The logic of SCs

[Shengirl]

Well - they are. Put the stripe to the left, or to the right. Press "Confirm" first, then enter PIN. Or enter PIN, then press...

Sure, you hear it often, but the customer probably isn't any less annoyed by it.

I don't care. I would rather hear ANYTHING other than that phrase. Repetitious repeating of the obvious is so painful. Why not the occasional, "Whoops, can you repeat those instructions?" or even a "GODDANGIT this machine is frelling impossible to use! Why did you personally design it this way?" There must be other ways to diffuse personal embarrassment than "They're all different!"

Please, don't answer those questions; they're rhetorical. Rantings, really. XD

[GingerBiscuit]

Shouting at me for asking you if you need a bag is a great way to make yourself feel important. Ignore logic!

The woman at the counter can read your mind and know you didn't want the item you brought to the till, but the COMPLETELY DIFFERENT one on sale.

The woman helping you in the vitamins is thin and couldn't POSSIBLY know anything about diets. In fact, go ahead and tell her she's anorexic. Despite that she;s a healthy weight, she'll appreciate your opinion on the matter.

[BookstoreEscapee]

40. Also decide you don't want something before the cashier has rung it. Stick it in the candy rack or on another register in her plain sight. It's not like she's the one who has to put it all back.

bonus if it's a glass jar of tomato sauce or something else that stains, and you place it in the most precarious spot you can find.

I don't care. I would rather hear ANYTHING other than that phrase. Repetitious repeating of the obvious is so painful. Why not the occasional, "Whoops, can you repeat those instructions?" or even a "GODDANGIT this machine is frelling impossible to use! Why did you personally design it this way?" There must be other ways to diffuse personal embarrassment than "They're all different!"

I usually just say "oh" or "oops, sorry" or something to that effect. I don't need to make a big deal of it.

One of the stores near me has a touch screen and you have to hit the button for whatever form of payment...including cash. If you forget/don't realize you have to hit the cash button the cashier has to reach around the screen and do it. Apparently there is no button on their register keypad. I'm beginning to get used to it. Again, though, when I forget I just say "oops, sorry"...no biggie.

[ShinyGreenApple]

I don't mind the "These are all different!" comment so much, because it's true Debit pads annoy the crud out of me. Asking three times to confirm the amount, oi!

[DesignFox]

"All these [credit card] machines are different."

I'm guilty of that... I'm a counter slave, too, and no one has ever made that comment to me before.

The people I said that to either A) thought it was funny or B) we started a conversation about customers because of it...(or both)

I dunno...it started up a chat-fest every-time. I guess it's because I don't say it like I'm clever or pretend they haven't heard that before. (and I certainly don't say it every time or ever again in the same store- usually I use it as my lead in for my apology for doing things wrong.)

[Shengirl]

It's cool of you to learn from your mistakes, DesignFox. My customers catch that amnesia bug after every card transaction, however.

I do try and be nice when it's said, even if it's just to cover my involuntary eyetwitch. Usually I say something like, "Yeah, our machine is the single worst one anywhere; no one gets it right on the first try!"

[DesignFox]

Shen, if the same customer said it over and over again...that'd make me twitch, too.

I did have one guy tell me and my co-workers the same lame joke two days in a row, once...so I know what you mean in that case!

I get to inflict it upon you all, Mwahhaa:

So, did you hear NASA is doing a new launch? They are taking a rocket to the sun.

I told them, they'd better watch out. They're gonna burn up!

The NASA guy said, "That's ok, we're going to launch at night!"



The guy that told us this was so proud of himself, too. It was kind of sad.

[Posture Moll]

Some manifestations of SC logic from my own store...

The young lady serving you just so happens to be an Agent of Satan and will attempt to use her Unholy Powers to taint your shopping experience at every turn out of sheer diabolic spite. This includes, but by no means is limited to:

- Her scrying into the future to purposely sell YOUR heavily discounted product to another customer right before you come in.

- Employing technokinesis to prevent YOUR debit or credit cards from being approved.

- Magically causing the major sale that has been on for the past few weeks to abruptly end right before YOU enter the store.

- Conjuring up massive amounts of other shoppers to slow down the queues when YOU are trying to make a purchase/do a return.

