A very good friend of mine works in the office/customer service at a Weis (regional supermarket chain). I was picking her up at work a few days ago and decided that I'd like to go buy a bag of chips and some soda. She works till closing, so it's one of her closing responsibilities to pull and count the cash from the self-checkouts, fill the receipt tape, etc. and I felt like messing with her, because it was like, 45 seconds before closing when I got to the registers and she was waiting to pounce on them like a cat (she doesn't get paid for the time she spends taking care of things after closing). So, I went and used the self-checkout she was waiting at.
First and foremost, it would NOT allow me to sit my hand-carried items down without bitching. So, chips and soda on the floor while I dug out my GDMF club card (because they put a 33% markup on everything for non-club members) and scanned it. That worked decently.
Scanned my chips. Put those on the belt. They proceeded to SLOWLY move down the belt to the other end. She told me to hurry up, so I went and scanned the coke and put it on the belt. "PLEASE REMOVE ALL ITEMS FROM THE BELT AND TRY AGAIN! and it proceeded to quickly reverse everything back to my end. Any amount or combination of sitting the items back on the belt wouldn't appease it - it wanted the sh!t re-scanned. Tried that, and then realized that it HAD NOT DELETED THE ORIGINALS. So she had to delete them. And it decided to delete the scan of my club card, too. Start over from the beginning. This time, I waited for the chips to be completely clear of the belt. And then scanned the coke and put it on the belt, which then proceeded to use the case of coke as a weapon to smash my bag of chips against the wall on the other end....
And then it refused to read the mag-strip on my check card (my wallet and I have had a few close encounters with some high power magnetic fields, and as such, some really poor equipment can't read the strips). I had no cash. There is no way to manually enter the CC# on these things. So, she said "You're paying tonight" and stuck in one of HER $10 bills. The machine proceeded to not give correct change. It had been doing that all day, apparently, and nobody had ever brought it to attention.
It took her an hour and a half after closing to account for all the overage in that ONE machine, and then she took care of the other two in an additional half hour. Unfortunately, by this time, every decent place to go eat was closed. So we went to a 24hr McD's drivethrough and sat in the car eating.
So.... If Weis weren't so incredibly stingy that they only paid her and her coworkers up until closing time and no later, they would have expended approximately $42. They also have to pay someone to stand there and fix the damn thing throughout the day when the machines decide to fight the customers, as they did for me. This works out to about 1 minimum wage teenager per machine. This is the same as the staff for operating a NORMAL cash register, which is faster, more efficient, and WORKS ALL THE TIME. And since normal cash drawers are a hell of a lot easier to count than an enormous wad of bills, there's less time spent after closing. Thereby, normal cash registers would be cheaper, both hardware and personnel wise.
First and foremost, it would NOT allow me to sit my hand-carried items down without bitching. So, chips and soda on the floor while I dug out my GDMF club card (because they put a 33% markup on everything for non-club members) and scanned it. That worked decently.
Scanned my chips. Put those on the belt. They proceeded to SLOWLY move down the belt to the other end. She told me to hurry up, so I went and scanned the coke and put it on the belt. "PLEASE REMOVE ALL ITEMS FROM THE BELT AND TRY AGAIN! and it proceeded to quickly reverse everything back to my end. Any amount or combination of sitting the items back on the belt wouldn't appease it - it wanted the sh!t re-scanned. Tried that, and then realized that it HAD NOT DELETED THE ORIGINALS. So she had to delete them. And it decided to delete the scan of my club card, too. Start over from the beginning. This time, I waited for the chips to be completely clear of the belt. And then scanned the coke and put it on the belt, which then proceeded to use the case of coke as a weapon to smash my bag of chips against the wall on the other end....
And then it refused to read the mag-strip on my check card (my wallet and I have had a few close encounters with some high power magnetic fields, and as such, some really poor equipment can't read the strips). I had no cash. There is no way to manually enter the CC# on these things. So, she said "You're paying tonight" and stuck in one of HER $10 bills. The machine proceeded to not give correct change. It had been doing that all day, apparently, and nobody had ever brought it to attention.
It took her an hour and a half after closing to account for all the overage in that ONE machine, and then she took care of the other two in an additional half hour. Unfortunately, by this time, every decent place to go eat was closed. So we went to a 24hr McD's drivethrough and sat in the car eating.
So.... If Weis weren't so incredibly stingy that they only paid her and her coworkers up until closing time and no later, they would have expended approximately $42. They also have to pay someone to stand there and fix the damn thing throughout the day when the machines decide to fight the customers, as they did for me. This works out to about 1 minimum wage teenager per machine. This is the same as the staff for operating a NORMAL cash register, which is faster, more efficient, and WORKS ALL THE TIME. And since normal cash drawers are a hell of a lot easier to count than an enormous wad of bills, there's less time spent after closing. Thereby, normal cash registers would be cheaper, both hardware and personnel wise.
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