Back in the 1960’s when I worked as a bookkeeper at Foodland Supermarkets, cashiers gave out Blue Chip trading stamps with each grocery order, one stamp per ten cents spent. After a shopper accumulated enough loose stamps to be an annoyance, they pasted them into a small book with space for 1,200 stamps.  Once shoppers had enough full books to exchange for an item in the premium catalog, they brought them to a redemption center.

The Blue Chip premium catalog included such useful items such as a Swank key ring with nail clipper attachment, 1 book; a Health-O-Meter bathroom scale, 4 ¼ books; and at the high end my personal favorite, the Polaroid Highlander Model 80A Instant Camera, price many, many books. About this camera, I will just say that it took excellent photographs.

The pads of stamps provided to cashiers had 50 pages, 100 stamps per page,  5,000 stamps in all, equivalent to just over four full books.

Our store had two small rest rooms for employees – the men’s was always dirty and in a state of disrepair, the ladies’ much nicer. When closing the store at night, after all female employees had left, any remaining men would often use the ladies’ to wash up. In the morning, whichever man (back then it was always a man) opened the store would use the ladies’ to straighten his tie and otherwise get ready for the day.

On Sundays we usually had a single female employee, a cashier named Barbara.

One Monday when I arrived at work, assistant manager Eddie, second-in-command to manager Neil, was waiting for me. Waving a pad of Blue Stamps, he said “I have to fire Barbara, I found these in the ladies’ room.”

“Errrm, those are mine.”

“Oh.”

A few months later, I transferred to another store in the chain. Eddie told me they weren’t planning to change the safe combination after I left, and added “If it was Neil leaving it would be a different story.”

Polaroid Highlander Model 80A Instant Camera