So I finally finish up the Christmas cards (don’t worry yours should get there in about a week) and head out to the postal outlet to get me some stamps.
Now I should mention that it was the day after a snow day wherein the city got 4 ft overnight and shut down for a full day. Understandably it was busy everywhere the next day as people tried to catch up.
I like to think I am an understanding person and had no problem waiting in line. Also I don’t exactly expect lightening speed service from the post office. I was mailing about 100 letters, 85 to Canada, and 15 to the rest of the world. Now postal rates go up with such frequency I am often unsure of how much one letter or another will cost. But I was pretty sure that within Canada it was going to cost around 50 cents per card. No worries.
So I get my turn at the counter and order up my stamps, which the woman gathers together, struggling to figure out how many books of 12 it would take to make up the 85, making up the difference with loose stamps. No worries. She rings it in, I have my credit card ready in my hand. By now there is quite a long line of people behind me.
At this point she takes my card saying, " That’s $262.00" and proceeds to swipe the card and enter this amount. Now I wasn’t really ready to do any math in my head this day but this sounds off to me. Not until she passes me the credit card receipt to sign does she give me a bill. I immediately see that she has rung in 36 books of 12 stamps instead of 6 and point out to her that this is wrong.
Now begins the painfully slow process of her reversing this charge off my credit card, which requires not only relearning the process but locating a managers swipe card. Much heavy sighing from the line behind me and shuffling of feet. She’s clearly not happy with these developements, and says to me, “That’s why I always say the amount before I sweep the card!” as though this was my fault. I politely pointed out I had said something as soon as she gave me the bill.
Now there was a big poster right behind her promoting over night service, and, as this is a bilingual country, in food high letters it said, En Retard !
Sorry, I can’t let you off the hook for this one. You are there to take care of exactly one transaction, she is processing transaction after transaction each of which is unique. It’s not too much to expect you to pay attention to the transaction and be a positive force to ensure it is done correctly, rather than a passive spectator who complains after the fact.
You should have had some clue of how many books you needed and how many loose stamps you needed, rather than rely on her to do the math. You should have known, without having to do long division, what to expect the bill to be, at least you should have known it was supposed to be under $50 instead of over $250.
That’s not to say I haven’t paid $30 for $15 worth of groceries because I didn’t notice the cashier ringing up 33 oranges instead of 3. But, I’m willing to admit it was just as much my fault as hers.
Postage stamps used to come in packs of 10, not 12, I could not possibly have known they had changed that.
She was going at her top speed, said the amount and swiped the card before I had any chance to consider a mistake had been made. By the time I had reviewed the math in my head she had completed the transaction. Besides which I can hardly review whether she has actually made a mistake, or what that mistake might be, until I have the bill to review in my hand.
:smack: And, of course, I meant foot high letters.
You know drunken dialing? Food high letters are ones you scribble out after eating whole cheesecake and getting that wonderful sugar/fat zoom. Luckily you crash before you have time to mail them.
No, actually, it’s not. It is entirely her fault. Not that she should be shot, but it is her mistake and it would be wrong for her to expect you to catch it.
OP: BTW, 85 stamps is 7 packs of 12 plus one unless it is an “imperial dozen” sort of thing
Not so much that the cashier should expect me to catch her mistake, but that the buyer should actually be a participant in the transaction, rather than a cellphone talking, nose picking, fog enshrouded spectator.
Maybe elbows’ situation was such that attentiveness wouldn’t have made a difference, but a lot of people go through transactions without really paying attention to anything at all. At least elbows caught it before signing the receipt and walking away, so I guess I can let it slide… THIS time.
We trust so much in cards and computers it’s easy to just charge and pay what the machine says. I doubt someone in a haggle-happy country would have paid $15 for 3 oranges by mistake.
Elbows, if you expect to be given paperwork before you can check the math, then you’re unclear on the way things work. The paper work comes AFTER the transaction has been completed, when it’s too late.
The fact is, the PO worker was trying to work as quickly as possible, so customers like YOU wouldn’t have to spend more time in line than necessary. So she fat-fingers one transaction in a hundred; she’s still obviously doing her best to keep the line moving. The fact that you were oblivious, and thinking about beer or something, and didn’t immediately go “WHAT???” she she said, out loud, “two hundred and thirty six dollars,” didn’t help.
Neither one of you was paying enough attention. Her, I can excuse; we can all imagine the stress she’s under this time of year. You, not so much.
You’d think your report on this incident to the dope would have gone in MPSIMS and gone something like, “I was daydreaming in line and didn’t catch that the PO worker had overcharged me until it was too late, but she very quickly voided the transaction and corrected it for me with minimal delay. Here’s a toast to the PO workers and the stress they have to live through this time of year!”
