It's nice when cashiers can actually count cash

[ISiddiqui]

So I went to Circuit City today to get something. You'd think that cashiers would be able count money for change. You'd think so. You'd be wrong. The person in front of me got a CD costing $23ish and gave the cashier $25 in cash. Apparently she really likes credit, because the change was throwing her for a loop. She stood their, with the receipt in hand for (I'm not shitting you) 3 minutes figuring what combination of green bills and shiny coins to give the man across from her. She stared at the receipt and then in abject puzzlement over the stuff in her till. It was comically stupid. The guy in front of me and I exchanged glances and tried not to laugh out loud in her face.

A valuable lesson comes out of this. Make sure your cashiers know how to handle cash!

[NYFAN]

That's alright. I bought a gift certificate today and the amount written on it was fourty dollars. I'm hoping it can get my parents forty dollars worth of food when they cash it in.

[Mustang]

I watched a cashier training session where the person training was teaching the cashier what change to give.

"Ok.. 2 of those, 4 of those, 6 of those.."

I'm guessing that cash register didn't come up correct alot at the end of the day.

[Logan]

God bless the registers that automatically spit out the correct change (coin-wise).

[Fidatelo]

I watched a cashier training session where the person training was teaching the cashier what change to give.

"Ok.. 2 of those, 4 of those, 6 of those.."

I'm guessing that cash register didn't come up correct alot at the end of the day.

I had the same thing happen a couple months ago. A nice, obviously foreign girl was learning the ropes at the 7-11 near my work. The trainer was not just training her on how to use the register and deal with customers, but literally explaining the value of the coins and bills.

Stuff like this always amazes me. I'm not trying to call the trainee stupid, because if you sent me to a foreign place I'd have no f'in clue how the money works either, but shouldn't that sort of be basic knowledge before actually being given the reigns to operate a cash register? Why put the poor woman into the embarassing situation where she is learning money in front of the customers? If you want to hire her, why not train her on the money values in the back before she starts learning the rest of the job?

[stevew]

I really wonder what percentage of cash "shrinkage" on a register is due to employee incompetence vs employee theft. I dunno if that type of info would even be easy to obtain, but I would venture a guess that more people are stupid than are dishonest. Maybe not.

[Shkspr]

I wonder what percentage of employee "incompetence" is due to mental stress from working long hours during the holidays without leaving their terminals while simultaneously trying to a) make sure that all of the hundreds of transactions they carry out are correct to the penny, b) maintain a cheerful and friendly demeanor, c) ensure every transaction is done as fast as possible to minimize the time customers spend waiting in line, d) answer as many questions as they can about product lines and promotions that the customer may have failed to ask people working the sales floor, and e) maintain vigilance from short-changers, refund abusers, tag-switchers, shoplifters, and the rest of that percentage of holiday shoppers that court and actively attempt to create service failures in order to put a retailer in their alleged "debt" for some imagined slight.

The work retail cashiers do isn't hard, but three days before Christmas? It's god damn tough. What is nice isn't when cashiers can actually count cash - except in cases like Fidatelo's, they can. What is nice is when customers realize that sometimes even the best cashiers, folks with tens of thousands of hours experience behind a register, can look at the 4000th customer in their line over the past week and suddenly get the thousand yard stare because they're trying desperately to remember whether the customer gave them a $20 or a $10 and whether forty-three cents change means they get a dime or not from the drawer.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go work my 64th through 75th hours since last Monday.

[JeeberD]

It's so sad...management is constantly amazed that the drawer in the bar almost always comes out correct to the penny when I'm working. Apparently it's hardly ever in-balance when other bartenders are working. I don't get it...first off, counting change is as simple as it gets. Secondly...the damn register tells you how much change to give.

*sigh*

[Raiders Army]

What throws people off is that the dime is smaller than the penny and although George Washington is on the dollar bill, Alexander Hamilton is on the twenty and he wasn't the 20th President.

[SportsDino]

Whenever I'm doing cash I just take my own time and do it my own way. Any customer gets ticked off that I do my idea of the correct procedure I just ignore. There really shouldn't be any difficulty in giving change, and given its just as easy to give out a $100 as a $1 they should make sure cashiers have some clue what they are doing.

Hell, having skipped actual training (learning on the go, yay) I wish they would have told me more about all the other special little rules.

[JW]

These are products of modern education theory. Memorization, drill, and repetition are considered evil by most modern educational theorists, so little things like memorizing basic arithmetic tables and drilling to mastery in manipulation of numbers are considered bad for the little children. Instead they are taught how to "think," whatever that means. So you get teenagers and young adults who cannot intuitively do basic number operations in their heads.