As soon as I walked into work today and got into the cash office one of the coordinators got a call from a cashier saying the register was saying, "not authorized," for credit and debit card transactions.
Soon after that call was received we learned the entire system was down: no credit cards and no debit cards.
During Christmas.
In a busy store.
So C, the most awesome coordinator ever, pulled out the "cash emergency kits" which consisted of receipt books, calculators, those ancient manual credit card imprinters and slips, and keys for the registers so we could make duplicate receipts.
I wanted to run away right then and there.
So here is how we had to do things:
cash transactions were fine, NO debit transactions could be accepted since there would be no way to process them, and for credit card transactions we were to ring everything through as normal, total it up, void-total everything, get an imprint of the card with the amount written in, have the customer sign the archaic slip and print them a duplicate in case they needed to return anything, with the original receipt stapled to the imprinted slip.
Oh and for credit card transactions over $100 we had to call the card companies, go through the automated system, sit on hold and finally get an authorization number to put on the slip.
All with lines out the ass.![Crying](https://www.customerssuck.com/board/core/images/smilies/cry.gif)
I work a a store that grosses billions of dollars every year and we were working with Mom-and-Pop type tools to do our jobs.
Not that I'm complaining about how things had to be handled, since I know that sometimes that's just how things have to be, I just found it amusing is all.
And by "amusing" I mean only after the fact. Nothing about this was even the slightest bit entertaining at the time.
This sounds simple enough, except the majority of us had never been around for this kind of problem so we didn't know how to properly do the transactions, and there weren't enough coordinators to go around to both explain it to everyone, deal with and explain to customers what was going on, talk to LP about the problem as well as the tech team (turned out to be a problem with our internet) and other managers.
So lines that started with five people in them quickly became lines with 40 people in them, most of which were paying with debit or credit (remember we have debit and credit ONLY lines as well, though thankfully I was not on one of them).
Never have I walked into a more stressful situation at work.
I've been there for power outages, evacuations, and other miscellaneous situations from hell, but this one I have to say tops them all.
Thankfully customers were understanding for the most part, or at least mine were, so that made life easier, though it didn't make the situation any less stressful.
One delightful issue arose for me, wherein one man wanted to do a split payment of cash and credit.
It took us all a while to decide what would be the best way to do this, and thankfully the customer was patient and understanding.
Here is how we decided we had to do this.
His bill was $454.xx and he wanted to pay $300 cash and $154.xx Master Card.
So... take the $300 cash, enter it in, then do the credit portion as we were instructed to, which, if you remember, required us to void-total the receipt to have a copy for our records.
Still with me?
Can you guess what happened when I cashed out at the end of the day?
$300 in cash OVER, since when I had to void-total the receipt to do the credit portion the register naturally eliminated the whole cash portion. Because it was, after all, a void of the total receipt.
Well this fact didn't occur to me while we were trying to figure out what the problem was, since all the coordinators said quite plainly, "There is NO way you're over that much money. No way at all. It's not your fault."
Then, as I was changing and gathering my things from my locker and thinking about where that $300 could have come from I remembered, and ran to the cash office to tell them, showed them the voided receipt which showed the total, the $300 I accepted in cash and the slip for the remaining $154.xx.
Thank goodness.
I know I wouldn't have gotten in trouble anyway, since it would have been obvious something like that was caused by the system going down, but I'm glad it was discovered where that $300 came from.
Well I was actually over $289.xx , so that $300 issue we figured out actually puts me at $10.xx over, since I obviously made another cash related mistake during the day. Or... would that make me $10.xx short?
I don't know, I fail at math and don't really care anymore. Hopefully because of the system issue I won't be responsible for that other $10 and change, since over or short, $10 either way means a write up.![Frown](https://www.customerssuck.com/board/core/images/smilies/frown.png)
But to be honest I'm not shocked that my cash was wrong today by whatever small amount it was, since I got really flustered early into my shift. I tried my best to pay attention and go slow enough to not make any mistakes, but I'm a really fast worker who always tries to get people through my lanes as fast as I can, so when you pair that with the stress of the issue and lines that are growing exponentially a mistake will happen.
My fault totally, but it's done now so what can I do?
Well, that was my hellish, stressful day at work.
And how did I top it all off?
Christmas shopping at the mall.
![headdesk](https://www.customerssuck.com/board/core/images/smilies/bangheaddesk.gif)
Thank goodness tomorrow is my day off.
