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by jareklupinski 1948 days ago
now i'm curious; has anyone been to a store that doesn't have a computer at the till / register, and the person ringing up your goods had to calculate the subtotal + sales tax = total by hand?

the few times i remember handing over a specific sum of cash at thrift/vintage stores, indie shops, etc smaller stores here or there, they would always seem to include the tax in the displayed price if there was no computer to calculate the final tax, and the receipt (if any) was whole numbers throughout

2 comments

No, not since I was a teenage employee at McDonalds, and doing the arithmetic with a pencil. The next summer I saw my first computerized cash registers. But then I was a stockboy and had nothing to do with the point of sale. (Summers of 1972 and 1973.)
I can’t recall where, but I’ve been to small shops in the US where they’ve whipped out a small table to calculate the tax.