Things that cashiers do that make you think... HUH!?

[Lingering Grin]

I hope I'm not a sucky employee I work in the most uptight corporate store so if someone needs a few cents and expects me to give it to them I just can't because if any drawer I work on is any off I could get written up/fired. And I dont always have spare change on me to help someone out.

Well no, that's not a problem, but if someone says "Oh, that's ok" you start to think they're going to spot ya the penny...

[Enigma]

I offered her the quarter and she said "But I already put it in."

How is that so hard? Just round up to the next dollar amount! Oh lord, people do that all the time to me and I don't know what I would do if I couldn't do something that simple. Wow.

[Record Store Tough Guy]

I'm awful at math. Have a hard time understanding concepts with a calculator. But I understood the concept of adding coins to an order to even out change, even if I had already punched in the amounts.

Funny and somewhat tangentially related story: I was talking with a game designer/head of a game company at Origins last year, who happened to be female, and a math major. She mentioned that most males of the Nerd persuasion usually assume that she is not good at math, or game design, simply because she is female. She therefore was quite amused when I told her that I myself was so bad at math that I automatically assume that everyone I meet is better at it than I am, regardless of gender.

[Sableonblonde]

I always had problems when someone would try to give me change after I had already opened the drawer. I am not a moron, I know how to add, subtract, multiply, divide, the whole shebang. But when it comes to being put on the spot like that to recalculate change - even an amount that was very simple - my brain would just freeze up. I don't have a math or numbers brain, I have an English and words brain. I have a lot of trouble adding/subtracting numbers in my head. I can do math easily if I have paper to write the numbers down on, but trying to do it in my head - I just draw a total blank and I have to stop and concentrate REALLY hard on doing the math, and even then I have trouble.

I once had this guy get really shitty with me because it took me a long time to recalculate his change after he handed over some more after my drawer was open. He made this snide comment about the sad state of our public school system. Which wasn't even a valid insult, because I was homeschooled I can write 500 pages novels, but my brain has an automatic shut-off valve when it comes to numbers.

[rerant]

kinda going OT, but that is my biggest pet peeve with cashiers... good God your job is to handle money and you don't know how to count change without your register giving you a number.

Speaking as a cashier let me just say that on busy days the last thing you want to do is have to think about the new change amount.
You just want people out for ease of speed and sometimes it takes an extra few seconds to let the new change someone has just handed to you click so that you're handing them back the correct amount.

That and I'm sure we all know about the quick change scam artists who deliberately try to confuse cashiers into giving them more money.
Well my store has been hit many times by these people and the rule is you get the change that's shown on the screen and we don't make change for bills at the registers. Ever.
Not even if the till is already open.
This pisses a lot of people off but it's for the benefit of the store. We don't have to make change for anyone who isn't buying something and we won't.

It may be a pain to have to get back a few extra coins, but (at least at my store) the policy is we cashiers do whatever we feel makes us most comfortable, and if NOT accepting that 13cents someone is trying to hand us after the sale is what works best for us then no manager or LP coworker will ever tell us we're wrong for not taking it.

[smileyeagle1021]

Speaking as a cashier let me just say that on busy days the last thing you want to do is have to think about the new change amount.
You just want people out for ease of speed and sometimes it takes an extra few seconds to let the new change someone has just handed to you click so that you're handing them back the correct amount.

Oh I agree that it is rather SC to change the amount of change you are giving during a busy rush when everyone is in a hurry... the people I'm referring to (and this is one of the reasons I use credit/debit cards rather than cash) are the people who will type the wrong number into the computer and are helpless. I've even seen a cashier have to call over a manager to have the amount cleared out so he could put the right amount in when it was a simple enough total (it was like $3.86, I gave them a $5 but they typed in $50... and really there are 2 different ways to figure the proper change, either subtract $45 dollars from what the computer gave you or count change the old fashioned way, which when I cashiered was something we were required to learn just for that reason, in that case the logic path is 4 pennies to get up to 3.90, 1 dime to get up to $4, then one more dollar and we're at $5 and now the store and the customer are even. Surely I don't expect cashiers to do that every single time (i didn't) but there will always be a time when you can't go off the register number (either a number was keyed in wrong, the customer changed how much they were giving you, granted that one you can refuse, or God forbid the system could go down.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Some people just can't do math on the fly. Like the cashier at Wawa who thought I handed her a five when I gave her a ten. She looked at it for a few moments, then had to ask me how much change she needed to give me.

I know logically that some people and math do not get along well, but I have trouble understanding it. (Math is my best subject, I like it.)

I am one of those people, but even I can figure out quarters.

My personal pet peeve is customers who give me some change after I've put their money in, but not exact change. Such as a quarter when their order is $XX.18.

That throws me off, too, though.

[Bella_Vixen]

Not to be a jerk, but I canNOT stand people who EXPECT me to spot them whatever few cents they went over.

If they make an effort to find it, and we have enough spare change, I'll let it slide, but if you expect me to cover 17¢, not gonna happen.

With a store that has over 1000 customers, and people want us to cover, lets say an average of 3¢ per customers...well, do you see where this is going? This ends up costing thousands of dollars a year.

[Bright_Star]

good God your job is to handle money and you don't know how to count change without your register giving you a number.

