Dad vs. The Meat Manager (by Dips)

[Dips]

The video in this thread reminded me of a story I posted before one of the hacks.

My father worked in a supermarket back in the 50s. He had his share of SCs, but this is about a Moron in Management...

Back then there were no bar code. Cashiers had to press a key (meat, produce, etc.) on the cash register while ringing in a price to identify what department the item came from. This way the store could track sales from each department.

Apparently sales from the meat department were down and the meat manager was taking some heat for it from his boss. Rather than spend time trying to track down the real problem, the meat manager decided to blame the cashiers for not keying meat items as meat, thus not giving his department full credit for sales.

But he had to prove it...

So one fine slow weekday Dad and his co-worker Jack were on duty on the registers. A customer walked into Jack's lane and began to unload items. Jack immediately became confused as to what key to use for a certain item and called Dad over to help him.

Dad wasn't busy so he walked over and looked at the item. It was something weird in a jar. He read the label and identified it as meat. Then Jack held up another strange item in cellophane and asked what it was. Dad looked at it, looked at the other items in the woman's cart, then at the woman herself.

She was dressed well and well-groomed. Most customers who came in at that time of day were in curlers and housedresses. He looked at the items in the cart again. All very strange and hard to identify. He looked around and spotted someone standing behind a display pretending not to watch them. It was the meat manager.

So he declared, in a bright, cheerful voice, "This is meat! You can ring this up as meat!" He made sure to make it loud and enunciate enough for the meat manager to hear him. Then he grabbed the next item, "Why, this is meat too!"

"And this!"

"As a matter of fact, everything in this order is meat. You can ring it ALL up as meat!"

The woman spy was non-plussed. Jack was looking at Dad like he'd lost his marbles, but rang all the meat through correctly. Dad stole a glance over at the meat manager. He looked pretty pissed that his plan to trap the cashiers had failed.

[derangedperson]

Dad 1, meat manager 0.

[Becks]

...it IS possible that occasionally the cashiers were mis-keying items...

But good on your Dad!!!!!!!!

[Spiffy McMoron]

Quoth Becks

...it IS possible that occasionally the cashiers were mis-keying items...

But good on your Dad!!!!!!!!

Good on Dips Sr.!

As for the cashiers mis-typing in the code--it's likely that happened by accident, but then it would affect ALL of the departements in the store.

Unless one cashier thought that "beef" was a type of produce.

[Becks]

Quoth Spiffy McMoron

Unless one cashier thought that "beef" was a type of produce.

Sadly, it's more than possible...

[Cia]

Uh, I don't want to eat any meat that isn't easily identifiable as meat.

[Primer]

I also worked a stint as a grocery cashier in the pre-barcode days. While I was still green, and especially during rushes, it was quite easy to mis-key items. And sometimes it was easier to hit the "grocery" key instead of finding someone available to ask if eggs went under "meat" or "dairy."

I didn't stay at that job for long.