Screaming woman

[Tama]

Al and I went to Malmart tonight for a few things. Now, naturally, it's midnight, and at the moment only one register is open, the cigarette one, and naturally it being the second of the month, it's jam packed.

As we approach the registers to check out we hear a woman yelling. She's put down her two tiny items, a Coke and something else.

SC: I DON'T HAVE TIME TO WAIT TWENTY MINUTES TO CHECK OUT!

She proceeds down to the CSM stand and yells, we can't hear it.

SC: NOW THEY'RE LOSING A CUSTOMER!

The best part is, not ONE MINUTE later, five more lanes opened and the 10 minute midnight embargo on checking out was lifted.

[prjkt]

There's a midnight embargo?

[Tama]

Basically it's a 10 minute window where the registers change over to the new day. NO checking out is allowed for fear of messing up the registers.

[drjonah]

I remember that well. It was no fun trying to get the register tills switched out for the new day while impatient jackals are screaming at you.

[Evannah]

Some people are ridiculous. I love it when they get pwned though. I called for a second cashier to help with some queues once. Some woman stood at my queue, had been there mere seconds, and proclaimed loudly "GET ANOTHER CASHIER ON! I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!' so I told her that another cashier would be down shortly, but she didn't like that answer for some reason and stormed off in a huff JUST as the other cashier came around the corner and onto his till. Thing is, she hadn't even made it to the front door before the other cashier had actually started ringing everyone out, but she was in that much of a huff anyway that she didn't even seem to notice!

[prjkt]

I'm sure the switch out is well announced/known?

[Seanette]

Not particularly well-announced, IME, but if you've been there at midnight a time or two, you'll know about the event.

[christopherius]

They do that to capture sales for the day correct?

[Deserted]

Why does it take 10 minutes? Those things are computerized, right? It should be a matter of seconds, at most.

[Sliceanddice]

Why does it take 10 minutes? Those things are computerized, right? It should be a matter of seconds, at most.

there is computerized and then theres is xxx stores uploading to a central server at the same time for a company that not only used the bare minimum lowest bidder for He systems in use and programing but the servers as well computerized. you might as well do it by hand.

[Tama]

Yeah. And I'm only saying 10 minutes because basically you are made to stop at 11:55, I suppose to make the process go faster.

[Seanette]

They also swap out cash drawers.

[raudf]

Ugggghhh, I hated midnight... always. Everything required to run the blasted store would hiccup and if you didn't hold your breath at the right moment, it'd screw up. Heck, at that time, it was quite capable of screwing up all by itself. We lost a third of our registers (including outlying) to a failure to properly communicate with the network during the midnight changeover. Department managers and cash office would spend most of the day trying to sort it out.

[Seshat]

If I were hired to design such a system (the midnight changeover), I would probably spend between a week and a month JUST designing it and figuring out which suppliers could provide fast enough equipment.

And then manglement would tell me what I recommend is too expensive/difficult/time consuming to do.

Well yes. It's expensive, difficult and time consuming at this stage so that in the field, it's cheap, easy, and quick. It's got to be expensive, difficult and time consuming SOMEWHERE. Control those elements!

[Tama]

The changeover can't be completely fast because they rely on two people to go through EVERY register to change it over. They print stuff out, pull cash...etc...

Almost always from one end to the other despite the cigarette aisle being in the almost middle!

Even with Hal you would rely on human interaction.

Oh, wait, that didn't go so well last time...