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Just a general rant...
One of my biggest work-related pet peeves is stupid people who can't figure out how to use the self-checkout machines. I could somewhat understand when they're old, but come on.....not only is there a voice that tells you what to do, there is also a VIDEO that plays on the screen to SHOW you what to do. Some of my favorites....
RC=random customer
Finish And Pay
RC presses 'ENGLISH' to start the process, then stands there and stares blankly at the monitor.
Me: 'Is there something you need help with?'
RC: 'It says FINISH AND PAY. I haven't scanned anything yet.'
Me: That's the button you hit once you're done scanning.'
RC: 'But I haven't scanned anything yet.'
Me: '.....Right.....scan your stuff.....then push that button.'
Duh.
Finish And Pay, Part 2
RC scans their stuff, then swipes their card without hitting 'finish and pay', and stares blankly at the pinpad wondering why nothings happening.
Me: 'You have to hit the Finish And Pay button.'
RC continues to stare.
Me: 'Sir, you need to hit the Finish And Pay button on the monitor.'
RC: 'Huh?...oh..' -goes over to the monitor and stares at it'
Me: 'It's the button on the bottom right.'
RC: stares at monitor
Me: 'It says FINISH AND PAY'
RC: stares at monitor
Me: 'It's the big giant button that's flashing at you....'
RC: stares at monitor
Me: -about now I just go over and hit it for them-
RC: 'Oh, I did that already.'
Yeah, ok.
What do I do with my card?
RC scans their stuff and hits Finish and Pay (yay for them, they actually found it). Then they stare at the monitor, and look it up and down. They try scanning their card where they scan their items. They try holding it up to the monitor as if it has psychic powers. They try putting it in the cash acceptor. They try putting it in the cash DISPENSOR. ANYTHING AT ALL except for swiping it on the pinpad like it SHOWS YOU IN THE VIDEO.
I'm waiting to cash out
OK, typical scenario....anywhere between 3-5 registers open, and a customer with a cart LOADED with lumber, bagged goods, and 3 of every other thing we could possibly carry in the store, comes strolling over to self-checkout with his cart....passing by every single open register on his way....pushing his cart over to the self-checkout attendant and expects them to scan everything for him. Now I don't know about other places, but I know that our machines get slower and slower the more you scan on them. They're not made for large items and they're not made to check out a lot of stuff. But when I politely let him know we have all these registers open with cashiers that have no customers and it will be much easier and faster for him, he flips out on me because I 'just don't want to do any f&$%@*g work.'
Or, even better...this one actually happened:
A customer wanted to buy a particular item and the UPC came up invalid when he scanned it. I tried looking up the SKU but couldn't find it in the system. I called on the radio (we have little hand-held radios for communicating in the store) for a hardware associate and was waiting for one to come up when the customer disappeared. The hardware associate came up and I told him I need a sku for this item. He went to look for it. In the meantime, the customer comes back and says forget it, he doesn't want that item, he found something else he is going to get instead. No problem, I void out the sale so he can start over, and call the hardware associate to cancel. Customer scans this new item and it rings up a different price than he thinks it should be. So I call the department for the price of that one (happens to again be hardware). I explain the product to him over the radio and he finds it and says that what it rang up is the correct price, and the sticker the customer was looking at belongs to the item next to the one that he has. The customer can hear this entire conversation over the radio, and it was all perfectly professional. He stares at me, and I think that maybe he wasn't paying attention, so I repeat what the hardware associate said over the radio. SC flips out on me....I mean, FLIPS OUT. Saying I have horrible customer service, and I've been rude to him from the start, I don't know what I'm doing, etc. He was so loud that one of the department heads IN THE BACK OF THE STORE heard him and called a manager for me....(why no one else called, I have no idea). My manager comes up and the customer tells him the same things he told me. I was rude and I told him to go to the service desk because I wasn't going to help him and I wouldn't help him with the first item he had either and and I refused to give him the correct price for the second item....(first of all, the price that rung up WAS the correct price. Second of all, if he had given me a chance instead of flipping out on me, I would've gladly given him the markdown...it was only a difference of $2). The manager says he'll give him the markdown and apologizes for the inconvenience, etc. By now I'm really shaking...it takes a lot for a customer to get me to that point, but this really came out of nowhere so he caught me totally off guard. I couldn't even ring it up, so I brought his stuff over to another cashier and had them ring him up. I went back over to the self-checkout where my manager was waiting. He stared at me...usually when a customer complains about stuff like that, once the customer is gone they listen to your side of the story so they can better judge the situation.
ASM=assistant sucky manager
Me: "I was helping him with the first--
ASM: "Just make sure you help the customers from now on."
And he walked off.
I was so floored that he wouldn't even LISTEN to me that I completely burst into tears and had to run to the bathroom and didn't come back out until about 20 minutes later.
The worst part is....my ASM and I went to elementary school together. It's not easy to show up to work every day knowing that my manager, who probably makes 3 times what I make (he has to in order to be able to afford a 2-week honeymoon in the South of France) is someone I went to school with. REALLY makes me feel good about my job.
Scan-and-Go
I had an idiot of a customer the other day that scanned his stuff on one of the machines, and one of his items he had a markdown on. He was buying a half-full bottle of fabric softener. I went into 'assist' mode to enter in the markdown and the idiot got impatient after about 15 seconds (it only takes about 30 seconds to enter a markdown), grabbed his stuff and stormed over to a register and paid regular price for the half-full bottle. Talk about impatient.
I've got LOTS more, but that's it for now.
