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What the eff is going on here ... LONG

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  • What the eff is going on here ... LONG

    I'm putting this in 'General' because it covers everything ... management, coworkers, customers ...

    1) Disgruntled staff.
    At least two people have bailed that I know of with a third planning to leave (that I know of) and who plans to make life as difficult as possible for management until he's gone (I was present when he said this). One staffer, who worked on our website (not sure what she did) apparently left without anywhere to go to, snarling that, as a minimum-wage job, they weren't paying her nearly enough to put up with this crap. Staff members who are still there are VERY unhappy, and some have turned VERY cynical, about the store and how it's run.

    We're also having quite the number of NCNS and sick call-outs. At least some of the latter could be legitimate; there's supposed to be a nasty cold making its way around the city.

    Store's been open two weeks.

    2) Disgruntled customers.
    Two customers that I know of have said they'll never be back. One was one of mine; he was very polite to me, but said the 'help' he'd gotten was very poor. Second guy was just a sighting, yelling "I'm going to [Competitor]!!!" as he stormed out the door. No idea as to the story behind that. A third case of an unhappy customer (don't know whether she'll be back or not) was, oddly, a woman whom I spoke to while buying something from HER stall in Large Mall. She'd come in to my store to buy a stepladder and ended up talking to two people from that particular department, both of whom said flatly they knew nothing about stepladders. One tried to plead that they "haven't been trained in that" yet.

    One coworker reported having no fewer than three customers scream at her in the space of one shift. Another cashier told her "You don't put up with that. Shut down your machine and call for a head cashier." Problem: the coworker was in the Lumber department when this all went down, which is at the far, FAR end of the store, and where there is often nobody else around. I should add that one customer was screaming because we had sold out of whatever it was he wanted ...

    3) Dipshit management.
    We appear to be doing the same thing that (I've heard) Walmart does: saturate the store with staff for a few days, or perhaps a week, after which they slash the staff down to the bone, and then some. We had ONE 'loader' on duty during my shift today. Loaders help customers put stuff in their vehicles as needed, and collect shopping carts from the parking lot. Over a three- to four-hour period, this loader had not yet managed to get to the carts, because he was being run ragged from one end of the store to the other (Customer Service, front cash, and Lumber) trying to help people put stuff in their cars.

    Oh, and did I mention that he was scheduled to go home at 5 p.m., with the next loader scheduled to come in at ... 5:30 p.m? Meanwhile, there was a woman waiting for help with putting a large countertop into her vehicle ... I called twice for help for her, and left after notifying the upper echelon staffers (Customer Service, where the head cashier and such are usually found) that I didn't think the customer would want to stand there until 5:30 when the next loader came on .... Normally they get somebody from the department itself to help.

    The floor overall seemed alarmingly empty of staff, as we cashiers discovered when customers came to US with questions and we tried to find the 'specialists' in various departments who might actually know what they were talking about.

    4. General chaos.
    My first customer today bought three large-ish items, one of them a light fixture. It came up as $40.

    "No," she said. "It's about $35."

    I tried a number of things to determine whether it was on sale. This included doing a check on my machine in a secondary program, and calling somebody in the lighting department, who said no, the price was $40. The customer was very polite but also very persistent: no, she said, it was around $35.

    We can't leave our registers, so I was running out of options. I finally glommed into another worker who *was* mobile, and asked her if she would go back with the customer and check on the light. Coworker came back with a sticky label that clearly read that the price was ... $35.

    So, as a cashier, I can't trust the in-store system, and I can't trust the people in various departments, when it comes to pricing ...

    I'm starting to have some sympathy for those people who say "Hahaha, that means it's free, right?"

    Also, we're supposed to call the head cashier to do a 'second count' if somebody pays with cash for anything that costs $300 or more. I had three of these today. The first time I called, the head cashier didn't seem to know what I was talking about, although she came over and counted. The third time, she was tied up with something else and never did come over. Eventually I got tired of the $100 bills staring at me everytime the cash drawer opened, so I just shoved them under the cash trays. If my till is off ... oh well. (No, nobody signs anything when we do these second counts, so there's no way of keeping track of whether we actually called anybody ...)

    Also, we've been handing out special coupons since the store opened. I've been cheerfully giving them out to anybody who comes through my line, as that's what I was told. Another cashier, puzzled, said she had been told to only give them to people who spent $100 or more ....

    5) Not a sucky customer, but I still wanted to bang my head against a wall.
    We have a very, VERY old system on our cash registers (can you say DOS? I knew you could.) This, of course, makes many procedures take far longer than they should.

    I had two women -- mother and daughter -- come through my line. Each was buying a $600 Christmas tree. Each had a $100 coupon. Mother goes first. We get through the entire checkout process, including the coupon, counting the cash (!!!) and THEN she says, "Oh, I wasn't going to pick it up for a few days, is that okay?"



