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We had a truck come in yesterday (Thurs), and today I managed to price a whopping two carts (and our shopping carts are small) full of merchandise. Yep, that’s it, two tiny little shopping carts, which amounted to a few boxes of spray paint, some canned sodas, various air freshening products and two boxes of canned peanuts. Over an 8 hour shift.
No, I am not our slowest worker, by a long shot.
Here in Texas, dove season starts this weekend, and last year’s hunting permits expired today. Our SM has trained newest worker K and me on the system, and we run most of the license purchases since he types like molasses in the dead of winter and the other trained employee is quite proud of her computer illiteracy and only touches the keyboard if no one else is around to do it.
K was off today.
It wouldn’t have been so bad, really, I can easily spend hours happily typing and clicking away. So what was the problem? Well, let me explain this system.
When I first started back at the store the very first thing I noticed was this sleek little tower with a nice slim screen perched above it. Didn’t take long to find out exactly what that was for, SM is aware that I am somewhat of a geek and he was more than happy to try to get me trained on using the thing. Try, and fail repeatedly, because the thing WOULD NOT CONNECT. Someone would come in wanting to buy a license and he would give it a shot, along with a big sigh and an explanation about how all we could do was try. And time after time we would hear how the customer had heard that at every other place they’d been and tried to get a license. Most people were nice about it, understandably frustrated but by this point they usually knew it wasn’t the merchant, it was the system.
Finally, after never hearing any explanation for why other than "they said it's the old phones lines here", I tried to nail down exactly what tech support had told him. He kinds of mumbles about it. A couple of days later he calls tech support and they walk him through some changes in modem initialization strings and what do you know, we can connect.
At the mind numbingly slow speed of 14.4.
Remember that Beall’s commercial a few years ago, where the lady was standing in front of the doors on sale day “Open, Open, Open”? That’s how I felt, waiting for pages to load. Again, people understood, we really do have fantastic customers for the most part. And since apparently no one else has bothered to call tech support in the area and get the changes, we seem to be the only store selling licenses unless they want to go to Wally World a couple of towns over.
Nice for us, yeah, but I literally could not get more than 15 feet away from the front, trying to get out on the floor to price and stock once I had relief at the register, when another would come in. By the time I was ready to get off I would look up, see the guy standing there and just automatically wave him over to the register where the computer is and ask what kind of license. Some of them looked shocked, till I explained that the system was really really slow and that this was all I had done all day. By the end of it all I think my brain was moving at 14.4, and I’m kind of afraid it hasn’t caught back up yet.
And at the end, doing the last two before I got off, one of them commented about the lack of a line and I explained that I had been lucky, it had never been more than two at a time but it had been a steady stream all day. What does this guy say?
“Wait till deer season starts, you’ll have them out the door.”
SM was at the front, he’d just come back from the bank with change for the weekend and was filling the drawers, and he laughed. He got a dead serious look from me, and a request for that day off.
He thinks I’m joking.
I’m not so sure myself.
No, I am not our slowest worker, by a long shot.
Here in Texas, dove season starts this weekend, and last year’s hunting permits expired today. Our SM has trained newest worker K and me on the system, and we run most of the license purchases since he types like molasses in the dead of winter and the other trained employee is quite proud of her computer illiteracy and only touches the keyboard if no one else is around to do it.
K was off today.
It wouldn’t have been so bad, really, I can easily spend hours happily typing and clicking away. So what was the problem? Well, let me explain this system.
When I first started back at the store the very first thing I noticed was this sleek little tower with a nice slim screen perched above it. Didn’t take long to find out exactly what that was for, SM is aware that I am somewhat of a geek and he was more than happy to try to get me trained on using the thing. Try, and fail repeatedly, because the thing WOULD NOT CONNECT. Someone would come in wanting to buy a license and he would give it a shot, along with a big sigh and an explanation about how all we could do was try. And time after time we would hear how the customer had heard that at every other place they’d been and tried to get a license. Most people were nice about it, understandably frustrated but by this point they usually knew it wasn’t the merchant, it was the system.
Finally, after never hearing any explanation for why other than "they said it's the old phones lines here", I tried to nail down exactly what tech support had told him. He kinds of mumbles about it. A couple of days later he calls tech support and they walk him through some changes in modem initialization strings and what do you know, we can connect.
At the mind numbingly slow speed of 14.4.
Remember that Beall’s commercial a few years ago, where the lady was standing in front of the doors on sale day “Open, Open, Open”? That’s how I felt, waiting for pages to load. Again, people understood, we really do have fantastic customers for the most part. And since apparently no one else has bothered to call tech support in the area and get the changes, we seem to be the only store selling licenses unless they want to go to Wally World a couple of towns over.
Nice for us, yeah, but I literally could not get more than 15 feet away from the front, trying to get out on the floor to price and stock once I had relief at the register, when another would come in. By the time I was ready to get off I would look up, see the guy standing there and just automatically wave him over to the register where the computer is and ask what kind of license. Some of them looked shocked, till I explained that the system was really really slow and that this was all I had done all day. By the end of it all I think my brain was moving at 14.4, and I’m kind of afraid it hasn’t caught back up yet.
And at the end, doing the last two before I got off, one of them commented about the lack of a line and I explained that I had been lucky, it had never been more than two at a time but it had been a steady stream all day. What does this guy say?
“Wait till deer season starts, you’ll have them out the door.”
SM was at the front, he’d just come back from the bank with change for the weekend and was filling the drawers, and he laughed. He got a dead serious look from me, and a request for that day off.
He thinks I’m joking.
I’m not so sure myself.
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