Do you need to scan all of these?

[simplyanother]

Yesterday was..."OMG WE HAVE TO BUY 57 OF THE SAME THING FOR ALL THE KIDDIES IN OUR SUNDAY SCHOOL SO THEY CAN MAKE CRAP FOR THEIR MOMS" day.

So, we got a lot of people buying ...quantities. Which is fine. However, the quantity button our registers requirer a key. I don't have a key, because I am not cool. So, I scan 'em all. Or, you know, scan 1 five times, and then scan another 5 times. Or scan one 20 times.

People get very irate at that. "Gah, why can't you just hit quantity..."..

My favorite are the people who come up with a shit load of stuff, and ask me this--like--they have a cart full of baskets. "I have 16 of these, do you need to I need to take them out of the cart?"

The answer is yes, you do, because I'm supposed to scan each and every item. But sometimes, it's obvious that everything has the same sku, and I can see that is all they have in the cart. I ring 'em all up, and... "ugh, aren't you going to put them in a bag for me??!!?!?"

Seriously, wtf?

Or you get the folks who have breakable items that don't want to take them out of the cart...for you to scan them, yet decide at the end that they want every item wrapped. At the end. After you're finished with the transaction.

Attention customers, while I will wrap your 60 cent clay pots, I will not wrap them individually, I will wrap them 3 or 4, or 5 at a time. Why? because DUH. And you know what? It will take a bit of time to do, because--I'm only one person. You know why the people before you got out sooner? Because even though they had six billion little breakable doodads, and they wanted all of them wrapped, she said "Can I have some paper so I can help you wrap?", instead of going "uh...gah".. every three seconds.

AND dammit, people stop reading 40% off of one item as "40% off of your entire order"....after I've scanned, wrapped and bagged your over priced crap...and you're completely confused as to why the total is 300 dollars. "Is that with the coupon, the coupon was for 40% off"

OF ANY ONE REGULAR PRICE ITEM.

And no, that doesn't mean you get your 100 clay pots for the price of 60 of them. No, if they aren't on sale, and they are the only things that you purchased that weren't on sale, then the coupon will come off of ONE of them. So, you get 40% of 59 cents.

To recap--it's best not to come through my line when I'm in a pissy mood.

Which is pretty near all the time lately.

[BookstoreEscapee]

You need a key to enter a quantity? That's kinda stupid. I loved the quantity key when I'd get school orders for 100 copies of something. I just wished you could use it when they came in for 100 gift cards.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The only time our cashiers ever get to use the quantity key is during BTS. It may or may not require a manager's key to work.

Time to quote from Norm Feuti's Pretending You Care again: It is quite possible the reason for requiring a manager's key to work the quantity key is inventory. If the ordering is being done solely by computers it can cause the wrong items to be ordered.

The example Norm uses is embroidery floss. In his store it came in many different colors, each under a different SKU, but they all cost the same amount. So if a customer bought, say, 10 units of red floss, 10 units of blue floss, and 10 units of purple floss, you couldn't just scan a red one and key in a quantity of 30, because that would cause the computer to order 30 red flosses, when you really need 10 red, 10 blue and 10 purple.

This is just one of those things that happens when corporate offices decide to cheap out and leave everything up to the computers.

[BookstoreEscapee]

The example Norm uses is embroidery floss. In his store it came in many different colors, each under a different SKU, but they all cost the same amount. So if a customer bought, say, 10 units of red floss, 10 units of blue floss, and 10 units of purple floss, you couldn't just scan a red one and key in a quantity of 30, because that would cause the computer to order 30 red flosses, when you really need 10 red, 10 blue and 10 purple.

That's where you stop assuming your employees are complete idiots and trust that they can be trained to know to put in a quantity of 10 red, 10 blue, and 10 purple when they are ringing the items up. I know, I know, I live in a fantasy world.

[Bramblerose]

The example Norm uses is embroidery floss. In his store it came in many different colors, each under a different SKU, but they all cost the same amount. So if a customer bought, say, 10 units of red floss, 10 units of blue floss, and 10 units of purple floss, you couldn't just scan a red one and key in a quantity of 30, because that would cause the computer to order 30 red flosses, when you really need 10 red, 10 blue and 10 purple.

Even better, counted cross stitch. What really happens is you buy 1 ea of 20+ colors, the guy at the register scans the Ugly-As-Hell Brown and times 20 it. I watched this happen at a Wal-Mart and wondered if they would get the actually I think 40 some ugly-as-hell brown and how much the craft person would curse when the order arrived.

