A customer actually took my advice!

[bean]

We have a very regular customer.. he's in 2 or 3 times a week, easily. Well, lots of them, but this one stands out in particular.

He's asked me about the employee discount before and how to get any other discounts, etc. My standard line is always "If you want the employee discount, get hired part time and work 1 or 2 days a week.. only other real discounts we offer are on cases of an item, 10% off on those.. the employee discount is a lot better, trust me".

Well, yesterday he came through my line, we exchange the usual pleasantries. And just as I finish ringing him up, he whips out one of our employee discount cards. I give him a WTF look and he just laughs and told me "Yeah, I started yesterday, I'm going to be a part time cashier". Sure as shit, he's working 2 days a week, and started officially training as a cashier today.

A few times in the past he's asked me how difficult cashiering is... I told him it's not rocket science, but you have to have a good memory for PLUs and have to be comfortable handling several thousand dollars a day. It does help that our registers are *incredibly* easy to use (entirely menu driven). I've even let him watch what my screen does/what buttons I press while ringing up an order. Like I said.. our registers are really easy to use, they're 100% menu driven and actually run Windows XP.

So... I guess he really, really wanted that employee discount. Can't say I blame him, he spends several hundred a week in my store, and our employee discount is 20% off of EVERYTHING (including alcohol). The only catches are you can't get case discounts with the employee discount, and you can't use store coupons/promos (you can use all the vendor coupons you want though).

[Javarod]

Heh, i don't blame him actually, not only is the discount a big deal when you spend that much, consider that his wages give him extra money to spend there. Win-win for him. I should consider doing that with Fry's out here, though with my current work arrangement, it might not be possible.

[bean]

Exactly. Granted, he's only going to get an extra $80-$100 a week (before taxes and benefits) and lose some free time with his family, but the discount is just flat out awesome. I'm not positive, but I think he may be retired anyway, so this will get him out of the house a bit.

And he's also proof that my employer doesn't discriminate based on age, I'd say he's in his early 60s, and our current trainer is in her late 60s. Incredibly nice guy all around though, I've always enjoyed dealing with him. It's still pretty strange seeing him wearing our aprons though.

Also, since he normally pays by check, check process for employees is a lot easier. With a normal customer, we need to see an ID that matches the name and address on the check, and write the ID #, expiration, and their phone # on the check. With an employee, we just write the employee ID # on the check and that's it. No ID required as long as we recognize them unless it's their first time writing a check, in which case we just type their ID # into the register.