Instead, you come to the Pit and sing a little aria in the key of whine about, what 2 minutes, tops? that it took her to correct the transaction.
Guess what: you’re angry at yourself, and embarrassed, that you didn’t catch the mistake on time, and you’re taking it out on her. Grow up.
I think you guys are way over the top saying Elbows is at fault here. As I read it the clerk said blah dollars and swiped the card before he even had a chance to say, whoa wait a minute. This happens all the time in retail. He then corrected the clerk, and it doesn’t sound like he went postal or anything, and she immediately placed the blame on him for not recognizing HER error.
I always know about what I’m spending when I go up to a register, but many times don’t catch the error until after the transaction is done. Are you guys all saying that you’re never been momentarily distracted while in the pay queue? BTW are Canadian PO’s like those in the US with all sorts of things to buy while you wait in line, like teddy bears and key chains? This also leads to distraction while you’re trying to buy your stamps.
I was trying to say that both people had some responsibility. The fact that I, personally, have more sympathy for the stressed out PO worker than for the distracted customer is irrelevant to that equation. I only meant to point out that, far from pitting the poor woman, the OP should have seen this incident as an example of grace under pressure and offered her a bloody tip.
They both had responsibility. The fact–the unavoidable fact–is that when you do hundreds of transactions a day, trying to keep the line moving as quickly as possible, a minor mistake here or there is absolutely unavoidable. OK? There is absolutely no human being on the planet would could do that many transactions, at that speed, under that much pressure, with absolute mechanical perfection. So the mistake was absolutely gonna happen to someone that day.
Outside of that context, sure, the PO worker made a mistake. But removing it from the context of unavoidability in order for the OP to expend the energy to actually come here and compose a seven paragraph whine is, to my eye, monstrously childish.
So Elbows, you drew the lottery ticket, and happened to be the person in line whose transaction was minutely flubbed and immediately corrected.
Get. Over it. Go back to that PO with flowers for the poor woman and quit whining because the universe chose you to be momentarily inconvenienced by a human being under pressure.
Geez lissner, most of us have worked a retail, customer service job at some point. I did Kresge’s at Christmas time and for God’s sakes was a car hop for Arf n Barf among other sleeze ball jobs. However, even as a snot nose kid I knew that when I made a mistake I was the one who was supposed to apologize, not blame the customer.
And how in holy fuck (since it’s the pit and this thread has been swearless so far) is it grace under pressure to blame your mistake on the recipient of said mistake?
I would like to agree with elbow and sinjin here. What else could elbow have done? Paid the 262 bill and walk off? Doesn’t seem like a satisfactory answer.
I will say I have worked in a retail setting, and several different random sales jobs, and I have often ran the credit card after saying the price and sometimes before, regardless of who is paying attention. Of course, I can’t blame it on them if I can’t operate the credit card machine, and if I make an error, it’s part of my job to fix it so that I don’t lose a customer.
I wasn’t there. But judging from the tone of the OP, I’m gonna read between the lines that the PO worker was at the receiving end of a little bit of impatience from elbows, and was responding defensively. If elbows complained about the mistake, the PO was perfectly correct in pointing out that elbows had missed her/his chance to check the math.
As I’ve said, it’s inarguable that such a mistake will happen once or twice a day; this is why the PO worker says the number out loud. Elbows says the transaction went to quickly for him to catch the mistake. He then goes on to say he can’t check the mistake until he sees it on paper. That’s ridiculous; would “two hundred and thirty-six dollars” make sense to anyone who was paying any kind of attention at all? How distracted would you have to be not to go, “Wait, what?!? Are you sure that’s right?”
Again, neither of us was there. You’re reading between the lines to find elbows blinking in starry-eyed, stainless benevolence at the snarling animal of a PO worker; I’m reading between the lines to find elbows an impatient customer, defensive about his own failure to pay attention, and the PO worker trying to snatch a little dignity from the situation by pointing out that she gave the customer an opportunity to correct her before the transaction was completed, so he was just gonna have to survive the two minute ordeal of correcting it.
Fine, the PO worker fat fingered the number pad. Because this is inevitable, as a way to forestall this the worker makes a habit of repeating the number to the customer, so that both of them have an opportunity to catch the mistake. BOTH of them missed it.
Who i the motherfucking fuck ever suggested such a thing?
Elbows could have shared a world-weary sigh and an sympathetic smile with the PO worker while she quickly corrected the mistake, and then come here and written a post in MPSIMS soliciting a round of applause for the PO workers of the christmas-celebrating world, rather pout like a solipsistic child in the Pit.