    Not really, ma'am. The sale had gone through with a 'tag' that indicated it was being taken home today, so it was, theoretically, gone from our stock. Now, IF she comes back in three days (or whatever) there's a possibility that we might have run completely out of those trees, having not put one aside for her. You know how we had to change that "tag"? She had to go to Customer Service, they had to refund the sale, and then put her through the whole purchase procedure again. Even though she no longer had the coupon because I had shoved it through the little slot in the drawer after using it ...

    Like the woman buying the mispriced light, this customer was very apologetic, and it was NOT her fault that she didn't know she needed to tell me this early on in the checkout process. But again ... why do we make this so very difficult?

    The daughter was getting the same tree and we cleared it up VERY early in the process that she too would be coming back later to pick up her tree.

    Tell me again how customers are so very important to us.
    Last edited by Pixelated; 11-01-2018, 04:40 AM.
    Customer service: More efficient than a Dementor's kiss
    ~ Mr Hero

  • #2
    A DOS-based POS system? Holy carp, that's an antique. Yeah, it's cheap, but what it'll cost in wasted manhours and not-quite-right transactions/missed sales...
    Oh wait, they don't have to worry about manhours because they got RID of most everybody. Not to worry, customer levels will drop to compensate, with time.

    Comment


    • #3
      That....is a total shitshow. I really hope for your sake that they get their act together. It sounds like management has no idea what they're doing, and everybody is working at cross purposes. Good luck!
      When you start at zero, everything's progress.

      Comment


      • #4
        Quoth Pixelated View Post
        ...and it was NOT her fault that she didn't know she needed to tell me this early on in the checkout process.
        Eh, I'll give her a pass for not turning into an SC, but if I'm paying now for something I'm not actually taking home with me this minute, I'd want that to be one of the first things mentioned just in case there's a special procedure.

        Is it too soon to suggest you restart your job search? 2 weeks open and already going to pieces like this does not bode well!
        This was one of those times where my mouth says "have a nice day" but my brain says "go step on a Lego". - RegisterAce
        I can't make something magically appear to fulfill all your hopes and dreams. Believe me, if I could I'd be the first person I'd help. - Trixie

        Comment


        • #5
          Quoth Buzzard View Post
          A DOS-based POS system?
          No kidding, is that even still supported? Or did they find it at a flea market somewhere?
          I'm trying to see things from your point of view, but I can't get my head that far up my keister!

          Who is John Galt?
          -Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

          Comment


          • #6
            Support? That's for underwear. Since this program has been around for a quarter-century, they ought to have worked all the bugs out of it by now, right?

            ... right????
            “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
            One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
            The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers

            Comment


            • #7
              The bugs... Oh gods, the bugs... And so many ways to FUBAR the poor thing without trying too hard. Of course, if one WANTED to FUBAR the thing... I can think of a few tricks to get into places I have no legit reason to be.

              Comment


              • #8
                I Wonder if it has the old CPU with the HFO* opcode, which was an enhancement of the classic HCF* opcode.




                * HCF = Halt, Catch Fire
                * HFO = Halt, Format Operator (implicit bulk erase operation)
                I am not an a**hole. I am a hemorrhoid. I irritate a**holes!
                Procrastination: Forward planning to insure there is something to do tomorrow.
                Derails threads faster than a pocket nuke.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Quoth Buzzard View Post
                  A DOS-based POS system? Holy carp, that's an antique. Yeah, it's cheap, but what it'll cost in wasted manhours and not-quite-right transactions/missed sales...
                  Oh wait, they don't have to worry about manhours because they got RID of most everybody. Not to worry, customer levels will drop to compensate, with time.
                  Its probably worse then that, an actual mainframe with a terminal interface.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Quoth Buzzard View Post
                    A DOS-based POS system? Holy carp, that's an antique. Yeah, it's cheap, but what it'll cost in wasted manhours and not-quite-right transactions/missed sales...
                    Oh wait, they don't have to worry about manhours because they got RID of most everybody. Not to worry, customer levels will drop to compensate, with time.
                    You've got that right. It's a HUGE pain in the patoot.

                    Quoth RealUnimportant View Post
                    Eh, I'll give her a pass for not turning into an SC, but if I'm paying now for something I'm not actually taking home with me this minute, I'd want that to be one of the first things mentioned just in case there's a special procedure.

                    Is it too soon to suggest you restart your job search? 2 weeks open and already going to pieces like this does not bode well!
                    Oh, I had no quarrel with her, although my heart sank when she mentioned that. I did say that yes, in future we need to 'tag' the item as pick-up-later, and she was very apologetic, so she was not an SC by any stretch of the definition. I'm sure she and her daughter will remember that in future dealings at the store, LOL.