Counting back change isn't as simple as you seem to make it out to be. I was a cashier at Wal-Mart & not only do you have to deal with making change out of a shit load of transactions but you have to do it while enduring stupid shit from sucky assholes who think there's nothing wrong with bitching you out cause you're too slow, too fast, not smiling enough & so on.
If you just had to deal with 1 or 2 customers every so often then counting back change without having the register tell you the correct amount would be a snap. BUT when you're dealing with LONG lines of never ending customers then doing that in your head without making a single mistake without using computer assistance starts to get challenging.

[mattm04]

That and I'm sure we all know about the quick change scam artists who deliberately try to confuse cashiers into giving them more money.
Well my store has been hit many times by these people and the rule is you get the change that's shown on the screen and we don't make change for bills at the registers. Ever.

My store/company has a no change policy. This has helped reduce scam artists but they are considering a "only give what the computer says" approach if the losses, they won't say the exact amount, don't go down.

[Ree]

This is an interesting thread.

If a customer is a penny or so short, I don't mind putting it in. In fact, a couple of times, I have put in as much as a whole dollar.

The one lady had walked out to our store on a really hot day, and it ended up being just slightly more than she had on her at the time.

The lady walked all the way back to the store later that afternoon to repay me my dollar.

I had another lady who came up short, and she was going to have to write a cheque for less than $10. I put in the dollar. The next time she was in, she paid me back, but she also sent a letter to my manager, commending me. They passed it on to HO, I got a mention in our company newsletter.

Yeah, if we put in the extra coin for every customer, it would add up to a lot, but really, how often does it actually happen in a day that a person is a penny or two short?

As for the issue of counting back change, and expecting the exact amount, I learned to count back change on an old non-computerized register. It took me a day or two, but it finally clicked when I realized that all I had to do was count up to the nearest whole coin and then to the nearest whole bill.
There was no subtracting in my head to count back.

To use an example from above, lets say the sale was $5.18 cents, and I got a $20 bill, on a computerized register, I punch in $20, and it automatically tells me to give them back $14.82. At the last minute, though, the customer realizes she has a quarter.
I counted to the nearest coin, which would be 2 cents to make it 20, then a nickel to make it a quarter. That brings me to an even $5, then, so count up $5 to make it ten, and then another $10 to make it twenty.

Even when I punch in the amount, and the register tells me what to give back, I don't even look at it, except for reference after I have counted out the change.
I have seen way too many cashiers punch in an extra 0 or double punch a digit and end up with some wild amount on the screen. Only for the fact that I was standing there and noticed, the customer would have been given about $10 too much in change.

I lost track of the number of times I had to step in and help a confused cashier who had punched in $1000 instead of $100, and was wondering why her screen said to give back $900 too much, but because she had no idea how to make change and depended on her screen to tell her what to do, she was lost.

When I was balancing the tills, in fact, that was usually the reason why the register was short. The girls depended on their screens to tell them how much change to give back, and they made an error punching in the amount, but didn't catch it.

I am in agreement that cashiers need to learn to count back change for that very reason. Computers are only as good as the information entered into them, and mistakes happen.

[Boozy]

I lost track of the number of times I had to step in and help a confused cashier who had punched in $1000 instead of $100, and was wondering why her screen said to give back $900 too much, but because she had no idea how to make change and depended on her screen to tell her what to do, she was lost.

Could be worse.

I worked with a woman who wouldn't even notice if the change the computer was telling her to give was excessive. She gave one guy change for $100 instead of $10, due to a keystroke error. She didn't even notice that there was a problem until he (bless his honest heart) handed the money back to her. And even then, the customer had to walk her through it!

I tell new trainees that just because everything is automated doesn't mean they can check their brains at the door. Even someone with very poor math skills would have noticed that error if they had been alert and paying attention.

[Dreamstalker]

At the bookstore, if we somehow wound up with WAY too many pennies in the drawer (some dork would keep opening rolls in the evening, when we already had enough coins) I would stack the excess on top of the drawer and use it if customers came up a few cents short.

At the game store, we had a "Home for Wayward Dragons" bucket where people could dump unwanted change and after awhile it would be given to charity. If a customer was a few cents short and nice about it, pennies would be taken from there; same for change for meters.

[blueantoidgirl]

I once went out on my break to get some lip balm at the Ulta store in the same shopping center (I forgot mine that day; I admit, I'm an addict and my lips were really dry) and the total came to $X.25. I gave the girl (who was probably in high school) a $20, and then realized I had the quarter. I offered her the quarter and she said "But I already put it in." It was like the week before Christmas and I was on my 15-minute break; I really didn't have time for a math lesson, so I just said OK....

Ok, bumping an old thread, but I have to side with the cashier on this one. I've always been told by loss prevention NEVER to take any money once the drawer is already open, it's one of the oldest cons in the book (customer hands over a 50 for something that only cost $1-$5, once the drawer is open, they say "Hey, I found a 5, lemme have that 50 back", then ask for their change, confusing the poor new cashier into giving them change for their 50, which will leave the drawer $45 short). I've gotten bitched out many times, but the company likes to send cash handling people out to try to trick us into doing something stupid, so I'd rather play it safe.