Peter Viney's Blog

Crisis at the cash register …

My first experience of the retail industry was aged fifteen, Saturdays and Sundays on Bournemouth Beach. We had a wooden tray each with dry ice and a supply of tubs and choc ices. The money went loose into a cloth apron round the waist where it rattled around together.

When I got promoted to a kiosk there was a cash drawer with sections for ha’pennies, pennies, threepenny bits and sixpences as well as shillings, florins and half crowns. We put all the notes … they were very few and far between … under the drawer. This is a system still beloved of secondhand record shops and book shops where production of a credit card by a customer causes gales of laughter, before they are directed to the nearest cash machine.

I finally made it to the small café, where I had a proper cash register with keys and a loud ting! It still had farthing and three farthing keys, though that humble coin had disappeared years earlier in 1961. I don’t think it went beyond nineteen shillings (95p), though who could spend such a fortune in a beach café?

Nowadays cash registers are really computers with a touch screen.  Their main function is sales analysis and stock control rather than recording the sums deposited in the cash drawer.

Trouble is … they’re too hard to operate for many operatives. Let’s exclude charity shops from this. They rely on elderly volunteers, often in their eighties. Touch screens are a challenge, and you expect the shop manager to be called out from the back (what do they do there all day?) to help with most if not all transactions. Is that talking book CD set to be recorded under media, books, bric a brac or other? For a bookshop selling new books, the distinction is important (there is VAT on audio books but not on books) but once they’re second hand it’s difficult to see the relevance of a distinction.

But what about mainstream shops? This was not unusual, but I was at a garden centre in the New Forest today. One bag of ericaceous compost. £3.99. I wasn’t looking, and handed over a £20 note. The change was counted out … twelve pounds two p. Hang on, I said. It’s only £3.99. Consternation. The touch screen registered it twice. £7.98. But she couldn’t open the till because there was no transaction and it was locked.

‘It’s registered twice,’ she explained.
‘Try £0.00,’ I suggested, ‘That’ll open the till.’
‘They stopped us doing that,’ she said.
‘Ah.’
‘It’s open to abuse.’
‘I can see that.’
Another assistant came over, ‘Oh! It registered twice. I’ll get the manager.’
That took two or three minutes.
‘We’ll have to cancel it,’ he said, ‘You see, it registered twice. No, it doesn’t want to do it.’
‘I have a penny. Can’t you just give me four pounds back and sort it out later?
‘We can’t get into the till, you see.’
‘I do.’
The first assistant said helpfully, ‘Try the other till and start again, then we can sort it out later.’
‘Good idea,’ I said.
‘It’ll completely mess up our stock control,’ said the manager.
‘Not my problem,’ I muttered, looking at my watch as obviously as I could.
Finally three people managed to get it registered on the other till and give me £4. I departed leaving them gathered round the screen looking worried.

How often does that happen? So often, you get two people gazing at the till, then a third joins them. It’s much worse if you’ve paid by credit card, because then some shops insist on a credit card refund. Marks & Spencer once did a credit card refund for 15p when I noticed the wrong price. Waitrose and Tesco just give you the cash.

Stock control? Loose peppers at Waitrose £3 a kilo. Four boxes, Red, Green, Yellow, Orange. All the same price. I put one of each in the same bag. At the check out each had to be taken out and weighed separately. Stock control. Someone somewhere needs to know the proportion of each colour sold, while I stand waiting and the check out person sneezes over them. I might not like people handling my fruit and vegetables … they’re not ones you peel. So use four bags? Apparently.

My record cash register haul, several years ago, was at Barnes and Noble (or possibly Borders, I don’t remember) at the Old Orchard Mall, in Skokie, Illinois. There were five cash registers. The person a few ahead of us in line had a problem with their discount system. One by one the others left their cash registers to join the discussion, until all five were huddled around the offending till. One to do the transaction, four to watch and offer advice.

Members of the Society of Authors get a 10% discount at Waterstones. In Bournemouth, Southampton or Poole this will always require calling the manager over to find the appropriate button. In Bath and Stratford-Upon-Avon, all the assistants know it automatically. This suggests where authors mainly live.

As I’ve said, the complex computers are doing stock control, not dealing with your purchase.  I shake my head at Self Service checkouts. They moan that you haven’t placed it squarely in the bagging area, then, oh dear. A bottle of beer. So you have to press HELP and wait for someone to come, key in their personal code, and confirm that you’re eighteen. That’s one of many possible issues. The person in front of me using Apple Pay from their phone the other day stopped the entire system.

As I have said for years, if you want me to use self-service tills (and thus take away someone’s job) at least give me a 5% or 10% discount for doing so.

To me, the answer was at the long defunct Toys ‘R’ Us, twenty five years ago. To my son’s delight they had an extremely rare and very large piece of Star Wars toys, boxed, new. £59.00, I think. Only one of them. We took it to the check out and went through the normal routine. Two assistants, then the manager. No, nobody could find it on the system.

‘Apparently it does not exist,’ said the manager.
‘Oh, dear. I really want to buy it. Can’t I just give you £59.00?’ I said.
‘No, the system won’t accept a payment without a bar code,’ she replied. She looked at my son, ‘There’s nothing else for it. You’ll just have to take it.’
‘Without paying?’ I gasped.
‘Nothing else for it,’ she said, ‘We’ve kept you waiting a long time. It doesn’t exist. It’s yours, sir.’

Let that be an example to all retailers! (And yes, I know Toys ‘R’ Us went bust, but that wasn’t the reason.)

FOOTNOTE

Last Sunday I scored a four at Waitrose when the till packed up. The fourth solved it by weighing a bottle of household cleaner on the fruit scales. It worked. I still haven’t managed a five in the UK.