I was reminiscing – again - about my days behind the counter in Woolworths, mentioned my secret hope that I would be assigned to the biscuit counter.
At 14 I was ravenous all the time, so I relished the idea of keeping myself going by sneakily snacking on broken biscuits.
What are broken biscuits?
Well, just what it says on the tin.
Biscuits did not always come tightly wrapped in their own packets in those days – certainly not in Woollies; they were displayed in deep open tins on the counter, weighed out by the assistant & put into a paper bag. As far as I can recall there was no kind of protective barrier which kept the biscuits sheltered from everybody’s germs, no special hygiene rules for the assistants.
Some biscuits must have got broken in this process, or got broken on the way home in the squash in your shopping basket, but I think that the tins of broken biscuits were supplied separately – accidents of an earlier stage in the production process. They were naturally sold very cheaply but, heigh, they tasted just as good. & times was ‘ard for many.
My mother would have been truly grateful to receive as a present a bag of Rowntree Misshapes, which could often, but not reliably, be found in shops; sometimes she might even find it within herself to finance buying a bag of her own out the housekeeping money as a guilty treat. More accidents of the production process, perfectly good chocolates that just looked a bit wonky – uneven chocolate coating or misplacement of the hazelnut cluster. If you were really lucky the bag contained a majority of rejects from the aspirational brand of the time - Black Magic.
We can probably expect a return to more of these value offers as times get harder again.
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