Flashback Friday

To say grocery stores today are nothing like grocery stores back in the day would be a gross understatement.  Even though today's grocery stores are way bigger and sell more things, they have fewer departments.  Certain areas in the grocery stores have become a thing of the past. For instance, grocery stores no longer have a photo developing department, nor do they have movie rentals.  Another area we haven't seen in the grocery in years is the glass bottle return area. 

It hasn't been that long; I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.  The grocery stores would have a metal roller conveyer and you would put the carton holding the empty pop bottles (or beer bottles) on the conveyer and give them a shove and they would roll on back where a store employee would take them off.  Before shoving the bottles on their way, another store employee would add up how many bottles you had returned and write out a receipt for the amount and you would give that to the cashier when you checked out and they would deduct the amount from your grocery bill.  Or if you just wanted to return the bottles for the cash, you would take the receipt to the customer service counter and they would pay you. 

On our Friday night trips to the grocery store, the bottle return was my job.  I didn't get to keep the money, but I still thought it was fun to put the bottles on the conveyer and shove them on to the back.  I was easily amused as a child. 

The little store down the street from The Compound even had a bottle return area with a smaller conveyer.  They never gave receipts, though - they would always give cold hard cash.  Needless to say, I would scour our yard and the neighbors' yards for bottles that people had tossed out of their car windows while driving by.  The little store would even let us return empty beer bottles if we found them.  Every nickel added up in our pockets.