Gift Cards and Old People Don't Mix

[SecurityWench]

This wasn't sucky, but still kind of a 'duh' moment.

A man came through the line and bought $16 worth of groceries. He paid with a gift card, and when I give him his reciept, he makes a frown.

He says, 'I had $30 on that gift card. Why did you only charge $16?"

"...because you only had to pay $16 for your groceries."

"Oh! So the rest of the money is still on the card?"

"um...yes."

"Oh, great! Thanks!"

That was an odd moment of my day.

[Aethian]

Um....brain burp on his part...I hope.

[bean]

Before we got more modern card readers at work, we had the older style ones - you slid your card through the top, and it had a REAL keypad to enter your pin/make selections, and a 2 line display. Pretty old by today's standards (note: we just got modern touch screen card readers this year).

I had an older guy come through my line (70s or so), slide his card, proceed to use the pen we had for check customers to push the buttons, and when I handed him the credit card slip to sign, he signed his name on the friggin display of the card reader. With an ink pen. I asked him to please stop writing on my equipment and sign the slip I was handing him.

The same day we got the touch screen card readers (the kind you sign with a stylus), we rejoiced.. until an hour after getting them, a customer picked up the pen for check customers and signed his name on the display. We finally convinced the management to pull the pens after a few weeks of cleaning the ink off of the displays every day.

We can still print a paper slip for someone to sign - every now and then we get the odd customer who refuses to sign electronically, and our machines are INCREDIBLY picky about how you sign. You have to stay in a less than 2 inch tall box on the screen, you can't sign right to left, and your fingers/hand cannot be touching any part of the display at all. Violate any of those and the register pops up "INVALID SIGNATURE". If I get that I usually just print a paper copy and have the customer sign that.