One of my biggest work-related pet peeves is stupid people who can't figure out how to use the self-checkout machines. I could somewhat understand when they're old, but come on.....not only is there a voice that tells you what to do, there is also a VIDEO that plays on the screen to SHOW you what to do. Some of my favorites....
RC=random customer
Finish And Pay
RC presses 'ENGLISH' to start the process, then stands there and stares blankly at the monitor.
Me: 'Is there something you need help with?'
RC: 'It says FINISH AND PAY. I haven't scanned anything yet.'
Me: That's the button you hit once you're done scanning.'
RC: 'But I haven't scanned anything yet.'
Me: '.....Right.....scan your stuff.....then push that button.'
Duh.
Finish And Pay, Part 2
RC scans their stuff, then swipes their card without hitting 'finish and pay', and stares blankly at the pinpad wondering why nothings happening.
Me: 'You have to hit the Finish And Pay button.'
RC continues to stare.
Me: 'Sir, you need to hit the Finish And Pay button on the monitor.'
RC: 'Huh?...oh..' -goes over to the monitor and stares at it'
Me: 'It's the button on the bottom right.'
RC: stares at monitor
Me: 'It says FINISH AND PAY'
RC: stares at monitor
Me: 'It's the big giant button that's flashing at you....'
RC: stares at monitor
Me: -about now I just go over and hit it for them-
RC: 'Oh, I did that already.'
Yeah, ok.
What do I do with my card?
RC scans their stuff and hits Finish and Pay (yay for them, they actually found it). Then they stare at the monitor, and look it up and down. They try scanning their card where they scan their items. They try holding it up to the monitor as if it has psychic powers. They try putting it in the cash acceptor. They try putting it in the cash DISPENSOR. ANYTHING AT ALL except for swiping it on the pinpad like it SHOWS YOU IN THE VIDEO.
I'm waiting to cash out
OK, typical scenario....anywhere between 3-5 registers open, and a customer with a cart LOADED with lumber, bagged goods, and 3 of every other thing we could possibly carry in the store, comes strolling over to self-checkout with his cart....passing by every single open register on his way....pushing his cart over to the self-checkout attendant and expects them to scan everything for him. Now I don't know about other places, but I know that our machines get slower and slower the more you scan on them. They're not made for large items and they're not made to check out a lot of stuff. But when I politely let him know we have all these registers open with cashiers that have no customers and it will be much easier and faster for him, he flips out on me because I 'just don't want to do any f&$%@*g work.'
Or, even better...this one actually happened:
A customer wanted to buy a particular item and the UPC came up invalid when he scanned it. I tried looking up the SKU but couldn't find it in the system. I called on the radio (we have little hand-held radios for communicating in the store) for a hardware associate and was waiting for one to come up when the customer disappeared. The hardware associate came up and I told him I need a sku for this item. He went to look for it. In the meantime, the customer comes back and says forget it, he doesn't want that item, he found something else he is going to get instead. No problem, I void out the sale so he can start over, and call the hardware associate to cancel. Customer scans this new item and it rings up a different price than he thinks it should be. So I call the department for the price of that one (happens to again be hardware). I explain the product to him over the radio and he finds it and says that what it rang up is the correct price, and the sticker the customer was looking at belongs to the item next to the one that he has. The customer can hear this entire conversation over the radio, and it was all perfectly professional. He stares at me, and I think that maybe he wasn't paying attention, so I repeat what the hardware associate said over the radio. SC flips out on me....I mean, FLIPS OUT. Saying I have horrible customer service, and I've been rude to him from the start, I don't know what I'm doing, etc. He was so loud that one of the department heads IN THE BACK OF THE STORE heard him and called a manager for me....(why no one else called, I have no idea). My manager comes up and the customer tells him the same things he told me. I was rude and I told him to go to the service desk because I wasn't going to help him and I wouldn't help him with the first item he had either and and I refused to give him the correct price for the second item....(first of all, the price that rung up WAS the correct price. Second of all, if he had given me a chance instead of flipping out on me, I would've gladly given him the markdown...it was only a difference of $2). The manager says he'll give him the markdown and apologizes for the inconvenience, etc. By now I'm really shaking...it takes a lot for a customer to get me to that point, but this really came out of nowhere so he caught me totally off guard. I couldn't even ring it up, so I brought his stuff over to another cashier and had them ring him up. I went back over to the self-checkout where my manager was waiting. He stared at me...usually when a customer complains about stuff like that, once the customer is gone they listen to your side of the story so they can better judge the situation.
ASM=assistant sucky manager
Me: "I was helping him with the first--
ASM: "Just make sure you help the customers from now on."
And he walked off.
I was so floored that he wouldn't even LISTEN to me that I completely burst into tears and had to run to the bathroom and didn't come back out until about 20 minutes later.
The worst part is....my ASM and I went to elementary school together. It's not easy to show up to work every day knowing that my manager, who probably makes 3 times what I make (he has to in order to be able to afford a 2-week honeymoon in the South of France) is someone I went to school with. REALLY makes me feel good about my job.
Scan-and-Go
I had an idiot of a customer the other day that scanned his stuff on one of the machines, and one of his items he had a markdown on. He was buying a half-full bottle of fabric softener. I went into 'assist' mode to enter in the markdown and the idiot got impatient after about 15 seconds (it only takes about 30 seconds to enter a markdown), grabbed his stuff and stormed over to a register and paid regular price for the half-full bottle. Talk about impatient.
I've got LOTS more, but that's it for now.
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