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Ow, my brain... (long)
Some of you might remember this post from yesterday. Congrats, you're up to speed.
For those of you reading this who haven't, a quick summary; the owners of the arcade I work at have set the number of hours to pretty much the bare minimum needed to keep said arcade open for business when it's supposed to, and we are to clock out at exactly the time the arcade closes. I, for one, am going to assume they are doing this because they are new at this. But then, I might be getting overly optimistic.
Because of this, we're pretty much forced to do as much of the cleaning and cashing out as possible before we close (as we'd be doing it for free afterward). This will become important later.
That's just gross
DDR junkies, I love you guys, but if I find ABC gum on the cabinet again I'm going to throttle something adorable in front of you.
Jeez, lady!
Had one group come in late in the day, two older people and what I assume was their granddaughter or something. I had a feeling they were going to be 'special' when the man came to me after putting 8 coins into one of the games (for reference, a single player game on that machine is 3 tokens) because he didn't notice the shiny start button in front of him:
Strange Guy (SG): "It said put in three coins, so I did, and then it said to put in 6 coins-"
Me: "Yes, a two-player game is 6 tokens."
SG: "-so I put in three more coins, and then I put in more coins, and now I'm out of coins and nothing's happening."
Me:
"Sir, just push that button right there-"
SG: *does something else entirely*
Me: "No, sir, just push that button to start the game."
SG: "Oh!" *looks over at another part of the arcade* "BOY!"
Me:
SG: "BOY! GET OVER HERE!"
Me: *flees to Counter of Awesome*
Anyway, they'd also managed to win some tickets and decided to get a few prizes. This might be a bit mean on my part, but I could tell from watching her for a minute or so that the little girl was...not quite right. Still, she was young enough that it didn't make much difference, at least for the purposes of redeeming tickets at the CoA.
Me: "Okay, you have X tickets left, what else would you like, sweetie*?"
Little Girl (LG): *points repeatedly at one of the items in the CoA*
Strange Lady (SL): "You want one of those toys? Which color do you want?"
LG: *keeps pointing at the item*
Me: *turns toward the bins on the wall to grab one for her*
SL: "WHAT COLOR DO YOU WANT?"
Me:
LG: *no answer*
SL: "She'll have a purple one."
Me: *gets a purple toy and gives it to LG* "Um...Y tickets, would you like anything else?"
Clearly we are in business to lose money
Due to the changes mentioned at the beginning of this post (told you it would become important!
), we've had to adapt the closing process a bit. Not as much as I'd feared, but instead of counting the money right after closing like I normally do, I've started doing so a bit before closing. Because of that, I've decided to stop redeeming tickets and breaking large bills about 30 minutes before close, both to give me time to do this and because to count the money in the till, I can't have company money on me (obviously). This was pretty much suggested to me by Coworker and Manager, who both worked at the old arcade (with similar restrictions) and are pro at this.
Most people have been understanding, but...:
Me: *counting money*
Rushed Lady (RL): "Excuse me?"
Me: "One second." *finishes counting the last stack of bills and leaves the office* "Yes?"
RL: "Could you break a five for me?"
Me: "...I'm really sorry, but I'm not making change right now."
RL: "Oh...well, I don't want to play five dollars worth of games..."
Me: "Um, well, maybe JCPenney can break it for you?" (Sorry, JCPenney.)
RL: "All right, I'll try them." *leaves for JCPenney*
Sucky Customer (SC): *approaches the CoA right after with her daughter* "I need you to break this into smaller bills for me." *starts to reach for the bill she wants broken*
Me: "I'm really sorry, but I'm not making change right now. I don't have money on me to do so."
SC: "Oh." *looks at her daughter* "Well, I guess you can't play any games because I can't get any fives-"
Me: "Oh, you can probably go to JCPenney, they might be able to break it for you." (Sorry JCPen- oh, wait)
SC: *gives me a Look* "I'm not walking all the way to JCPenney for some change."
Me: (Lady, it's right next door.) "..."
SC: *picks up the JCPenney bags she put on the CoA at the beginning of this exchange and leaves with her daughter*
...Did your sister stop by here last Sunday, by any chance?
The Adventures of Girl Genius and Boy Wonder
Me: *counting out the last of the change, wonders why we have almost a hundred and fifty pennies*
Girl Genius (GG)**: "Miss?"
Me: "Just a minute." *finishes counting and leaves the office*
GG: *as I'm exiting the office* "We put 8 tokens in the Guitar Hero game and it ate 3."
Ah, Guitar Hero Arcade, my old nemesis.