                    RealUnimportant, I am not losing sight of restarting a job search. However, I have snagged a seasonal job at a store I really want to work at, so I figure I've got enough on my plate ATM. Come the New Year, it will be a different story. I will probably hand in my resumes at two local supermarkets. I've worked at one before (at a Niagara site) so I'm reasonably familiar with their procedures. If for any reason I get canned from this job, I will go to my seasonal job and tell them I am now available 7 days a week (although I still prefer daytime shifts). In that case, I will deal with any fallout in the New Year.

                    Quoth taxguykarl View Post
                    No kidding, is that even still supported? Or did they find it at a flea market somewhere?
                    I overheard the other day that this particular DOS-based program is in fact owned by the company, which probably explains why they're not updating it -- it would mean paying somebody ELSE to use *their* program. Of course, if the program ever crashes, every single store will be toast ...

                    I've also heard there's about a dozen people at head office whose SOLE jobs are to keep this thing running.

                    Quoth Nunavut Pants View Post
                    Support? That's for underwear. Since this program has been around for a quarter-century, they ought to have worked all the bugs out of it by now, right?

                    ... right????


                    Quoth dalesys View Post
                    I Wonder if it has the old CPU with the HFO* opcode, which was an enhancement of the classic HCF* opcode.

                    * HCF = Halt, Catch Fire
                    * HFO = Halt, Format Operator (implicit bulk erase operation)
                    I don't know if this qualifies, but on my last shift I was cashing somebody out (a hefty order too: between $250 and $300) and the damn machine just QUIT. Stalled stone dead, in the middle of the process.

                    At one point we had three people clustered around it, trying to get it to do SOMETHING.

                    I moved to the register right next to it and ... three minutes after that, the printer that prints out the receipts quit. Don't remember what the problem was, but at least we got that one fixed quickly.

                    FURTHER UPDATE

                    Also on my last shift, I looked over at one point and one coworker (a young woman, who probably still qualifies for the term "girl") was standing there, back to her register, staring at the wall and obviously on the verge of tears.

                    She finally came over and told me that they had asked if she could stay until 10 (she was supposed to leave at 7). She said no. Then they said "Well, how about 9?" This is not the first time they've done this.

                    She felt horribly pressured to stay, not only (IMO) because of her youth and inexperience, but also because she's been told -- I suspect by her father -- that "You have to PUSH yourself at your job, to show them you're dependable and necessary!" I had a hard time not telling her that she could fucking KILL herself and the company would still not hesitate to toss her to the curb for any or no reason. What I did tell her was that she did not OWE the company her health and/or her sanity. Have an excuse ready: "I'm sorry; I have company coming over at 7:30." Make the timeline short enough that it's not worth their while to badger you.

                    She is terrified of being fired. I told her that I've been downsized AND I've been fired and neither one is the end of the world. And again: it's not worth your health to fight this hard not to be fired.

                    However, she did a smarter thing: she actually went and talked to somebody higher up. They told her they were not trying to pressure her and were sorry it came across that way. I hope they meant it and they don't can her in the near future ... although the way things seem to be going there, they'd be stupid to do so.

                    Incidentally, I had a second young coworker tell me she's been on the receiving end of the same thing: "Can you stay until 10? No? How about until 9?"

                    Incidentally ... I just got a message from them: "Can you come in tonight? We need somebody from about 4 until 9." I plan to call them back about 7:30 or so (just so I'm on record as having called back) and say wow, sorry, I've been out of the house all day; hope you found somebody.

                    I asked a coworker if they are hiring to replace the people who've left and was told "I don't know." Then again, the person I asked was not in HR so they probably wouldn't know.
                    Customer service: More efficient than a Dementor's kiss
                    ~ Mr Hero

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Quoth Pixelated View Post
                      I overheard the other day that this particular DOS-based program is in fact owned by the company, which probably explains why they're not updating it -- it would mean paying somebody ELSE to use *their* program. Of course, if when the program everfinally crashes, every single store will be toast ...
                      Fixed that for you.
                      Quoth Pixelated View Post
                      I've also heard there's about a dozen people at head office whose SOLE jobs are to keep this thing running.
                      Only?!?!
                      I'm trying to see things from your point of view, but I can't get my head that far up my keister!

                      Who is John Galt?
                      -Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Crappy, DOS based cashiering systems... in a store that's been open 2 weeks?

                        That says about the place you're working for right there.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Yep, they saved SO much money by using an old DOS program, that they can AFFORD a dozen people, full time, to keep the old beast running.
                          Sadly, they had to let go the accountant who noticed how much a dozen people cost per year. That guy was expensive.

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