Soon after that call was received we learned the entire system was down: no credit cards and no debit cards.
During Christmas.
In a busy store.
So C, the most awesome coordinator ever, pulled out the "cash emergency kits" which consisted of receipt books, calculators, those ancient manual credit card imprinters and slips, and keys for the registers so we could make duplicate receipts.
I wanted to run away right then and there.
So here is how we had to do things:
cash transactions were fine, NO debit transactions could be accepted since there would be no way to process them, and for credit card transactions we were to ring everything through as normal, total it up, void-total everything, get an imprint of the card with the amount written in, have the customer sign the archaic slip and print them a duplicate in case they needed to return anything, with the original receipt stapled to the imprinted slip.
Oh and for credit card transactions over $100 we had to call the card companies, go through the automated system, sit on hold and finally get an authorization number to put on the slip.
All with lines out the ass.
![Crying](https://www.customerssuck.com/board/core/images/smilies/cry.gif)
I work a a store that grosses billions of dollars every year and we were working with Mom-and-Pop type tools to do our jobs.
Not that I'm complaining about how things had to be handled, since I know that sometimes that's just how things have to be, I just found it amusing is all.
And by "amusing" I mean only after the fact. Nothing about this was even the slightest bit entertaining at the time.
This sounds simple enough, except the majority of us had never been around for this kind of problem so we didn't know how to properly do the transactions, and there weren't enough coordinators to go around to both explain it to everyone, deal with and explain to customers what was going on, talk to LP about the problem as well as the tech team (turned out to be a problem with our internet) and other managers.
So lines that started with five people in them quickly became lines with 40 people in them, most of which were paying with debit or credit (remember we have debit and credit ONLY lines as well, though thankfully I was not on one of them).
Never have I walked into a more stressful situation at work.
I've been there for power outages, evacuations, and other miscellaneous situations from hell, but this one I have to say tops them all.
Thankfully customers were understanding for the most part, or at least mine were, so that made life easier, though it didn't make the situation any less stressful.
One delightful issue arose for me, wherein one man wanted to do a split payment of cash and credit.
It took us all a while to decide what would be the best way to do this, and thankfully the customer was patient and understanding.
Here is how we decided we had to do this.
His bill was $454.xx and he wanted to pay $300 cash and $154.xx Master Card.
So... take the $300 cash, enter it in, then do the credit portion as we were instructed to, which, if you remember, required us to void-total the receipt to have a copy for our records.
Still with me?
Can you guess what happened when I cashed out at the end of the day?
$300 in cash OVER, since when I had to void-total the receipt to do the credit portion the register naturally eliminated the whole cash portion. Because it was, after all, a void of the total receipt.
Well this fact didn't occur to me while we were trying to figure out what the problem was, since all the coordinators said quite plainly, "There is NO way you're over that much money. No way at all. It's not your fault."
Then, as I was changing and gathering my things from my locker and thinking about where that $300 could have come from I remembered, and ran to the cash office to tell them, showed them the voided receipt which showed the total, the $300 I accepted in cash and the slip for the remaining $154.xx.
Thank goodness.
I know I wouldn't have gotten in trouble anyway, since it would have been obvious something like that was caused by the system going down, but I'm glad it was discovered where that $300 came from.
Well I was actually over $289.xx , so that $300 issue we figured out actually puts me at $10.xx over, since I obviously made another cash related mistake during the day. Or... would that make me $10.xx short?
I don't know, I fail at math and don't really care anymore. Hopefully because of the system issue I won't be responsible for that other $10 and change, since over or short, $10 either way means a write up.
![Frown](https://www.customerssuck.com/board/core/images/smilies/frown.png)
But to be honest I'm not shocked that my cash was wrong today by whatever small amount it was, since I got really flustered early into my shift. I tried my best to pay attention and go slow enough to not make any mistakes, but I'm a really fast worker who always tries to get people through my lanes as fast as I can, so when you pair that with the stress of the issue and lines that are growing exponentially a mistake will happen.
My fault totally, but it's done now so what can I do?
Well, that was my hellish, stressful day at work.
And how did I top it all off?
Christmas shopping at the mall.
![headdesk](https://www.customerssuck.com/board/core/images/smilies/bangheaddesk.gif)
Thank goodness tomorrow is my day off.
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