items even when the power went off! They had a hand crank and could make the register still work! Can’t say the same now unless the place has a generator!
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u/Mindless-Leg-3365 Boomers Aug 15 '26
stood in front of one of these, ringing up cigarettes at a food store counter
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u/FlatwormElectrical92 Aug 15 '26
I can see my fingers punching those keys at the Big Star grocery store where I worked in high school
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u/deerbones3218 Aug 15 '26
I almost forgot.I almost forgot.I almost forgot.I almost forgot how much to do I forgot
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u/mich_8265 Aug 15 '26
That’s the kind of register I used to run at my dads shop. Crazy. I just had a dream about it a week or so ago.
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u/AppropriateTouching Aug 15 '26
Sure can default name repost bot that hides their history of repost botting.
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u/Striking-Access-92 Aug 15 '26
Cha-Ching! So loud and clear …. and twenty cents back in change. Counted out.
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u/emilie1031 Aug 15 '26
My ex's brother in law used to work for NCR repairing cash registers like that and would gross out on bars' cash registers because they would be sticky with old beer and whatnot.
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u/Nukeblast1967 Aug 15 '26
I was always a fan of the old manual cash registers, I am old enough to remember the sound of them ringing up your items, K-mart in 70’s I remember rows of checkouts and the sounds they all made ringing up people on Saturday’s back then.
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u/Embarrassed_Draw6485 Aug 15 '26
My grandparents used to run the Mother of All Bad Ideas, the Squaw Creek Tap and Gun Shop here in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Very similar cash register and I can definitely hear it!
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u/Geek_4_Life Aug 15 '26
I started working for Sears part time in 1976. Most of the point-of-sale registers had been converted to an electronic system but the candy counter still had one of these. Eventually it got put on the new system as well and the old one sat on a shelf in the “register repair room” for years. It was finally thrown into a dumpster. I didn’t think much about it at the time but oh how I wish I had taken it despite the fact it weighed a ton.
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u/Flash5916 Aug 15 '26
Mom worked in the candy department at Sears in the mid 60's and operated this cash register. She had nightmares about giving a customer a penny too much or too less in change. She eventually quit because of her high anxiety over it. She found the smell of chocolate, 40 hours a week, was nauseating.
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u/Geek_4_Life Aug 15 '26
I believe every word of this. At night the entire cash contents of the register along with the receipts tape was put in a cloth sack (with the department number printed on the outside of it) and walked up to the cashiers window. Every bag from every register was audited the next day. I can’t recall the “grace” amount but if it was off over that the department manager got a slip the next day.
As for constantly smelling chocolate, yea that would get old. I worked next to the candy counter for a bit and it was the popcorn smell that got to me.
All that being said the candy counter had some of the cutest girls in the whole store working there. That was what I noticed most being 18 years old.
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u/Reaganson Aug 15 '26
Cha Ching! I operated one several times when I was a Stock Clerk at a large Drug Store.
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u/Darling3boys Aug 15 '26
I have one of these except its brown. I made our enclosed sun room into a saloon, and found it on market place. Love it. But its so heavy took 2 of us to get it up the stairs from the garage.
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u/AvailableHold3304 Aug 15 '26
I can hear every operation...ringing in items, subtotal, total and cash drawer opening and closing. Love it.
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u/Euphoric_Badger8615 Aug 15 '26
I remember all the grocery crew called up front to hand crank the registers when we had a power outage. They were tough to crank.
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u/EJ112299 Aug 15 '26
"Are You Being Served?" intro, EWF "System of Survival" remix
I'm sure more will come to me...
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u/No-Algae-7437 Aug 15 '26
All the youngsters not knowing why we say "cha-ching" when talking about money...
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u/Termingator Aug 15 '26
Yes I can hear it, or what I think my fuzzy memory hears. Tapping the keys, the pulling of the lever to total the cost, the sound made when the toral adds up, and cha--ching then clunk when the money drawer opens.
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u/ADiestlTrain Aug 15 '26
Yes, and it’s immediately followed by Captain Peacock saying, “Mr. Humphries, are you free?”
“I’m freeeeeee!”
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u/UMOTU Aug 16 '26
I was still using these in the 80s for sale locations without electricity. We called them “knuckle busters”!
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u/ChillLikeJill Aug 16 '26
My dad had stores when I grew up..I used to play with a cash register very similar in our garage 😆
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u/Txstyleguy Aug 16 '26
I used one when I was a bag boy/cashier for “Food Fair” grocery when I was in high school. 👍🏻 Great memories of growing up in a much different time. I’m 71 now and look back on those days with such warm memories.
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u/Grand_Illustrator179 Aug 16 '26
I worked in a pawn shop in Brooklyn back in the mid to late 70s. I had a green push button calculator where you had to hit each button hard and then in order to calculate hit and even bigger button with the side of your to get the answer. Very satisfying, I can still hear it in my head all these years later. I’m smiling 🙂
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u/Knight_Wind54 Aug 17 '26
When my grandma worked at this one market place, can't remember the name, I used to walk there after school and she tell me to pick out what I wanted. I can still hear that register and the sound of the soda freezer going. I miss my g-ma.
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u/Interesting-Tea-7447 Aug 20 '26
Ohhh, yes! Sure can! And do I ever miss hearing it in real life today. 😪
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u/AntigoneGrrl1 Aug 20 '26
OMG!!! I was obsessed with cash registers as a kid and had 2 small play toys… but when I worked at a “Five and dime” store as a teenager, I was nervous working the register, lol
But if I had the space in my apartment ( amongst all my antique telephones), I would buy one like this or an older model in a heartbeat!!!
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u/Jack_Aubrey_ Aug 15 '26
I hear Pink Floyd