General Chat

Dear All

Hello

Not so long ago, life seemed to be lived at a slower and gentler pace.

Do you remember:

Being served by a person and not a self-service checkout?

A telephone that is answered by a live, actual voice not an automated machine?

Paying your bills by cash not card?

Looking forward to a weekly wage packet, not a monthly one?

Electrical items that worked for years and did not conk out just after the guarantee expires?

Quality TV programmes not repeats?

Take care
Very best wishes
xx

Yes...I sure can recall all you have put!!!!!!!!!

Linda x

Dear Ladies

Hello

You are not waffling Mo, that's why the post is here. Talk as much as want!

I tried the new self-service till in the shop.

I brought 3 grapefuits, made a mistake on the till and the bill totalled up the price for 30!

I'll stick to the queues and the sales assistant......which are getting longer because people are making mistakes on these new tills.

Barmy!

Take care
Best wishes
xx

I can remember going to the Co-op with my Mum every Thursday for the big shop. Mum wrote her list in a little note book, then the woman at the Co-op wrote the price down and added it all up in her head - and never made a mistake. We would be there ages as everybody knew everybody and we all enjoyed a good 'camp' (gossip, chat). No-one was rushing about.

My sons and their wives lead such hectic work lives and are so stressed. They work long hours, have hardly a lunch break and if they do have a break, their mobiles are ringing with queries from their offices.

There were no banks in our village and you couldn't pay bills at the Post Office in those days. Once a quarter, a clerk from either Gas or Electricity Board would be at our Methodist Sunday School so folk could go and pay their bills there (obviously weekdays, not Sunday!!)

I find life is too hectic and no-one seems to 'have a window' for anyone else.

Good thread as usual, Elizabeth.

LW

Yes I remember all that. I used to shop in the co-op when first married. I would hand in my order book at the beginning of the week, strange, I can't remember but must have then paid for it because it was delivered free to my door at the end of the week. Sheets went to the laundry and were delivered back to the door all nicely pressed, as were OH's RN Shirts, bread was at the door from the baker, there was a greengrocers van/shop weekly. Utility bills were paid quarterly at the respective offices. The puzzling thing is, if we have all these conveniences (fast shopping, all in one shop, electric appliances to do our work etc etc. What do we do with all the time we save?

Oddly enough, I was just saying something similar to my dad last night about thhe work side of things. He originally made it a selling feature that his business would offer support at any time of the day (allowing for emergencies) but the problem is, people now feel as though it's acceptable to phone him at ridiculous times like 5am! (Often for non-urgent reasons!)

And, as I'm an arts/crafts person, I do a lot of craft fairs and similar promotional-type things at weekends but I'm also finding that people think that automatically makes it acceptable to call me out-of hours (ie. after 5.30pm, sometimes as late as 10pm and quite often during the weekends too). So I think this is the price we are starting to pay for being contactable all the time - that people them assume it's OK to contact you at unusual times.

Personally, I'd never dream of making business-related calls outside the hours of 9am and, say, 6pm, but it seems as though that isn't the case with a lot of people any more.

And I think the dinner/tea break is becoming endangered too - I well remember going upstairs at work for my purse so I could come down to buy my tea and being promptly enlisted to serve customers on the till even though I had my purse in my hand and various items of food that I was taking to a till myself, and the golden rule at work was "no personal money to be on the shop floor unless you're on a break", yet nobody realised . . .

Dear All

Hello

Dear LancashireWitch...........thank you for the compliment. Always appreciated.

Dear Ann in Glos...........remember the coin-operated laundries?

The 'saved time' now is taken up sorting out the mess created by computers used in everyday life.

Dear Kate...............yes, contacting people at all hours seems normal practice, as is being rung up by employer saying
"Can you come into work?" when it is your day off or the weekend.

Take care all
Very best wishes
xx

OH yes to all of the above

I used to love sticking the green shield stamps in my nans book when i was a kid, my mum and nans houses where kitted out from green shield stamps.

I used to work in a post office and everything was written down and added up made you use your brain, I'm only in my early 40's but I do miss the personal touch in shops.


I work for my local council and paying bills is a nightmare you have to raise a purchase order, send it to the boss to verify, send it on to accounts, print out the receipt photocopy it and file.

