Today I worked the register totally on my own for the first time, no one standing over my shoulder to answer my questions as I went along and jump in if I start drowning. And I lived to tell the tale.
Kids can be so frustrating. Since I'm still pretty new at this, I'm much slower than the old cashier, so periodically the line would start to noticeably clump up between the server and my register. And they just can NOT hold on to those debit cards! So while it should go smoothly - kid swipes card, account appears on my screen, I make the proper debit and clear it - most of them either had to ask me to look up their account by name or they type in their account number on the pinpad beside the card reader. And they all try to punch it in like they've got somewhere to be real fast, leading to multiple attempts. And then the kids behind them will try to punch in THEIR numbers before I'm done with the current kid, making a general mess of things.
Also - why oh why do 5th graders give me cash in such a mess? The ones who paid me in cash for their lunches never gave me unfolded dollars. Even folded dollars would have been okay. I get crumpled wads, or dollars folded over together about four times, or Drunken Hobo Origami. Ai-yaa.
But I digress. 'Member when I said the school won't let 'em go hungry? That's not entirely true. I suppose if we truly did that, some kids could run up unmanageable tabs at the rate of $2.25 per day over a school year. We're supposed to float them for a few lunches, but after that we can't do it. We just give them a "peanut butter bar" and a milk. These things - they look like mini ice-cream sandwiches, wrapped in paper with the words "peanut butter jelly graham cracker sandwich" or something like that on them in plain print. I haven't seen the actual bar inside, and I'm not sure I want to. I was told today that if they're more than seven or eight dollars in the red, I'm not to ring up a lunch for them but instead give them one of those.
And sure enough, it came to that...just once, fortunately. And of course, they see the server before they see me, so she already had a lunch on her tray. Pizza Day. I had the dubious honor of letting her know how much she owed, taking away her pizza and salad, and handing over one of those abhorrent creations. She looked at me like I'd run over her puppy and then offered her a pet slug.
Okay. My supervisor reminded me that, if she's that far behind, the school has called her house at least twice to remind her parents to give her lunch money. At least a week and a half ago, what with the break and all. But I still felt awful.
Kids can be so frustrating. Since I'm still pretty new at this, I'm much slower than the old cashier, so periodically the line would start to noticeably clump up between the server and my register. And they just can NOT hold on to those debit cards! So while it should go smoothly - kid swipes card, account appears on my screen, I make the proper debit and clear it - most of them either had to ask me to look up their account by name or they type in their account number on the pinpad beside the card reader. And they all try to punch it in like they've got somewhere to be real fast, leading to multiple attempts. And then the kids behind them will try to punch in THEIR numbers before I'm done with the current kid, making a general mess of things.
Also - why oh why do 5th graders give me cash in such a mess? The ones who paid me in cash for their lunches never gave me unfolded dollars. Even folded dollars would have been okay. I get crumpled wads, or dollars folded over together about four times, or Drunken Hobo Origami. Ai-yaa.
But I digress. 'Member when I said the school won't let 'em go hungry? That's not entirely true. I suppose if we truly did that, some kids could run up unmanageable tabs at the rate of $2.25 per day over a school year. We're supposed to float them for a few lunches, but after that we can't do it. We just give them a "peanut butter bar" and a milk. These things - they look like mini ice-cream sandwiches, wrapped in paper with the words "peanut butter jelly graham cracker sandwich" or something like that on them in plain print. I haven't seen the actual bar inside, and I'm not sure I want to. I was told today that if they're more than seven or eight dollars in the red, I'm not to ring up a lunch for them but instead give them one of those.
And sure enough, it came to that...just once, fortunately. And of course, they see the server before they see me, so she already had a lunch on her tray. Pizza Day. I had the dubious honor of letting her know how much she owed, taking away her pizza and salad, and handing over one of those abhorrent creations. She looked at me like I'd run over her puppy and then offered her a pet slug.
Okay. My supervisor reminded me that, if she's that far behind, the school has called her house at least twice to remind her parents to give her lunch money. At least a week and a half ago, what with the break and all. But I still felt awful.
No comments:
Post a Comment