Sue Fowler – Working the tills

Simon: What were the tills like. I guess mechanical in those days were they?

Sue: Yeah they were about that wide, that long …

Simon: Sort of 4 or 5 inches wide …

Sue: … and they had a bit that lifted up that you put the receipts in. It was like a double …

Simon: What like a carbon paper?

Sue: No, it wasn’t carbon. It was just two pieces of paper like that but the sheets were impregnated with the carbon, so one piece went one side under and then one went over the top of the till.

Simon: So you hand wrote it?

Sue: You hand wrote them all.

Simon: So, the till was just a sort of container that you stored stuff in.

Sue: Yeah.

Simon: Right.

Sue: As I say, it was about that long, about that wide, so the back lifted up and the front lifted up. The back was to fill the dockets up with and they were all joined like a toilet roll.

Simon: Ok.

Sue: Yeah flat, like a toilet …

Simon: What’s the docket then? That’s the receipt is it?

Sue: That’s the receipt, yeah.

Simon: I see, so the top copy for the customer …

Sue: The bottom, the carbon copy was ours (laughs).

Simon: Right. (laughs). And was it people paying in cash as there were no credit cards then I guess?

Sue: A lot of them had accounts.

Simon: Ok.

Sue: There was two types of accounts. One was Budget Account and one was a normal account. The Budget Account I think you paid a slight commission on it, so it … we didn’t have to work it out, it was all done.

Simon: So, what was the Budget part that people helping them budget to buy stuff?

Sue: It was an account that you paid so much monthly.