Towers slogans
 

Towers flyers
 

Towers ads
 

The Observer was a "...quarterly newspaper published by and for the employees of the Oshawa Group Limited and subsidiary companies" -- which included, of course, Towers Department Stores.

As an employee of Towers for many years, I would receive the Observer at home, glance it and toss it.

Except for one edition.

The "Spring Issue. Volume 12, No. 1", published June 1974, I kept for some reason.  And I'm glad I did. It's a unique snap shot of Towers - who was just promoted, who just got married and who celebrated the birth of a child.

I'm going to pick out this and that from this edition for you to enjoy.

Page 3
There is, more me at least, an extraordinary photo on this page. It was included in an article, by Oshawa President Harvey S. Wolfe, that bemoaned the fact that many small towns still had laws in place that forced businesses to close by 6 pm.

The photo is of an opening of a Towers store - a store that opened in, or before, 1974.  I don't know which one. The noticed (and OMG, remember!) the cashier uniforms and the cash registers.

The uniforms where an outrageous canary yellow colour, with a short mini skirt and a "beret" cap that had a little "stem" on the top -- like a stem of a pear!

The cash registers where from a company called Sweda.

Cashiers had to (and I remember this because I had to know how to do this):
 

• Separate the taxable items, from the non-taxable items.
   

• The machine had 7 or 8 columns of vertical buttons, arrange from zero at the bottom to nine at the top. They were colour coded. These buttons where mechanical. You had to apply some force to depress each one.
   

• Towers tickets were made up the CLASS, ITEM and PRICE. The CLASS, or department, would identify a category of products -- like candy. The ITEM number would identify a specific product in that department -- like Coffee Crisp chocolate bar.
   

• Cashiers has to enter the each piece of information one a time. It was commonly referred to as "3-pass" entry.
   

• Starting with the first taxable item, they would press the ITEM button. Then, moving their index finger swiftly up and down, enter the item number. It meant (counting from the right) entering the first digit in column 4, the second digit in column 3, and so on. Experienced cashiers would zip up and down -- their finger nails making clicky noises as they flew up and down. Once done entering the item number, they would press the big "ENTER" button on the far right. The cash register would go ca-chunk. The numbers would appear (white against a black background) in the mechanical display at the top of the machine.
   

• Next came the class number. Cashiers would press the CLASS button and enter (just as described above) this 3-digit number and press the ENTER button. Ca-chunk.
   

• Finally, the PRICE would be entered.
   

• When the ENTER button was pressed for the last time, a little bit of the customer receipt would peak out (with that item printed on it) and, unseen, a computer paper tape on the right side of the machine would be punched with little dots. (These tapes would be sent in daily for computer processing at the Head Office.)
   

• The cashier would then move on to the next item.
   

• I don't recall a way of repeating the transaction if a customer was buying two or three of the same item.
   

• Once all the taxable items were done, the cashier would press the SUBTOTAL button. Using a chart, the casher would then manually calculate the tax, press the TAX button and enter the amount.
   

• The cashier would then move on to the non-taxable items.