"I May Or May Not Have Called Her A 'Runt'"

[ralerin]

Relayed to me by one of my customers yesterday. She tried scanning in a sports drink while I was trying to input a date for the cigarettes her girlfriend wanted to buy. I told her, "Ooops, hang on two seconds please!" (which is my standard reply for people who are too eager with cards or scanning in things before I'm ready, etc) and she apologized, and then told me this.

"When we were at Family Dollar a while ago and I did that, the bitch behind the register FLIPPED OUT. I mean she LOST IT. She screamed at me that I was a bitch and don't ever do that again. I may or may not have called her a 'runt' (I'm sure if you replaced the r with a c you'd get my meaning) and I told the manager it wasn't worth losing her job over. But she nearly did."

I told her that that woman was an idiot and she should've gotten fired anyway. Oh well.

[Ironclad Alibi]

So why was that customer repeating actions that caused another clerk to flip out? Was she looking for a repeat performance? If so, it appears she recovered nicely and didn't press the issue.

[bainsidhe]

Hmm, I dunno. Not saying I doubt this altercation happened, but I suspect the "bitch" cashier who was called a "runt" may tell the story differently. People who immediately start calling others with derogatory names tend to have a few issues themselves. Add to that she was bragging about her own rudeness...well I wonder.

[KabeRinnaul]

If their registers work like ours, it's easy to end up in a situation like that. Basically, the system doesn't know what to do with two inputs at the same time and rejects them both. So if you scan an item while the customer is using the pinpad, the item will misread and whatever they were entering will be dropped. The keyboard and scanner are prone to fighting like that, too.

It's a simple matter of someone not noticing that the cashier is already doing something, or not knowing that it will cause a problem.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Some of those registers say "scan card now" on them, even when they are not ready. So I have been guilty of that myself on occasion.