It was minimum wage. $3.05/hr at the time, unloading 60 ft trailers in 100 degree heat in the late summer. That notwithstanding we actually had medical/dental and paid vacation time.
Often thought if they'd made it longer, it was a pretty close approximation to online shopping. Look at an example on the floor and then order from the warehouse upstairs.
So.. like Ikea?
At Best (and Service Merchandise) you collected tickets for the items you wanted and brought those up to the front. They'd enter your order, you'd pay and wait. The items would be picked and sent on a conveyor to the front.
> ... They owned Best Products, a catalogue retailer that sold discounted goods in hybrid showroom/warehouses (sort of like Ikea). Selling everything from hair dryers to toaster ovens to doll-houses, they were proto-big box stores ...
It was close to $400 a quarter near the end.
Clearly the parent post was contemplating making $3.05 an hour in terms of today’s cost of living, just as I might contemplate how crazy it sounds to pay 5¢ a gallon for gas.
> A credit hour in 1979 at MSU was 24.50, adjusted for inflation that is 79.23 in today dollars. One credit hour today costs 428.75.
That's about 1600 hours at $15.60, or 40 x 40-hour weeks. So you need to work most of a year to pay the tuition for a year. And this doesn't account for your living expenses, taxes etc.
Here's an infographic that does a more detailed comparison: https://college-education.procon.org/view.resource.php?resou...
Nowadays, I imagine it would be more like 1/10 or less.
Cost for the courses and parking etc. for 1 semester was $152.50 . I guess the student had to buy some books also - so say, even $100 in books would take it to $252.50 ?
And 1975 minimum wage was $2.10/hour. So ~ 120 hours of labor (1 month) was enough to cover tuition and books.
A website has unlimited shelf space, physical retail doesn't. And e commerce has now been pretty much perfected with free next day delivery and internet banking.
I last remember going to Best in the early 90s somewhere in Northern Virginia. I have a boom-box CD player I got there, IIRC. The CD player doesn't work much, but 99% of time I just have a phone or tablet plugged into a cassette adapter, and it still sounds great.
Best was replaced by Circuit City over the course of the 80s and early 90s and now that niche is filled by Best Buy, at least here in the mid-Altantic east coast.