The Weight Of History

What Do You Think You're Looking At? #131

Have you ever seen one of these before?

(Photo credit Phillip Pessar/Flickr, CC BY 2.0 DEED.)

They’re old-fashioned scales in the lobbies of most Publix supermarkets—a simple but iconic symbol of the very well-liked supermarket chain.

In 2021, Publix announced that at some point its scales would have to be pulled from stores, as their condition deteriorated and parts became scarce. What happened?

I love this “things we can’t make anymore” beat—I did cassette decks here, and tiny star-shaped pasta here. Now sure, we can make these things, theoretically, probably. But they don’t pencil out as products anymore for whatever reason.

In this case, here’s the crux of the story:

The manufacturer, Mettler Toledo, quit producing the scales in 2015.

The scales have been a fixture in the stores since George Jenkins opened his first Publix supermarket in Winter Haven in 1940.

And while Publix posted that “our wonderful repair shop keeps our remaining machines in great shape,” there will come a time when they will no longer be able to be repaired and will be pulled from store floors.

And here’s Publix’s announcement, buried under some nostalgia:

You would think 3D printing could fix this. Maybe when it comes down to it, it can. But there’s arcane knowledge involved in the repair of old tech—the steady hand of experience—and that knowledge decays along with the availability of parts.

I remember reading a review of an electronics repair shop, and one customer had his wonky turntable returned, still not quite perfect, after a couple of inconclusive hours of investigation. Whatever little problem the unit had was undetectable without a completely non-cost-effective amount of time. It’s what aircraft techs called “gremlins.” Things break down in odd ways that can make them almost seem alive.

Industrially produced products aren’t artisan crafts. They only work at a certain scale, where knowhow and staffing and factory tooling ultimately produces profit. Too small a market for too complex a product makes that product effectively impossible to make, at least according to economic logic. It’s weird to realize that things with real cultural and human meaning nonetheless rely on the raw logic of time and money. Maybe everything does.

The newest Publix stores now lack the scales from the very beginning. As far as I can tell, the new scales that ceased production 2015 are basically the same as the original ones, meaning this product was a kind of living fossil: something that became an antique even while it was still being manufactured. Not a reproduction, but a once-current product turned into an antique by the passing of time.

Neat but somewhat depressing story. I wonder how long they can keep them in service?

---

Related Reading:

A Repair Journey Through Low-Cost Manufacturing

We’re Still Making Car Cassette Players

The Christmas Clock

---

Thank you for reading! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekly subscribers-only post, plus full access to the archive: over 700 posts and growing. And you’ll help ensure more material like this!