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About last June, we got new thermal printers. At first they were an improvement over our old ones (mainly because up to 6 people can use one printer and they don't need to be hooked up to your scanner by a cable), but they've since become steaming hunks of crap.
The biggest problem I have with them is they don't print furniture pull tags well. The paper the pull tags are printed on is different, less glossy, than the paper shelf labels and clearance labels are printed on. Therefore the barcodes, SKUs, UPCs and other data don't burn into the paper as well. The cashiers end up being unable to scan the pull tags, and when they go to type in the UPCs those are broken-up and unreadable, so then they have to call somebody to do a price check and try to figure out what item they need the price check on.
Today I hit upon a solution: Instead of spending half an hour testing all the printers and trying to find the one that prints pull tags decent, I just loaded the printer with regular shelf label and took the pull tags with me. When I needed to make a new tag, I printed out a shelf label for the item and then attached it to the blank pull tag. This is the way we used to do it before we even had portable printers.
Result: The UPC barcodes are easily scanned, and all the relevant information is printed on the label for the cashier to read off to the person doing the carryout.
I can just see some manager or bean counter somewhere figuring out I'm using two different kinds of label stock when I should only be using one and tearing me a new asshole. They can say this knowing they never have to run a register and figure out what kind of furniture item the customer is trying to buy.
The biggest problem I have with them is they don't print furniture pull tags well. The paper the pull tags are printed on is different, less glossy, than the paper shelf labels and clearance labels are printed on. Therefore the barcodes, SKUs, UPCs and other data don't burn into the paper as well. The cashiers end up being unable to scan the pull tags, and when they go to type in the UPCs those are broken-up and unreadable, so then they have to call somebody to do a price check and try to figure out what item they need the price check on.
Today I hit upon a solution: Instead of spending half an hour testing all the printers and trying to find the one that prints pull tags decent, I just loaded the printer with regular shelf label and took the pull tags with me. When I needed to make a new tag, I printed out a shelf label for the item and then attached it to the blank pull tag. This is the way we used to do it before we even had portable printers.
Result: The UPC barcodes are easily scanned, and all the relevant information is printed on the label for the cashier to read off to the person doing the carryout.
I can just see some manager or bean counter somewhere figuring out I'm using two different kinds of label stock when I should only be using one and tearing me a new asshole. They can say this knowing they never have to run a register and figure out what kind of furniture item the customer is trying to buy.
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