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I have been out of work for a few months and accepted a seasonal position at a major department store, things have been going well until today that is.
well today the entire computer system crashes we could do simple transactions such as sales when there was cash or a credit card involved (it wouldn't take debit however) but giftcards/exchange cards were out of the question since the computer couldn't look up how much they were worth and there was no work around.
Returns were a pain in the butt because even with a receipt the computers couldn't retrieve the transaction and would take the merchandise as not having a receipt, this was sort of easy to work around, we can change the prices so they get back what they paid, but that needed a manager approval, and we needed a manager override so they can get their money back in the form they paid since without a receipt they could only get store credit. And gift receipts were out of the question since they don't contain the information on how much was paid and there is really no way to look it up otherwise.
And finally whenever somebody used the store credit card it would automatically pop up to the call for authorization screen, this was pretty easy to get around since there was a number we could plug in that would work every time.
So you can imagine the crap we got today. first of all the people who would challenge me when I said the system was down asking questions like "well why is it down?" "can't you fix it?" or my favorite "well what are you gonna do for me?". Or the people that would huff and puff and go "this is absolutely ridiculous" or some variation thereof or the best one "really well, (competitor)'s computers are working)
but the best was this one woman who wanted to return a $150 jacket, I had to change the price from the $50 it was going to give her which needed a manager approval and she paid with her store credit card which would need his override. At the time he was helping another person with a similar situation and there was another cashier in another section that needed his override so it would be a minute. I explain this to the woman and apologize for the inconvenience and she huffs and puffs and waits for about a minute before asking if the main customer service center could help her and the following ensued.
Me: "well probably not since all the managers are on the floor right now running from register to register overriding and approving pretty much every transaction"
Her: *sigh* "well this is ridiculous he should be here by now it's not that busy"
Me: "It'll just be a few more seconds sometimes the overrides take a minute because he has to do more than one per transaction"
Her: "well i'm just going to go there, i'm sure THEY can help me"
about a minute later he comes by and I tell him what happened and just then we hear him paged to customer service to which he says that she now has to wait longer because there are 3 transactions ahead of that one.
There was more but I just realized this is a lot longer than I intended it to be...so I'll say fortunately by 1:30 everything was up and back to normal.
well today the entire computer system crashes we could do simple transactions such as sales when there was cash or a credit card involved (it wouldn't take debit however) but giftcards/exchange cards were out of the question since the computer couldn't look up how much they were worth and there was no work around.
Returns were a pain in the butt because even with a receipt the computers couldn't retrieve the transaction and would take the merchandise as not having a receipt, this was sort of easy to work around, we can change the prices so they get back what they paid, but that needed a manager approval, and we needed a manager override so they can get their money back in the form they paid since without a receipt they could only get store credit. And gift receipts were out of the question since they don't contain the information on how much was paid and there is really no way to look it up otherwise.
And finally whenever somebody used the store credit card it would automatically pop up to the call for authorization screen, this was pretty easy to get around since there was a number we could plug in that would work every time.
So you can imagine the crap we got today. first of all the people who would challenge me when I said the system was down asking questions like "well why is it down?" "can't you fix it?" or my favorite "well what are you gonna do for me?". Or the people that would huff and puff and go "this is absolutely ridiculous" or some variation thereof or the best one "really well, (competitor)'s computers are working)
but the best was this one woman who wanted to return a $150 jacket, I had to change the price from the $50 it was going to give her which needed a manager approval and she paid with her store credit card which would need his override. At the time he was helping another person with a similar situation and there was another cashier in another section that needed his override so it would be a minute. I explain this to the woman and apologize for the inconvenience and she huffs and puffs and waits for about a minute before asking if the main customer service center could help her and the following ensued.
Me: "well probably not since all the managers are on the floor right now running from register to register overriding and approving pretty much every transaction"
Her: *sigh* "well this is ridiculous he should be here by now it's not that busy"
Me: "It'll just be a few more seconds sometimes the overrides take a minute because he has to do more than one per transaction"
Her: "well i'm just going to go there, i'm sure THEY can help me"
about a minute later he comes by and I tell him what happened and just then we hear him paged to customer service to which he says that she now has to wait longer because there are 3 transactions ahead of that one.
There was more but I just realized this is a lot longer than I intended it to be...so I'll say fortunately by 1:30 everything was up and back to normal.
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