What Are The Greatest Changes In Shopping In Your Lifetime

What are the greatest changes in shopping in your lifetime? So asked my 9 year old grandson.

As I thought of the question the local Green Grocer came to mind. Because that is what the greatest change in shopping in my lifetime is.

That was the first place to start with the question of what are the greatest changes in shopping in your lifetime.

Our local green grocer was the most important change in shopping in my lifetime. Beside him was our butcher, a hairdresser and a chemist.

Looking back, we were well catered for as we had quite a few in our suburb. And yes, the greatest changes in shopping in my lifetime were with the small family owned businesses.

Entertainment While Shopping Has Changed
Buying butter was an entertainment in itself.
My sister and I often had to go to a favourite family grocer close by. We were always polite as we asked for a pound or two of butter and other small items.

Out came a big block of wet butter wrapped in grease-proof paper. Brought from the back of the shop, placed on a huge counter top and included two grooved pates.

That was a big change in our shopping in my lifetime… you don’t come across butter bashing nowadays.

Our old friendly Mr. Mahon with the moustache, would cut a square of butter. Lift it to another piece of greaseproof paper with his pates. On it went to the weighing scales, a bit sliced off or added here and there.

Our old grocer would then bash it with gusto, turning it over and over. Upside down and sideways it went, so that it had grooves from the pates, splashes going everywhere, including our faces.

My sister and I thought this was great fun and it always cracked us up. We loved it, as we loved Mahon’s, on the corner, our very favourite grocery shop.

Grocery Shopping
Further afield, we often had to go to another of my mother’s favourite, not so local, green grocer’s. Mr. McKessie, ( spelt phonetically) would take our list, gather the groceries and put them all in a big cardboard box.

And because we were good customers he always delivered them to our house free of charge. But he wasn’t nearly as much fun as old Mr. Mahon. Even so, he was a nice man.

All Things Fresh
So there were very many common services such as home deliveries like:

• Farm eggs

• Fresh vegetables

• Cow’s milk

• Freshly baked bread

• Coal for our open fires

Delivery Services
A man used to come to our house a couple of times a week with farm fresh eggs.

Another used to come every day with fresh vegetables, although my father loved growing his own.

Our milk, topped with beautiful cream, was delivered to our doorstep every single morning.

Unbelievably, come think of it now, our bread came to us in a huge van driven by our “bread-man” named Jerry who became a family friend.

My parents always invited Jerry and his wife to their parties, and there were many during the summer months. Kids and adults all thoroughly enjoyed these times. Alcohol was never included, my parents were teetotallers. Lemonade was a treat, with home made sandwiches and cakes.

The coal-man was another who delivered bags of coal for our open fires. I can still see his sooty face under his tweed cap but I can’t remember his name. We knew them all by name but most of them escape me now.

Mr. Higgins, a service man from the Hoover Company always came to our house to replace our old vacuum cleaner with an updated model.

Our insurance company even sent a man to collect the weekly premium.

People then only paid for their shopping with cash. This in itself has been a huge change in shopping in my lifetime.

In some department stores there was a system whereby the money from the cash registers was transported in a small cylinder on a moving wire track to the central office.

Some Of The Bigger Changes
Some of the bigger changes in shopping were the opening of supermarkets.

• Supermarkets replaced many individual smaller grocery shops. Cash and bank cheques have given way to credit and key cards.

• Internet shopping… the latest trend, but in many minds, doing more harm, to book shops.

• Not many written shopping lists, because mobile phones have taken over.

On a more optimistic note, I hear that book shops are popular again after a decline.

Personal Service Has Most Definitely Changed
So, no one really has to leave home, to purchase almost anything, technology makes it so easy to do online.
And we have a much bigger range of products now, to choose from, and credit cards have given us the greatest ease of payment.

We have longer shopping hours, and weekend shopping. But we have lost the personal service that we oldies had taken for granted and also appreciated.

Because of their frenetic lifestyles, I have heard people say they find shopping very stressful, that is grocery shopping. I’m sure it is when you have to dash home and cook dinner after a days work. I often think there has to be a better, less stressful way.

My mother had the best of both worlds, in the services she had at her disposal. With a full time job looking after 9 people, 7 children plus her and my dad, she was very lucky. Lucky too that she did not have 2 jobs.

Travel and Leisure Subscription

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How the Right Clothes Can Make the Man

Ask any fashionista if clothes are an important part of our identity and they will probably talk about how vital style is to their success. To break it down a little further and step away from high fashion and instead focus on the man in the street, how important are his clothing choices? Was Mark Twain right in saying “the clothes make the man” and has this adage been taken too literally of late? Everything that we do has a cause and effect impact on the world, so in that aspect our clothes will to some degree have an effect on how we are treated by others, but in what way?A simple example can be found at a high-end Michelin-starred restaurant. Unless your face is immediately recognisable as being wealthy and successful, it will often be your clothes that the host or waiter makes their decisions on and, if you’re not wearing the right clothes to a restaurant or nightclub, then the chances are you won’t get in. Call it ‘power dressing’ or dressing to impress, but the fact is that a man’s clothes determine how society sees him, this is something that women probably got to grips with a lot earlier than most men too.We’ve all heard the expression ‘first impressions count’, and it is absolutely true; as the average stranger takes no more than 30 seconds to assess another stranger on first meeting them, and this impression can then take up to five years to erase. You can forget the other saying ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’, as anyone in publishing will tell you that it’s the covers that make the books stand out on the shelf.Obviously Hollywood has taken this idea a little too far, with movies like Jackie Chan’s ‘The Tuxedo’, where a down-and-out cab driver’s life is turned around thanks to the discovery of a technologically advanced tuxedo, and obviously James Bond has been known to pick particular threads too. To find serious real-world examples, you don’t have to look far. Politics is full of power dressing, where subtle messages are portrayed in candidate’s clothing choice, like Gordon Brown’s persistent red tie, or George W Bush’s choice of slightly oversized suit jackets to larger his appearance. In the first Kennedy-Nixon presidential race, radio listeners favoured Nixon thanks to his authoritative voice, while TV watchers favoured Kennedy as he looked fresh-faced compared to Nixon’s tired and unconsidered choice of mens clothes.To really understand how clothes can make a man’s appearance though, you can think back to childhood fairytales like ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ or try a simple test. Picture in your head the manager of a petrol station, and then picture the manager of a successful advertising agency. The two managers might be in charge of the same number of people and earn the same salary, but they will probably be dressed pretty differently.