The hell?

[Imogene]

So, a couple comes through my line tonight, carts overflowing with stuff to buy, as is the norm, apparently. The lady starts scanning, no biggie, I keep clearing the error as she pulls bags off the UScan... and suddenly, there is a massive back up of customers, and me with only three UScans open, I hop on a regular register, doing my best to keep up with both scanning through the real register, and to clear errors on UScans... and suddenly, the couple's UScan says, "Customer requires assistance," so, I try to clear it, but the hand scanner ocassionally just refuses to take any input from me.... so I schlep over to the master computer I have and try to clear it there. No go, can't clear the error until the other button says 'Security OK', which it does... but, I can't select the register on the fourway split screen to do anything for them. I call the night manager up, tell him the situation, and ask if I should suspend the order and have it finished up on a different register? "Yes." I ask, "How do I do that?" "I don't know, but you should." I respond, "But I don't. They hardly trained me..."
Luckily, as I've been keeping the couple updated, they're perfectly fine with waiting while we try to figure things out together... Night manager eventually says they should go through the other register and have the lady who took over cashiering for me ring them through again. No sooner do they step away than I stumble across a quick fix if not the actual answer, as I unintentionally glitched the system into clearing its cache, and picking right back up at the pay now screen. And now, I do the dance of joy! Night manager calls the couple back over, they finish, they go home, all are happy, except the fact that I've finally stumbled across the line in the sand that broke the Awesome Night Manager into a Crappy Night Manager.

[KabeRinnaul]

If yours works anything like ours, you can get control back by closing the station and then immediately re-opening it.

[ottid]

So wait, because you were running the self-check you are supposed to know every little detail on how it works? I thought managers and things were meant to know more about the equipment than you are? One thing that I LOVE about the golden arches, the managers and owners have to know how to do everthing, and the main reason the managers know is because they worked their way up

[Marmalady]

It's much the same at QD (discount chain store where I work) everyone does everything, the manager is as likely to be clearing the baskets up or putting stock out as he is to be up in his office. Obviously there are some things that need a particular level of authority, but other than that, if a job needs doing then whoever is free at the moment does it.

[bainsidhe]

I hate hate hate that you're supposed to be on regular registers and SCO at the same time. Yet it's your fault if even your manager doesn't know how to fix a problem. WTF?

[Imogene]

Quoth KabeRinnaul

If yours works anything like ours, you can get control back by closing the station and then immediately re-opening it.

That's kind of the workaround I stumbled on... seeing as I couldn't select the register, I couldn't do anything to it directly. I sent it into maintenance mode while pressing buttons, and then went over and clicked out of that, and reopened the register at the service stand. That cleared the cache and let them continue.

Quoth bainsidhe

Yet it's your fault if even your manager doesn't know how to fix a problem. WTF?

The night managers are NOT cashier trained, they usually are just customer service oriented. So, leaving me, half trained, all alone at night to run fifty thousand things at once is more a recipe for disaster than anything.