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So, our lottery machine is on the blink... specifically, the printer misses out a small section down one side of everything it prints... not enough to make anything illegible, but it fucks with the bar codes on the bottom of the tickets... as a result of this, the scanner on the terminal can't read them, so we have to do all payouts/cancellations etc. manually, by typing in a 14 digit code on the ticket (which, fortunately suffers only a minor level of illegibility)... also, there is limit on the amount of manual cancellations we can do (not sure if this is a monetary value or a number of codes, but that's not strictly relevant here)
Our rep hasn't been in for a while and tech support are not very helpful... the problem has been logged and all we can do is sit with our thumbs up our asses waiting for the engineer... 6 weeks and counting...
Cue suckyness! Last night at about 7.15 (bear in mind cut off for tickets to be entered into any given night's lottery draw is 7.30pm EXACTLY and after this time there is literally NO way to create new tickets or cancel existing ones) a woman (we'll call here Lottery Lady) rocks up with a fistful of fastpay cards, all with multiple lines and asks for them to be put on for tonight... no problem I think, scanner works fine so it's just a case of beep beep boop boop and done... they printer spits out the first ticket and I notice it says Saturday rather than Wednesday... so I check the other cards she handed me... they're all for Saturday...
I explain the situation to LL, there's no line, and no one else in the store so I offer to punch them in manually for her and make Wednesday duplicates of her cards... she accepts and I get on with it...
Fastpay cards are a nightmare for this sort of thing... the print is incredibly small and it takes a LOT of concentration to accurately punch the same information into the terminal... and the tiniest thing can throw you off, such as noticing that it jumps straight from line C to line E, and you have to start again cos you thought there were 7 lines when there are actually 6 (and this sort of thing was all over LL's cards... not her fault most likely, and really only a problem on the rarest of occasions
2nd line on 2nd ticket, and we have a customer waiting, so I buzz for back up, which shows up nice & quick, she even offers to stick around while I finish up with LL, huzzah! Or so I thought...
doing the third ticket, and a vast queue appears from nowhere... funt.... oh well, soldier on... nearly there, couple more after this!! LL is apologising to the woman behind her for holding everything up... it's now 7.20 ish, and there are a lot of people here...
The law of averages finally takes effect and a customer being served on the other till wants lottery... nothing fancy, paper ticket filled in with all info, so CW waits till I finish this fourth ticket and drops her customer's slip in the terminal...
oh fuck.
LL: Have you finished now?
Me: sorry, not quite, just paused to let this other chap get his ticket in quickly... I'll just be another minute!
LL: oh no, don't bother, I'll just take these *gestures and peripheral items she has accumulated over the last few minutes*
Me: ok then no problem... *scans items, scans 4 completed tickets* here you go
LL: OH NO! I don't want those!
Me: these are the tickets I managed to put through for you, they're good to go for tonight!
LL: No no! I'll leave those
Me: But they're your numbers... (failing to comprehend)
LL: I. AM. NOT. PAYING. FOR. THOSE.
Me: *stunned silence*...erm.... ok... that's £xx.xx....
exit LL
7.23pm... still a bit of a custo-worm to contend with before I can sort out what I at this point am regarding as quite inconvenient...
exit all customers... 7.26pm... I jump on the terminal and start furiously tapping buttons, manually cancelling one ticket... now two!!! now 3!!! what... wait.... "you have reached your manual cancellations limit... please insert voided slip into terminal or call XXXXX-XXXXXX"
shit beans...
call number...
follow robot menu...
get through to human being...
explain what needs doing...
"I'm sorry mate, I can't do that right now..."
7.30pm
and I now have £30 discrepancy on the lottery to figures to explain to the boss... I'm just glad she loves me.
tl;dr- customer wants something, changes mind, I cannot undo what has been done, results in cash loss.
Our rep hasn't been in for a while and tech support are not very helpful... the problem has been logged and all we can do is sit with our thumbs up our asses waiting for the engineer... 6 weeks and counting...
Cue suckyness! Last night at about 7.15 (bear in mind cut off for tickets to be entered into any given night's lottery draw is 7.30pm EXACTLY and after this time there is literally NO way to create new tickets or cancel existing ones) a woman (we'll call here Lottery Lady) rocks up with a fistful of fastpay cards, all with multiple lines and asks for them to be put on for tonight... no problem I think, scanner works fine so it's just a case of beep beep boop boop and done... they printer spits out the first ticket and I notice it says Saturday rather than Wednesday... so I check the other cards she handed me... they're all for Saturday...
I explain the situation to LL, there's no line, and no one else in the store so I offer to punch them in manually for her and make Wednesday duplicates of her cards... she accepts and I get on with it...
Fastpay cards are a nightmare for this sort of thing... the print is incredibly small and it takes a LOT of concentration to accurately punch the same information into the terminal... and the tiniest thing can throw you off, such as noticing that it jumps straight from line C to line E, and you have to start again cos you thought there were 7 lines when there are actually 6 (and this sort of thing was all over LL's cards... not her fault most likely, and really only a problem on the rarest of occasions
2nd line on 2nd ticket, and we have a customer waiting, so I buzz for back up, which shows up nice & quick, she even offers to stick around while I finish up with LL, huzzah! Or so I thought...
doing the third ticket, and a vast queue appears from nowhere... funt.... oh well, soldier on... nearly there, couple more after this!! LL is apologising to the woman behind her for holding everything up... it's now 7.20 ish, and there are a lot of people here...
The law of averages finally takes effect and a customer being served on the other till wants lottery... nothing fancy, paper ticket filled in with all info, so CW waits till I finish this fourth ticket and drops her customer's slip in the terminal...
oh fuck.
LL: Have you finished now?
Me: sorry, not quite, just paused to let this other chap get his ticket in quickly... I'll just be another minute!
LL: oh no, don't bother, I'll just take these *gestures and peripheral items she has accumulated over the last few minutes*
Me: ok then no problem... *scans items, scans 4 completed tickets* here you go
LL: OH NO! I don't want those!
Me: these are the tickets I managed to put through for you, they're good to go for tonight!
LL: No no! I'll leave those
Me: But they're your numbers... (failing to comprehend)
LL: I. AM. NOT. PAYING. FOR. THOSE.
Me: *stunned silence*...erm.... ok... that's £xx.xx....
exit LL
7.23pm... still a bit of a custo-worm to contend with before I can sort out what I at this point am regarding as quite inconvenient...
exit all customers... 7.26pm... I jump on the terminal and start furiously tapping buttons, manually cancelling one ticket... now two!!! now 3!!! what... wait.... "you have reached your manual cancellations limit... please insert voided slip into terminal or call XXXXX-XXXXXX"
shit beans...
call number...
follow robot menu...
get through to human being...
explain what needs doing...
"I'm sorry mate, I can't do that right now..."
7.30pm
and I now have £30 discrepancy on the lottery to figures to explain to the boss... I'm just glad she loves me.
tl;dr- customer wants something, changes mind, I cannot undo what has been done, results in cash loss.
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