- Accelerating the passage of Time inself so that the store is closed before YOU can get in. i.e "But it's not nine yet by MY watch!'.

[HYHYBT]

Peeing in the urinal/toilet, and then in the hand sink (and stopping the drain) is a perfect way of making us put your food out faster.

Ew. But, if it's not too horrible to tell, how the blank do you stop up a sink with pee?

Threatening to talk to the owner is acceptable, when you are the one who peed in the hand sink.

Our store manager once caught someone in the act of taking a dump in the urinal, and kicked him out of the store. The guy then called the 800 number to complain of rude service.

[ShinyGreenApple]

- It is acceptable to accidentally drop and break a large bottle of red, fruit-scented dish soap in the checkout lane. When the cashier tries to get paper towels and step out to clean it up, stop her and offer to do it yourself, then proudly proclaim that "It's almost all up!" before you leave, failing to tell the cashier that you have left pretty much all of it oozing on the floor.

- Go to a checkout that has red dish soap spilled on the floor and complain about it, even if there are other registers open with no waits. Keep complaining about it but don't ask the cashier to please clean it up, because you're important and in too much of a hurry to have your groceries checked out.

- Come to the register with a huge overflowing cart full of groceries. Take two minutes digging in your purse for a customer reward card. Carefully examine each item before placing them on the belt, one by one, and ask your husband in the electric scooter behind you if that's what he wanted. In short, take three times as long as you would if you were a normal person doing a normal, Sunday afternoon transaction.

- Get pissed off at the cashier because the power blacked out and her cash register died, thus making her unable to wait on you *just* this moment. Ignore the fact that the lady who was just about ready to finish up before all went black is patiently waiting for us to retrieve her transaction on another register.

- Despite the fact that the cashier has moved lanes and everyone is talking loudly and chuckling over the dead cash register, keep asking the store manager, who is in the process of taking apart the register to fix it, if he is open.

Can you tell I had a really fun weekend?

[Starlord]

My wife worked at a store in Olympia, WA, and some woman came through her line one day. Suddenly, the woman began screaming that she was going to report my wife to management. When my wife asked why, the old woman pointed at the Seal of Solomon my wife wore, yelling, " You're not a Christian!" My wife finished ringing up her purchase and slid it toward her and told her how much it was. the lady paid, still mumbling about non-Christians. My wife leaned over real close, said, "That was not on my job description. May the Goddess Bless you." I laughed my butt off at the look on the old biddy's face.

[Starlord]

usually, they will pull a lot of the brown paper towelling out of the machine and use it to stop up the sink. Either that, or they will toss a big wad of it in the toilet, then pee all over the floor.

[JustaCashier]

9. When the announcement comes over that the store is closed and to please go to register 5, loaf around for ten minutes looking at ice cream bars..........

......then step up to register 4, that is obviously closed and it's cashier is counting out, then interrupt them at the point of counting out 37 of the 56 unbundled ones they have, by asking "are you open?"

On the CC/Debit machine issue, of all the oft repeated SC lines that tend to annoy us, this one bugs me the least, if at all, because it's true. On our system, the unit is in "sleep" mode until the first item scanned actually posts into the POS. Then, the customer may slide their card, and it will let them get to a certain point, then they have to wait until the transaction is totaled in the POS.

A locally owned Drug Store chain, that I frequent has similar looking pads, though different software, and the customer needs to wait until the sale is totaled, before they even swipe the card. Plus, their "Yes" and "No" are switched on how they appear on the screen from ours.

If a customer is having trouble with it, and is apologetic, I'll be the one that says "yeah, they're all different", even if the customer doesn't.

Another common thing, is not following the prompts, but in our case, they are not the most prominent thing on the screen. Plus, my brain goes into a bit of a tizzy sometimes when trying to read something that seems too "busy", so I can relate to that. Hell, I even have trouble finding UPC's on some products when scanning, because there's so much other junk printed on the package.

I even try to put some people at ease by saying that many others have the same problem, so don't feel bad. I'll even tell some of those that get it right, but still comment, that the "passed the test"

One other issue we have, is glare. Really bad at a few of our registers, which makes it dang near impossible to read the screen.

Mike