The last time I got floss for a major project it was at Hobby Lobby, where the cashier counted, scanned one, and hit the multiply key. I asked about auto-order, and was told "Oh, no, we hand inventory/order floss". Whatever other evil H-L may perpetrate on this Earth, at least they do floss right!

Dear God, save me from Glue Crap on a Pot and Stick a Seed/Flower in it Craft Day. I refuse to do that in my like of work.

[BookstoreEscapee]

B&N has certain titles "modeled" so that if one gets sold, one gets ordered, but other things are store-managed, or buyer managed from the home office (usually for new/big/popular/it-was-on-Oprah titles). The store manager has some leeway to "edit" the electronic shop, also, before it gets sent in (so, for example, when a bookseller shortlists a title, the manager can look at the reason and the sales and decide if it is worth ordering more or less than the bookseller requested). After a new/promo title is out of it's big push phase, it then gets decided based on sales whether to keep it buyer- or store-managed, or to model it.

[RetailWorkhorse]

The last time I got floss for a major project it was at Hobby Lobby, where the cashier counted, scanned one, and hit the multiply key. I asked about auto-order, and was told "Oh, no, we hand inventory/order floss". Whatever other evil H-L may perpetrate on this Earth, at least they do floss right!

H-L has all my Copic and Prisma Markers! I love them, because I will spend a whole month's paycheque with them all in one go.

Yeah, I really need to learn to buy online.

[marasbaras]

I'm not sure I see auto-ordering as going the cheap route. When a store has 100,000 SKUs, doing any by hand isn't really practical.

And, as we all know, because a certain percentage of the population are idiots ... some will just say "oh, 50 floss..." and do 50x bright purple when someone has bought one of each.

At least the right colors will get re-ordered here.

Ideal? No. Better than the alternative? Well, I think so ...

[Bramblerose]

I won't speak for whole store, but in some sections it makes great sense- like z, thread, anything by Carole Wright, buttons, etc.

The ordering isn't bad at all- you find a Zen state of count and mark that makes the dead times pass by less painfully. But then, I also like to shelf read at the library.

[Gothicsmurf]

That's where you stop assuming your employees are complete idiots and trust that they can be trained to know to put in a quantity of 10 red, 10 blue, and 10 purple when they are ringing the items up. I know, I know, I live in a fantasy world.

Once at the grocery store, I put a mix of apples in the plastic bag as they were all the same price.

The cashier was cool about it but she said something that I never forgot, "Even though they are the same price, we have to ring them all out so we don't get inventory messed up." I appologized up and down and never did it again. To this day when I go to the grocery store, I pull everything out and put them in groups.

Now if the person bagging would realize that I put all the frozen and cold foods down first so I could have them bagged together... You know, Ice cream should go with the cheese in the bag instead of, oh, the bathroom cleaner. And that re useable green bag that's INSULATED. Yeah, cereal and crackers don't need to be in there. It's only 80 degrees outside, I'm sure my yogurt will hold up fine in the plastic bag as long as the cereal isn't too hot or cold! Gah.

What is with me tonight? I'll stop

[simplyanother]

I do understand the reasoning behind the quantity key being disabled, really, I do-- but it is a pain in the ass.

I know that some of the slightly less than bright cashiers would do a quantity of 40 christmas red dmc floss (it's number 666, btw. Makes me giggle), when the customer is really buying several different colors...

Floss isn't that difficult to ring up (IME, that is), it's easy to grab and the barcode tends to be flat. Paper is a huge pain in the ass to ring up, mostly because I have no finger nails and because they've tethered the damned scanner guns to the opposite end of the fucking counter. So, when I see that a customer is buying 60 sheets of polka dot vellum, I should be able to go do the quantity--without having to bug someone for a key. But most of the time with that, I find customer "miscount" and will have at least 10 more sheets than they said.

I try to deflect and say "really, I have to count them all, it's not because I don't believe it, it's because---if you got home and found you had 45 sheets and were charged for 60, I think you'd be more than a little peeved..." But like i said, I tend to do the things in groups of five or ten.

So, I get the reasoning behind the no quantity thing. But shit, I know that certain things have all the same sku--because I took them out of the box and put them on the shelf!

You know what? I'll live with the no quantity thing--if they just fix the stupid by the yard ribbon BS.

[purplecat41877]

Where I work, the quantity key can only be used if the customer is buying 24 or more of the same item(s) with a barcode. The quantity key can be used for items with a PLU code regardless of how many of the item(s) the customers has.