Me: "Again? It does that; I'll take a look and see if I can get your tokens back." *walks over to the machine, where Boy Wonder (BW) is waiting; the machine is already in the middle of a game*
BW: "Can you make it restart? It ate our tokens so we couldn't start a 2-player game."
Me: "Let me look at it." *opens the machine up, makes sure everything's cleared out in the coin mech, grabs the tokens that had fallen out and puts them in the coin slot, bringing the total to four credits extra. Too late to start a second person, though* "Okay, I can't restart the game, but I'll give you four extra tokens so that you can play two-player after this, since the game messed up.*** If you want, I'll come make sure it doesn't eat the tokens again, too."
GG & BW: "Okay."
I go to the back, grab some tokens, and bring them out to GG. While BW's playing, I make sure the everything's ready to close and help customers. In the middle of helping a couple of younger kids with the ticket station, I notice that BW has finished playing, and that Guitar Hero Arcade is ready to start a new game (with four tokens already in).
GG: *is getting more tokens from the token machine*
BW: *reaches toward the game, guitar in hand*
Me: *calls to BW* "Just put four more in-"
BW: *pushes the start button on his side*
Guitar Hero: *switches over to the "waiting for second player" countdown*
Me: "Why'd you start the game?"
BW: "It started itself!"
Me: "I saw you push the start button."
BW: "Well it said to push start!"
Me: "Well, it's waiting for another player now, if you can beat the countdown you can play two-player."
So guess what didn't happen?
BW: "I didn't come here to play Guitar Hero by myself." *starts toward another game with GG while Guitar Hero is still on character selection*
Me: (Then don't push the button until you're ready!)
And now for today's Happy Moment (tm)
Nice Customer (NC): *approaches the Counter of Awesome*
Me: *drawing a picture early into my shift****, and looks up when NC reaches the counter to see if he needs anything*
NC: *looks at my picture* "That's really good."
Me: 
* - I have a habit of calling really young kids 'sweetie' or 'sweetheart'. I really don't know why.
** - No, not that Girl Genius; that would have been awesome rather than sucky.
*** - This is not as big a deal as you'd think; I'm constantly finding eaten tokens in machines that hadn't been reported, so there's usually some spares to hand out in cases like these.
**** - Manager has said that we can do pretty much whatever so long as it doesn't get in the way of cleaning and helping customers (and I assume so long as it's legal).
For those of you reading this who haven't, a quick summary; the owners of the arcade I work at have set the number of hours to pretty much the bare minimum needed to keep said arcade open for business when it's supposed to, and we are to clock out at exactly the time the arcade closes. I, for one, am going to assume they are doing this because they are new at this. But then, I might be getting overly optimistic.
Because of this, we're pretty much forced to do as much of the cleaning and cashing out as possible before we close (as we'd be doing it for free afterward). This will become important later.
That's just gross
DDR junkies, I love you guys, but if I find ABC gum on the cabinet again I'm going to throttle something adorable in front of you.
Jeez, lady!
Had one group come in late in the day, two older people and what I assume was their granddaughter or something. I had a feeling they were going to be 'special' when the man came to me after putting 8 coins into one of the games (for reference, a single player game on that machine is 3 tokens) because he didn't notice the shiny start button in front of him:
Strange Guy (SG): "It said put in three coins, so I did, and then it said to put in 6 coins-"
Me: "Yes, a two-player game is 6 tokens."
SG: "-so I put in three more coins, and then I put in more coins, and now I'm out of coins and nothing's happening."
Me:
"Sir, just push that button right there-"SG: *does something else entirely*
Me: "No, sir, just push that button to start the game."
SG: "Oh!" *looks over at another part of the arcade* "BOY!"
Me:
SG: "BOY! GET OVER HERE!"
Me: *flees to Counter of Awesome*
Anyway, they'd also managed to win some tickets and decided to get a few prizes. This might be a bit mean on my part, but I could tell from watching her for a minute or so that the little girl was...not quite right. Still, she was young enough that it didn't make much difference, at least for the purposes of redeeming tickets at the CoA.
Me: "Okay, you have X tickets left, what else would you like, sweetie*?"
Little Girl (LG): *points repeatedly at one of the items in the CoA*
Strange Lady (SL): "You want one of those toys? Which color do you want?"
LG: *keeps pointing at the item*
Me: *turns toward the bins on the wall to grab one for her*
SL: "WHAT COLOR DO YOU WANT?"
Me:
LG: *no answer*
SL: "She'll have a purple one."
Me: *gets a purple toy and gives it to LG* "Um...Y tickets, would you like anything else?"
