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I went to my fair city's only real bookstore this afternoon to pick up a couple magazines. If you must know, they weren't pornos. 
This place isn't much of a bookstore, and about half the shop is taken up by tobacco stuff including a walk-in humidor, but it's at least half an hour to the nearest Barnes and Noble.
My purchases were rung up by an older man, late 60s I guess, who was just having a dickens of a time with the cash register. He punched in the prices for the magazines and told me my total. I handed him my debit card. He swiped my card, too slowly at first (no pin pad for me to do it myself), and then made a mistake someplace punching in the numbers.
This prompted the manager, an older lady, to swoop in an start tut-tutting the poor old guy. "No. This is not how you do it. This is a machine; you're going too fast. You have to go step by step." She reset the register and he punched in my debit card number. He then asked me for my ID, which I provided, and then handed back both my ID and my debit card and advised me to sign the back of my debit card.
"No, no, no! You don't tell him to do ANYTHING!" And the old guy gets all flustered.
Eventually he got my debit card info into the register and the sale completed. Or so I thought. He hit the wrong button on the register and the cash drawer popped open. "No! This is a card sale. You put it through as a cash sale. Now we have to fix it." And she did, with the older guy trying to sheepishly explain himself. "I wish there were crib notes for this thing, sorry."
"Okay, that's all taken care of, now we stick this copy of the receipt in the bag and he's all set," and I was on my way.
The whole while I couldn't help but feel embarrassed for the guy. He clearly wasn't comfortable with the cash register and the manager wasn't very patient with him at all.
This place isn't much of a bookstore, and about half the shop is taken up by tobacco stuff including a walk-in humidor, but it's at least half an hour to the nearest Barnes and Noble.
My purchases were rung up by an older man, late 60s I guess, who was just having a dickens of a time with the cash register. He punched in the prices for the magazines and told me my total. I handed him my debit card. He swiped my card, too slowly at first (no pin pad for me to do it myself), and then made a mistake someplace punching in the numbers.
This prompted the manager, an older lady, to swoop in an start tut-tutting the poor old guy. "No. This is not how you do it. This is a machine; you're going too fast. You have to go step by step." She reset the register and he punched in my debit card number. He then asked me for my ID, which I provided, and then handed back both my ID and my debit card and advised me to sign the back of my debit card.
"No, no, no! You don't tell him to do ANYTHING!" And the old guy gets all flustered.
Eventually he got my debit card info into the register and the sale completed. Or so I thought. He hit the wrong button on the register and the cash drawer popped open. "No! This is a card sale. You put it through as a cash sale. Now we have to fix it." And she did, with the older guy trying to sheepishly explain himself. "I wish there were crib notes for this thing, sorry."
"Okay, that's all taken care of, now we stick this copy of the receipt in the bag and he's all set," and I was on my way.
The whole while I couldn't help but feel embarrassed for the guy. He clearly wasn't comfortable with the cash register and the manager wasn't very patient with him at all.
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