Yesterday I checked a woman out, she had a pair of shoes and some other items. They all fit in one bag, and it came out in the low $20 range. When I handed her the bag, she said, "At any *other* store, I'd expect at least three bags for that amount of money." Really? Go to one of those other stores next time, okay?
This didn't happen this 4th, but several years ago at my last store.
I was wishing people a happy 4th, and all was going well until one guy took offense (very strongly and vocally) and explained that he had native American ancestry and all the 4th meant to him was oppression.
I guess I understand that, we've treated native Americans very badly in the past, and still do today, but to take it out on an underpaid cashier who was just trying to be pleasant?
One of my managers does not take any shit from customers.
It was 10 minutes before closing, and a sour-looking old woman came up to check out and complained about two of our employees laughing loudly in the back of the store. She said that it was unprofessional. My manager faked listening seriously to her until she asked him, "So what are you going to do about it? It ruined my shopping experience."
He told her that this was a thrift store, she'd just have to manage her expectations. She looked really pissed. The rest of us were amused. After she left, he said that she was probably president of the HOA.
Today I got a customer who brought up a cart full of glass. A lot of glass. It took over 30 minutes to individually wrap each piece and put them in three fairly large boxes. A reseller, obviously. The total came out to nearly $300.
When she tried to pay, she asked me if I had a phone charger. It seems that the only way she had to pay was with her phone, and the battery was at 0%. Of course, I didn't have a phone charger at my station. I didn't feel too good hearing this after all that work.
She asked if we sold phone chargers. I told her that it was the luck of the draw and sent her to Electrical/Mechanical. No charger there.
It was looking like I'd have to unwrap all of the glass and put it back on the shelves. On a busy Saturday.
We've recently gotten new registers, and it occurred to me that we might be able to suspend a transaction and then reopen it later. Our old registers would not do that, but I called my manager over and asked if she knew if it was possible. She said that she had been told it was possible, and managed to figure out how to do it. This is the first time we've done this, as far as she knew.
So, the customer left to charge her phone.
About 30 minutes later, she came back with a charged phone, and my manager unsuspended the transaction (a manager has to do it, at my old job, I could do this myself). She tried paying with her phone, but all I got was "Declined." She tried arguing that she had the money in the account, but that didn't do any good, of course.
She asked if we could suspend again, and she'd be back. I really didn't expect to see her again, but about an hour later, she came back with a debit card that worked.
Annoying, but I didn't have to unwrap over 100 pieces of glass and re-shelve them.
In the middle of this, I got a customer who felt that I didn't give her the right amount of change. I had to go over every item in her cart, one at a time, add them up on a calculator, figure her discount and take that off, and then add tax. You know what? The register did not actually make a mistake! It always gets arithmetic right. She did apologize. Later, I realized that I should probably just have passed this issue on to my manager.
Thanks goodness we had all four registers open, we were very busy.
The other day, we kept smelling something like kerosene or gasoline in various areas of the store. We were looking for it, but it seemed to keep moving around.
While I was checking a family out, the smell was very strong, and I mentioned that we had been trying to find it.
The mother started laughing and said that that was their son, he wanted to fill the car up and had covered himself in gasoline.
I just don't know what to think of that. Other than maybe New Jersey, where you are not allowed to pump your own gas, might be on to something.
Last week, I posted that we'd be getting new register software last Tuesday. It would have been a disaster based on my testing of the system.
Well, another location got the update before we did, and it was a disaster, so they held off until Thursday to update us, after some emergancy bug fixes in the new software'
What we got was usable, but far harder and slower to use than the old system with no clear benefits for anyone
The first thing to pop into mind is the fact that a customer can't use a gift card unless you check the amount on it first, and then enter that. If you don't do that, and the card has enough on it, it works as expected. If it does not, it gives an error, and then you have to check the balance before proceeding and manually type that number in.
The second is that you can't do a return that involves more than one transaction. You can't ring up the new items, and then run the return and have it subtracted from the total. You have to run the return first, put the value on a gift card, and then use the gift card for the purchase. The old system let you do them together. Also, if the customer has a return spanning multiple receipts, you have to run each one separately and put them onto a gift card seperatly. The old system let you do multiple receipts on one transaction.
Another thing is that items in certain categories can't cost a specific amount; they just don't scan. You have to watch for this number on the tag and scan a blank barcode, then type in the price manually.
None of this makes the system unusable, but they slow you down with extra steps.
There's a lot more, but this is getting long.
One of my biggest retail pet peeves is people who walk up to an unattended register and just start piling stuff on the counter.
Today I was on my register, checking someone out.
A woman walked up to the unattended register next to me and started piling clothes up. I told her that if she waited a moment, I could help her at my register.
She said nothing, totally ignoring me, and piled a lot more clothes onto the counter.
When I was done with my customer, I repeated that I could help her at my register. She ignored me. I asked her again, and she ignored me. I started to walk over to pick up her stuff and move it, and she let out a big, exasperated sigh and brought the stuff to my register.
I started scanning stuff and bagging it, and she said that I was doing a bad job folding. I started folding over again, and tried my best to fold in a pretty manner. She sighed again, held her hands out, and said, "Give it to me." She held her hands out for every item, folded it, and stacked the items up.
When I was done scanning, she said, "Now you can put them in the bags. I started to do this, and she sighed again and said, "Give me the bag." She then proceeded to put the clothes in each bag. She had a lot of bags.
Then, before I could ask her, she said, "Aren't you going to ask for my phone number? I need my discount." I asked her for her phone number, and typed it in. Nothing found. I told her I must have made a typo and could she repeat the number. Another irritated sigh, and the same result: nothing.
I asked her if she wanted me to try and look her up by name, and she said, "No, I'm tired of this, you can never find my number, and I don't get my discount. Call a manager."
So I call a manager, and she can't find the account by the phone number either, and asks for a name. The account comes right up, and my manager tells her the phone number on the account, which was not what she had been giving us. My manager told the customer the number on the account. She said that this was the number she'd been giving us all along. It wasn't.
It turns out that she had no rewards and got snappy when my manager told her that. She swore that she did, and my manager took 10% off everything manually.
Not fun. At this job, unlike my last, *most* of our customers are pretty laid-back, not this woman.
A few days ago, another cashier and I were scheduled to work from 4 to 9 pm. As we walked onto the floor, we saw a woman shopping in the picture frame area. We saw her multiple times throughout the night, each time with more and more in her cart.
At 5 minutes before closing, she came to the registers with a heaping cart of miscellaneous stuff.
How in the world can someone shop for more than 5 hours at Goodwill? An hour or more is common, but 5+ hours? Why?
We're getting new software on our registers over the night of Monday/Tuesday.
No one has been given any formal training on the new software. We're supposed to just start using it.
I, and several others, but not all cashiers, have had a preview of this software. No training, no manual, just "try it out."
It won't scan books. If you try, you get "Item Not Found." If a bar code is damaged, and you enter the number below the code manually, you get "Item Not Found." I have found no way to check the balance on a gift card. I can enter a customer's rewards number, but guess what? The discount is not applied. On a similar note, there doesn't seem to be a way to see what rewards a customer has earned when you type in their number.
With a problem list like that, I'm expecting more bugs to surface. We haven't had a chance to try a credit card or gift card payment, only cash, so who knows what will happen?
Tuesday is going to be fun. I expect to be calling for a manager more in one day than in a typical week (or longer).
I had a new one tonight.
Two guys brought up a large cartload of miscellaneous stuff to my register. While I was ringing them up, one of them said that he wanted the items wholesale. At a retail establishment? And at Goodwill on top of that?
At least he didn't argue too much, but it was something I hadn't been asked before.