Clearly we are in business to lose money
Due to the changes mentioned at the beginning of this post (told you it would become important!
), we've had to adapt the closing process a bit. Not as much as I'd feared, but instead of counting the money right after closing like I normally do, I've started doing so a bit before closing. Because of that, I've decided to stop redeeming tickets and breaking large bills about 30 minutes before close, both to give me time to do this and because to count the money in the till, I can't have company money on me (obviously). This was pretty much suggested to me by Coworker and Manager, who both worked at the old arcade (with similar restrictions) and are pro at this.Most people have been understanding, but...:
Me: *counting money*
Rushed Lady (RL): "Excuse me?"
Me: "One second." *finishes counting the last stack of bills and leaves the office* "Yes?"
RL: "Could you break a five for me?"
Me: "...I'm really sorry, but I'm not making change right now."
RL: "Oh...well, I don't want to play five dollars worth of games..."
Me: "Um, well, maybe JCPenney can break it for you?" (Sorry, JCPenney.)
RL: "All right, I'll try them." *leaves for JCPenney*
Sucky Customer (SC): *approaches the CoA right after with her daughter* "I need you to break this into smaller bills for me." *starts to reach for the bill she wants broken*
Me: "I'm really sorry, but I'm not making change right now. I don't have money on me to do so."
SC: "Oh." *looks at her daughter* "Well, I guess you can't play any games because I can't get any fives-"
Me: "Oh, you can probably go to JCPenney, they might be able to break it for you." (Sorry JCPen- oh, wait)
SC: *gives me a Look* "I'm not walking all the way to JCPenney for some change."
Me: (Lady, it's right next door.) "..."
SC: *picks up the JCPenney bags she put on the CoA at the beginning of this exchange and leaves with her daughter*
...Did your sister stop by here last Sunday, by any chance?
The Adventures of Girl Genius and Boy Wonder
Me: *counting out the last of the change, wonders why we have almost a hundred and fifty pennies*
Girl Genius (GG)**: "Miss?"
Me: "Just a minute." *finishes counting and leaves the office*
GG: *as I'm exiting the office* "We put 8 tokens in the Guitar Hero game and it ate 3."
Ah, Guitar Hero Arcade, my old nemesis.
Me: "Again? It does that; I'll take a look and see if I can get your tokens back." *walks over to the machine, where Boy Wonder (BW) is waiting; the machine is already in the middle of a game*
BW: "Can you make it restart? It ate our tokens so we couldn't start a 2-player game."
Me: "Let me look at it." *opens the machine up, makes sure everything's cleared out in the coin mech, grabs the tokens that had fallen out and puts them in the coin slot, bringing the total to four credits extra. Too late to start a second person, though* "Okay, I can't restart the game, but I'll give you four extra tokens so that you can play two-player after this, since the game messed up.*** If you want, I'll come make sure it doesn't eat the tokens again, too."
GG & BW: "Okay."
I go to the back, grab some tokens, and bring them out to GG. While BW's playing, I make sure the everything's ready to close and help customers. In the middle of helping a couple of younger kids with the ticket station, I notice that BW has finished playing, and that Guitar Hero Arcade is ready to start a new game (with four tokens already in).
GG: *is getting more tokens from the token machine*
BW: *reaches toward the game, guitar in hand*
Me: *calls to BW* "Just put four more in-"
BW: *pushes the start button on his side*
Guitar Hero: *switches over to the "waiting for second player" countdown*
Me:
"Why'd you start the game?"BW: "It started itself!"
Me: "I saw you push the start button."
BW: "Well it said to push start!"
Me:
"Well, it's waiting for another player now, if you can beat the countdown you can play two-player."So guess what didn't happen?
BW: "I didn't come here to play Guitar Hero by myself." *starts toward another game with GG while Guitar Hero is still on character selection*
Me: (Then don't push the button until you're ready!)
And now for today's Happy Moment (tm)
Nice Customer (NC): *approaches the Counter of Awesome*
Me: *drawing a picture early into my shift****, and looks up when NC reaches the counter to see if he needs anything*
NC: *looks at my picture* "That's really good."
Me:
* - I have a habit of calling really young kids 'sweetie' or 'sweetheart'. I really don't know why.
** - No, not that Girl Genius; that would have been awesome rather than sucky.
*** - This is not as big a deal as you'd think; I'm constantly finding eaten tokens in machines that hadn't been reported, so there's usually some spares to hand out in cases like these.
**** - Manager has said that we can do pretty much whatever so long as it doesn't get in the way of cleaning and helping customers (and I assume so long as it's legal).
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