I was called a liar...

[Mottom24]

So I went to a wawa to get my usual morning iced coffee and muffin when I got up and pay. I just took money out at the atm in the wawa, which only gives 20's... so I know, without a doubt, the amount I am about to give her.

me: mee
ww: wawa lady

so she gives me change for a ten and closes the drawer before I can say a word...

me: uh... I gave you a 20
ww: huh? no you definatly gave me a 10
me: no I am pretty sure I gave you a 20, I just got it from your atm
ww: I don't think so
me: what?... no seriously I gave you a 20, I need that change for lunch.
ww: don't lie to me, I would have seen that.
me: can't you just open your drawer to make sure or something?
ww: not unless you buy something else
me: ....

suddenly someone comes up to make their purchase. she opens her drawer and suddenly her smiling face (to the new customer) turns to the face of "oh shit...".

ww: oh...
me: .... (me obviously looking annoyed)
ww: seems you did give me a 20... it's in the 10's slot... heh... um... here's your change.
me: thanks.... i guess. (no I'm sorry or my mistake... jerk)

after a week i haven't seen her working there anymore. either because of a change in schedule, or this mistake was a common one.

[ZumZum]

Damn! Almost the same thing happened to me.
I bought some stuff. Counted out the money. Cashier says I shorted her $5. I am positive I didn't.
She convinced me I did, but let's me leave my number in case her drawer is over.
I didn't have time to argue, I was on a time crunch. Gave her another $5 and my phone number.

Turns out she dropped the original $5. Called me later to apologize. I never did remember to go back and get the damn thing.
Next time I will hold my ground and make her double check!

[Mnemjian]

Oh man, what a b*tch. I can't believe she said "don't lie to me" like she's absolutely perfect and couldn't possibly have made a mistake, and then didn't even apologize when she was wrong. I would be fuming over that if it happened to me. I might have even gone into slight SC territory and asked her right out for an apology!

Turns out she dropped the original $5. Called me later to apologize.

At least she apologized! But yeah, definitely ask them to count the drawer when there's a chance. It's really a reasonable thing to request if there's any discrepancy.

[EvilEmpryss]

Cheating customers is a quick and easy way to loose a job. Some people think they can be slick about skimming the till by shortchanging customers: the till will balance at the end of the shift because they don't take from the profits, they take only what they withheld from the customers.

They're usually caught when too many customers complain and demand that the security tapes are reviewed. Once that happens, the theft is pretty easy to catch.

[Whiskey]

Maybe i'm harsh, but I would have gotten her managers number. I understand scamming happens, but you don't outright call anyone a liar and then tell them they have to buy something in order to verify that they're not lying. This never happened to me personally, but I assumed the procedure was to call a manager and have the till counted, not go "NAH UH YOU LIAR."

[Megg]

There have been a couple of instances in my years working a cash register that I have been accused of giving the wrong change back. Two stand out: once, a lady said she gave me a $20, and I could have sworn it was a $10. I went to the manager and asked for her key, explained the situation. She came over with me, opened the till, and whadda ya know? A $20 in the $10 slot. I apologized, and gave her the correct change. Now, that is how your cashier should have handled that. I hope she at a minimum got transferred to a non-cash position.

There was this other guy, of the type that this site would not exist without. He insisted the same thing, he gave me a $20. By this time, I was a manager myself, though not in charge that day, which is why I was in DT. Anyway, I opened the till and didn't see anything amiss, plus I remembered saying "Out of $10" when he handed it to me. He was yelling, mad as heck. I was incompetent, how could someone who can't count be a manager, blah blah. My store manager was in charge that day, and this guy was being a real douche, so we switched some people around (middle of lunch) so she could pull the till and count it. This whole time, this guy is making a scene. She counts the till, it was one penny short. She refuses the refund, but we even remake his order because it got cold. Seriously. He never apologized, and was still ranting when he left. /sigh

[Kullervo]

As a customer I had the opposite happen.
I had 3 bills in my hand.
2 $50 and a single $20.
The cashier saw the $50's and didn't look at the bill I handed her.
I explained that I only used a $20 and corrected everything.

When I was working as a cashier I think they allowed $2 either way.
Since I sucked at the job I was almost always a few cents off.
So much so I thought highly of myself when I was right on.
Imagine the trouble they would get in being $30 off.

[dwasifar]

People make mistakes - that's just how it is. This is why I always say out loud what I am handing the cashier as the money changes hands. If you hand them a $20 and say "twenty" as you're doing it, there's much less chance of mistake.

I got into this habit because I'm one of those annoying customers who does mental math and uses each transaction to consolidate bills and coins. So if I am paying, say, $6.22, and I have a few singles, some twenties, and a couple of quarters and pennies on me, I'll give the cashier $21.27 rather than $20, so as to get back a ten, a five, and a nickel (rather than a ten, three singles, three quarters, and three pennies).

This really isn't as complicated as it sounds, but it does result in me handing cashiers odd amounts of money that they don't expect, so to keep things clear I started stating the amount as I handed it over. It turned out that it sort of generally minimized problems even when I wasn't doing change math, so now I do it all the time.

[Mnemjian]

As a customer I had the opposite happen.
I had 3 bills in my hand.
2 $50 and a single $20.
The cashier saw the $50's and didn't look at the bill I handed her.
I explained that I only used a $20 and corrected everything.

That reminds me of last week when I counted out my CWs drawer and it was $80 off. Turns out there was a $20 in the $100 slot Good for you being honest!!

Probably it was a cute girl customer and he got distracted

[BookstoreEscapee]

When I was head cashier in Store2, I had one cashier whose drawer was almost always off. Why they kept him on cash I'll never understand, except that I guess they didn't trust him to do much else in the store, either. I don't think he was doing anything nefarious, just didn't pay enough attention. Never got complaints from customers claiming to be short-changed, either. I don't know what his problem was. (Sometimes we found it in the safe or the deposit, which was usually the fault, at least in part, of the manager or head cashier making a mistake while making change or doing a cash pickup, but since the cashier has to double count everything it was really on both.)