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I work in a convenience store, and I often work the graveyard shift (10pm to 6 am).
One Sunday night, we were having new registers installed. Normally, our sales counter is very cluttered with displays and there are two distinct register stations, with a touch-screen for the clerk and PIN pad for the customer and stuff. On this night, we had taken down all of the displays so the technician would have lots of room to work, making the registers even more obvious than usual.
Now would be a good time to mention that our customers have a gift for approaching the "wrong" register: when there is not a line of customers, we will leave the register area to attend to other duties, and when a customer comes up to the register, one of us will hurry over to ring them up, but well more than 50% of the time, the customer is standing in front of the other clerk's register, and has to move their purchases to get rung up. We got a small (8"x11.5") sign that says "register closed" which is useful when one person is the designated cashier while the other, for example, does dishes or counts the cigarettes.
That little sign was up where the customers put their purchases for Register 1. The technician had disconnected Register 1 and had physically removed it, and was now working on connections under the counter, when a customer came up to the counter and put all of her purchases down right there where she would to get rung up by Register 1.
After she left, I had to muse to my co-worker, "Not only do we have the sign that says 'Register Closed' but there isn't even a register there, and she still goes to the wrong one."
Same night, as my co-worker was ordering (and thus standing in front of the display doors of the drink cooler, a customer comes up to the Gatorade and opens the door and begins peering at each bottle. He's also on the phone. My co-worker asks him quietly which flavor he's looking for (as she orders that, so she knows what is where), and he asks the phone. Then he cups his hand over the mic and says, "I'm color-blind, and she tells me 'the purple one'."
Seems brain burps were going around that night.
One Sunday night, we were having new registers installed. Normally, our sales counter is very cluttered with displays and there are two distinct register stations, with a touch-screen for the clerk and PIN pad for the customer and stuff. On this night, we had taken down all of the displays so the technician would have lots of room to work, making the registers even more obvious than usual.
Now would be a good time to mention that our customers have a gift for approaching the "wrong" register: when there is not a line of customers, we will leave the register area to attend to other duties, and when a customer comes up to the register, one of us will hurry over to ring them up, but well more than 50% of the time, the customer is standing in front of the other clerk's register, and has to move their purchases to get rung up. We got a small (8"x11.5") sign that says "register closed" which is useful when one person is the designated cashier while the other, for example, does dishes or counts the cigarettes.
That little sign was up where the customers put their purchases for Register 1. The technician had disconnected Register 1 and had physically removed it, and was now working on connections under the counter, when a customer came up to the counter and put all of her purchases down right there where she would to get rung up by Register 1.
After she left, I had to muse to my co-worker, "Not only do we have the sign that says 'Register Closed' but there isn't even a register there, and she still goes to the wrong one."
Same night, as my co-worker was ordering (and thus standing in front of the display doors of the drink cooler, a customer comes up to the Gatorade and opens the door and begins peering at each bottle. He's also on the phone. My co-worker asks him quietly which flavor he's looking for (as she orders that, so she knows what is where), and he asks the phone. Then he cups his hand over the mic and says, "I'm color-blind, and she tells me 'the purple one'."
Seems brain burps were going around that night.