How easy it was to fill in the cheque book get the boss to sign and post the cheques!!!!!!!!

remember that chain of shop - Liptons maybe - where the counter assistant put the money in a container which went along a wire to a cashier in a little booth somewhere else in the building and the change would come back the same way

only me then!!!

We all got 'divi' from the Co-Op. I bet most people can remember their number.

I suppose though that we had less choice of food items. King Edwards potatoes were the only ones I remember,. (besides new potatoes).
Fish and chip shops only sold fish and chips.
There wasn't a big choice of cleaning items either, no oven cleaner, shower cleaner, surface cleaner, floor cleaner, etc etc. We must have a lot of extra items in our trolleys.

I spend a lot of my "freed up time" looking for things that I had in my hand just a moment ago! Usually till I forget what I am looking for and go onto the next thing.
And of course, answering the phone to people who are NOT trying to sell me anything! (Or trying to ignore the phone when it rings).

The service in shops when I was really little was always good. When they were adding up in their head it was pounds shillings and pence, much more difficult than decimal currency.
They could work out the price of the cheese (that they had cut off the block for you), by putting it on the scales and doing the arithmatic.

I do remember though in the seventies, getting very bad service in big shops. When shop assistants often seemed annoyed that you had interupted their conversation.

I find the people on the tills nowadays at my very large local supermarket are always friendly and polite. Time constraints mean that they can't have a proper chat, but they do take the time to make the customer feel like a person, instead of just another pile of items to go through the 'bleeper'

I think that I would find it difficult to go back to the limited choices of food. Although I enjoy a good roast dinner of meat and two veg, I aalso like rice, pasta, a large variety of fruit and veg. etc

Oh dear, I think i've lost the plot!

Speaking of Green shield Stamps - our cat loved licking the adhesive before we stuck them in the book.

do you remember in Woolworths - those orange/lemon juice drinks thingies they had. Transparent circular things with an orange floating on top?

The dustbin men came into your back yard and carried your bin to the cart to empty it. Now we can't leave our bin out if the lid does not close fully.



LW

I remember the `pop` man coming round with brown earthenware jugs full of dandelion and burdock and cream soda, my favourite drinks but they just dont taste the same anymore. He had lots of jugs on his lorry and you just swapped your empty jug for a full one.

crumbs Susan - thought they were long gone!!!

I remember train station waiting rooms with open fires in, and porters who actually 'portered' your bags.

Bus conductors who would give little kids ticket machine rolls.

LW

Talk of down memory lane, I remember all those things. Once worked in a grocers where I cut the cheese, but not the bacon, That was a mans job! Also sold loose eggs in a paper bag, sometime wrapped in newspaper if the customer brought some. The men had to draw the chickens too. For those not old enough, that means take the innards out.

I can remember going with my Mum to a little grocery supermarket in the main shopping street in Norwich, I have been in similar ones in foreign countries in years past, when they were catching up with us lol

You went in one swing doorway like a low saloon door in the westerns, shopped as you went round and paid at the other end and went out more swing doors, it was a u shaped shop. Sadly it was demolished when St Stephen's Street was demolished during my childhood years. I also remember a department store my Mum used which was further away but the shop had been going since before Mum was born and was one used all the time by her Mum before she died when my Mum was 16. It was one of those that had the cash bullets that whizzed off up a chute and along a wire to the cashier's office then came back with the change.

When I was quite young, about 8 maybe my 6 yr old brother and I would go on the bus to a small grocery shop with Mum's order - again it was one Mum had used when we lived for the first two years of my life, in rented rooms of a house in the street. Later in the week the groceries Mum had ordered would be delivered and Mum would pay the chap, I don't know why she didn't get an order ready to save us going, but we were quite young to be travelling about like that, it was in the days in the 50's when kids were safe and had more freedom. I couldn't have imagined letting my son aged 8 do such errands.

I can remember Mum's divi number, 31244, and then had to forget that and learn my own in the 1960s when i was old enough to have a number. I still use my divi card at our local Co op supermarkets but our big Co op dept store closed last year and another company Vergo has moved in.

We used to have a greengrocery man come round with his horse and cart, his name was Tommy Hamill I think it was, and he was ok but he would get drunk after his rounds and you would often see the horse pulling the cart to take him home, incapable of holding the reins. Now and then the horse would get excited about something and bolt and that used to wake Tommy up with a start lol

Lizx