AFTER 45 years working at Coles in Orange, service assistant Kerry Foster is not planning on going anywhere and still enjoys meeting her customers each day.
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Mrs Foster, the second longest-serving Coles employee in NSW, said the supermarket had changed a lot since she started fresh out of school.
“When I first started we were all full-timers and stores didn’t open at night and stores shut at 12 (noon) on Saturday and didn’t open on Sunday,” Mrs Foster said.
For the first 43 years she worked in the meat packing department and said in the early days everything was done manually.
Pay was issued in envelopes rather than deposited into bank accounts, and in the meat department the meat was hand wrapped and weighed before labels were put on with the weight and price handwritten.
On the shop floor, prices had to be stamped on every product as there were no barcodes, and cashiers punched in the price of each item on the till rather than scan them.
Mrs Foster said even unloading the deliveries was more labour intensive as workers had to unload every box rather than having the boxes packed onto crates.
“People really held together, we worked damn hard,” Mrs Foster said.
Since then Mrs Foster has seen many customers and colleagues grow up and have their own families.
“The kids you started out with now bring their grandkids in,” she said.
For the past two years Mrs Foster has worked as a service assistant. She said she still enjoyed her job and had no plans to stop.
“I enjoy the customers, they become family friends,” Mrs Foster said.
tanya.marschke@fairfaxmedia.com.au
