| The origins and ideas behind packaging machinery are | | | | that he had made these people happy, supplied all their |
| complex. After all, go back in history one hundred | | | | needs for a day and given that personal touch with |
| years and who needed it, I ask. You had the man in | | | | the wrapping and chatting. |
| the local grocery store in his brown coat who would | | | | How did things change so much in the last one |
| do all that sort of thing. | | | | hundred years and who, exactly, called for this |
| He weighed your meat, your rice, your fruit and veg, | | | | change? A visit to the shops is not the same anymore. |
| and your vinegar and then he wrapped them all for | | | | So many shops specialise in only one thing that it can |
| you in brown paper. A godsend to Jack and Jill but | | | | take up to eight different shops to supply a day's |
| stories told through the generations will tell you that this | | | | needs. Every item you buy will be shrink wrapped by |
| man was under immense pressure. He was the 'One | | | | packaging machinery that has been programmed by |
| Stop' shop for the whole town and supplied all your | | | | an origami expert and will require a surgeons degree |
| culinary needs as well as your coal for heating, | | | | to get into. |
| haberdashery needs and he also acted as a | | | | Today's customers have little contact with the shop |
| hardware store. | | | | keeper. If they're lucky they may receive a grunt from |
| Trying to keep up demand for all this without | | | | them which will just about suffice in the signal that they |
| packaging machinery must have been a veritable | | | | are still alive. Food wrapped in plastic by food |
| nightmare. There was no conveyor belt to speed | | | | packaging machinery is silently slung at us so we can |
| things along. There was no plastic carrier bags for him | | | | pack it in more plastic, the type guaranteed to remove |
| to sling at customers to pack themselves. And there | | | | digits on the way home. |
| was no sullen face that sulked should he have to do | | | | When we get home we will break out the industrial |
| something for his customers. | | | | strength scissors that we bought from the specialist |
| Shopkeepers today just don't know they're born. For | | | | scissor shop that now has to carry a licence to sell |
| the customers of olden days, particularly the elderly, | | | | such dangerous goods. We can then waste half an |
| the local grocer was the only person they spoke to in | | | | hour of our lives trying to get into our food, thus aiding |
| a day and he provided their only source of comfort in | | | | the weight loss diet because we eventually give it up |
| what would otherwise be a lonely existence. He would | | | | as a bad job. |
| stand and chat while he collected their goods from his | | | | Still, at least we can sit down and relax with the daily |
| shelves. He would then carefully wrap them while | | | | newspaper and read about how plastic packaging |
| diagnosing their ailments or lamenting the behaviour of | | | | contains carcinogenic agents and that this might just |
| young people and see his customers off, even opening | | | | shorten our lives. The answer, apparently, is to use |
| the door for them. | | | | recyclable packaging that is bio-degradable and user |
| The old time grocer may have had a long day but he | | | | friendly. So, that will be brown paper then? |
| certainly would have felt a sense of pride in the fact | | | | |