A little bleary, but I love stuff like this and saved some particularly gruesome fuel and grocery receipts for the older kids to tuck in their yearbooks to compare as adults. Unfortunately for you, I have an impeccable memory, so I can add even more detail to this era. Picture it, the 80s…
I was a poor kid in class of ‘90, but still managed to have five of the “fashionable things” listed, which usually meant I squirreled enough of my babysitting money away from my mother to get them. None of them were extravagantly expensive. All of them have a $35-$50 price point on the swatch and wayfarers unless you start getting fancier versions and sundry accouterments (I’m sorry for that last sentence, @Rat. My 8-year-old daughter has me speaking like Fancy Nancy n shit over here.).
Around that time, the “popular” shoes one year were white mocassin-looking things from K-Marche for $10 or $15. They were smooth on the bottom, and I still have a nasty scar where a chunk of my knee was sacrificed to a crosswalk on a busy street in Olympia. I told you I was always scurrying.
Honorable mention from me to the original cheap-ass meat-feet makers, “Jellys.” I have a good story about the Wayfarers that has to wait.
It’s interesting that milk was not that much different in price back then when everything else was so much less. I am here to tell you the Dairy folk were pushing milk HARD then. Ads all the time. Living high off the udder, as it were. Anyway, I pay maybe 20 cents more a gallon for the “no freaky hormone” milk. Shit, I think organic may only be a further 20 cents, now that I think about it. I think they started pushing pork in the 90s. Is every protein source assigned a decade or something?
I was a cashier/barista at Cow Chips Cookies in Seattle, shortly after leaving home (87-88-ish). During that era of my life, I lived on cookies, walnuts, milk, and juice. I was hired for $4.25 an hour. The owner came in during a slow time and caught me chiseling cookie dough out of the floor tiles (because of boredom, and now we know AUDHD) and gave me a 25-cent raise on the spot. I guess I was some kind of manager, I had keys and opened/closed all the stores. I was 16 or 17. Ridiculously, I also managed a live-in retirement community at 17. I got an apartment by fudging my birth year and a tech job with a GED in 1999 (after proving myself for three grueling years as a permatemp). By 2005, they were asking for “a” degree. I was on the interview loop for all incoming Web Developers (they were all laid off, Engineers got to stay, I chose a title change over a promotion one year or that would have been me). I was interviewing people with 2-3 degrees. I blushed when they asked my educational background. I’m kind of proud of it now.
Now, employers want to dictate which kind of debt you should be in before you arrive (which degree, certifications). They used to pay for our certifications, but. I paid $1,000 for a useless Scrum Master Certification in 2018 in a failed attempt to return to tech. It is not nearly the same as it was 10 years earlier.
Feel free to share my real-life experiences with anyone insisting a can-do attitude, good work ethic, and a firm handshake will absolutely get you a job with a liveable wage and a path to management. I have a patent, decades of experience, and entire other fallback careers outside tech, and I am still struggling to find work that pays a liveable wage, for fuck’s sake. Nobody wants to work as much as someone with 3 children, legal fees to pay to keep them safe, and a threatened eviction. Fuck that argument in particular. We aren’t even playing the same fucking sport they did. If they refuse to believe you, I’m sorry, there is no other choice but to write it off to heavy metal exposure in their young lives.
I am mostly a hermit and have been since just before Covid. Back then I was processing trauma. I still have social anxiety and it’s getting nasty out there (road rage, shootings). If I can’t be in nature, I’d rather just do something I enjoy at home. Naturally, I hate grocery shopping as much as I hate all other shopping and recreational decision-making (like dinner, fuck, I might have to go to the store tonight!).
I do not like talking to people I don’t know, especially small talk. I will do it for the cashier or server with a smile every time because it’s the least I can do. They are stuck there much longer than I am. Then I might need a nap. Even I spoke to a complete stranger on the condiment aisle recently. I asked an older gentleman if he thought he would ever see mayonnaise at $9.99 a (regular-sized) jar. He looked at the price and said, “Is that what it is now? Forget it,” and walked away. No bread lube for him that week, I guess. Also, I should probably not apply for a job at that store. I’m terrible at sales.
I hope you enjoy reminiscing and/or seeing why people who remember these prices (or even lower ones!!) are getting a little flinchy about the cost of living these days.
Oh yeah, I remember fuel at AM/PM was 99 cents when I was 16. So were two crappy burgers.
This was a great read! I was 9 in 1984 and I remember a lot of this...especially the Challenger. ❤️🙏
When your life starts with "I had it best under Reagan". All the feels, my kindred!