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Today was just an... interesting day.
First it started with getting stuck on register 12. 12 is the busiest register in the store - it's next to express, and most customers seem to finish their shopping on that side of the store. Plus the baggers rarely make their way up there. Our main registers are 1 to 12 - we never use 1, 2 is rarely used, the rest are used regularly. Also I hate working express and 11 or 12. The last time 1 got used was in March or so when the power went out, I was on my lunch break and jumped on to help everyone get registers out of the store before the battery backups died. The credit card reader on it has literally never been used - we got new ones this past spring. I don't think it's even been rebooted in several months, which is amazing considering our registers run... Windows XP.
One of my first transactions... had a guy with american express travelers checks. I've never taken one before, and I've been handling money for a living since 2000. I know there's a very, very high amount of fraud within the US with them, so I was immediately nervous... and trying to remember everything I read in the amex travelers check acceptance brochure I'd read before. All of the security measures checked out, but I still had a supervisor come over and check them out and sign off on them... at least that way if they wind up being bad, I only get shit on half as much.
Did I mention I had no bagger for about 95% of my sales today? I had a couple of $400+ orders today too.
When express closes around 8:30, whoever's on 11 or 12 usually moves down to join the other cashiers at the... more often used? (is that a valid phrase?) registers. In other words they like us to be fairly tightly clustered together, since we're close to closing at that point anyway. I turned off my light and put out my "Next lane please" sign and people still kept coming up to me, one guy even moved the sign off the belt to put his groceries down. I wound up snapping at him a little bit.
One of my more interesting transactions was a lady who either lost her wallet or forgot it at home. No big deal, it happens, I tell her I'll ring it up and suspend it, we'll put her cart in a cooler, and she can run home and get another form of payment. Instead she asked if she could call her husband on her cellphone and have him read off his credit card to me. This is normally a huge nono, we like to have the card present. Supervisor okayed it - she (customer) was someone I recognized as a regular anyway. It's easy to do on our registers. But I got a nasty look from a store manager when he walked by with the customer's cellphone glued to my ear while I was trying to hear him above our insanely loud PA system and music (we're forbidden from even having a phone on us while clocked in).
The most amazing thing that happened... we start our drawers with $400. I got down to $10 in 5's and $30 in 1's, and loose change, plus a bunch of hundreds, and had to close my lane until I could get more change. I've NEVER had to do a final loan over $200 (we have to build our drawers ourselves at the end of the shift, hence doing a final loan near the end of your shift). I did my final an hour early too, we usually do it an hour before the end of shift.. I did mine 2 1/2 hours early because I was just out of everything. My loan was $301.00 (mostly 5's and 10's, plus 2 rolls of pennies and $40 in 1's). I've run one of 10's once, 20's plenty of times, but never came so close to running out of 5's or 1's (we start with $60-90 in 1's, I started with $60 today). When I handed my supe the loan slip he looked at it and he asked if I was trying to rape his loan drawer and if I really needed all of that. I opened my drawer and said "I don't know, you tell me"... he took one look at said "wtf happened?".
I'm going to go drink a beer. Actually make that a lot of beers... long, long day.
First it started with getting stuck on register 12. 12 is the busiest register in the store - it's next to express, and most customers seem to finish their shopping on that side of the store. Plus the baggers rarely make their way up there. Our main registers are 1 to 12 - we never use 1, 2 is rarely used, the rest are used regularly. Also I hate working express and 11 or 12. The last time 1 got used was in March or so when the power went out, I was on my lunch break and jumped on to help everyone get registers out of the store before the battery backups died. The credit card reader on it has literally never been used - we got new ones this past spring. I don't think it's even been rebooted in several months, which is amazing considering our registers run... Windows XP.
One of my first transactions... had a guy with american express travelers checks. I've never taken one before, and I've been handling money for a living since 2000. I know there's a very, very high amount of fraud within the US with them, so I was immediately nervous... and trying to remember everything I read in the amex travelers check acceptance brochure I'd read before. All of the security measures checked out, but I still had a supervisor come over and check them out and sign off on them... at least that way if they wind up being bad, I only get shit on half as much.
Did I mention I had no bagger for about 95% of my sales today? I had a couple of $400+ orders today too.
When express closes around 8:30, whoever's on 11 or 12 usually moves down to join the other cashiers at the... more often used? (is that a valid phrase?) registers. In other words they like us to be fairly tightly clustered together, since we're close to closing at that point anyway. I turned off my light and put out my "Next lane please" sign and people still kept coming up to me, one guy even moved the sign off the belt to put his groceries down. I wound up snapping at him a little bit.
One of my more interesting transactions was a lady who either lost her wallet or forgot it at home. No big deal, it happens, I tell her I'll ring it up and suspend it, we'll put her cart in a cooler, and she can run home and get another form of payment. Instead she asked if she could call her husband on her cellphone and have him read off his credit card to me. This is normally a huge nono, we like to have the card present. Supervisor okayed it - she (customer) was someone I recognized as a regular anyway. It's easy to do on our registers. But I got a nasty look from a store manager when he walked by with the customer's cellphone glued to my ear while I was trying to hear him above our insanely loud PA system and music (we're forbidden from even having a phone on us while clocked in).
The most amazing thing that happened... we start our drawers with $400. I got down to $10 in 5's and $30 in 1's, and loose change, plus a bunch of hundreds, and had to close my lane until I could get more change. I've NEVER had to do a final loan over $200 (we have to build our drawers ourselves at the end of the shift, hence doing a final loan near the end of your shift). I did my final an hour early too, we usually do it an hour before the end of shift.. I did mine 2 1/2 hours early because I was just out of everything. My loan was $301.00 (mostly 5's and 10's, plus 2 rolls of pennies and $40 in 1's). I've run one of 10's once, 20's plenty of times, but never came so close to running out of 5's or 1's (we start with $60-90 in 1's, I started with $60 today). When I handed my supe the loan slip he looked at it and he asked if I was trying to rape his loan drawer and if I really needed all of that. I opened my drawer and said "I don't know, you tell me"... he took one look at said "wtf happened?".
I'm going to go drink a beer. Actually make that a lot of beers... long, long day.
and 2) express never closes. The big lanes get tighter about 7pm-ish.
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