True. But in this case the OP’s better choice would be to rant.
Had he chilled, he would have been out $27. Instead, he stood up for his very obvious rights, and got sworn at for it. In my book, that entitles the OP to one Grade A Regulation Rant.
That reminds me of a story.
These three guys wanted to order a pizza for $30…
You can fix someone’s behaviour and forgive them at the same time. And you’re totally right, this kid just didn’t understand how checks work. Which is why the OP should follow up and make sure this kid gets it. Because he’s selling groceries to little old ladies on social security, and families on food stamps, and other clueless people who also don’t understand checks but might be caught one day without their ATM card. For the sake of all those people, OP should put in a call to the store and make sure somebody explained to this kid how checks work and how to handle people’s money. Unlike Baltimore traffic, this is something that can be fixed. And if the kid happens to get fired as a result of the call, well, either he’ll find another job, or the job market is really tight in that area and someone else well get the chance to prove that they know how to work a register. Sorry, but I don’t buy the logic that all min-wage workers are so stupid that they don’t know what it means to write a check. I think people in the service industry deserve more credit.
Yeah, OP, why aren’t you joining the Visa Dance? How dare you throw the perfectly orchestrated synchonized Great American Commerce Dance Dance Revolution off its timing by your oh-so-outdated and selfish desire to use paper?
I’m in the “fire the clown” camp. We go to the Safeway near us in large part because the checkers are not minimum wage drones, are reasonably smart, and always helpful. If I found checkers like that in the OP, I might go to Albertson’s with its Satanic self serve checker (which seldom works very well.) So if a checker is going to drive a customer away, the checker must go. At my Safeway all the workers on the floor are ready to say hello and answer questions. Do you really want this clown near any customers?
I’ve never driven a checkout stand, but I’d guess that the computer would not let him finish the transaction when the amount was for $85 and the payment entered was for $58. It probably said that $27 more was owed. If it had let him finish, at the end of the day he’d have $X of sales entered, $X in the till, and $X-27 listed as being paid - so he wouldn’t have been out the $27 at all. The coding of the register was done to ensure that mistakes like the guy made would get caught. The register is clearly smarter than the user.
Ok, dude, I agree, that cashier was a moron. But it’s 2007 so why the fuck are you still writing checks? See that is what caused the error. If you had handed him your checkcard, and he had done that, you would have still owed $27 as your card would only have been charged $58.60.
Think of the errors that would have ensued had you tried to pay with wampum. Checks are to pay bills (and even there there are faster better ways for most bills), not to shop.
Clearly not. The error was caused by the checker inputting the amount of the check incorrectly. What if the OP’er had used – gasp! – cash and the checker had inputted the amount incorrectly? Still his fault? Or the checker’s fault?
There is no obligation to use one particular form of legal tender over another. If the store doesn’t want to accept checks, it can institute a policy to that effect. But so long as the store accepts checks, it has an obligation to employ people who actually know how to deal with checks. And if wampum was legal tender and accepted by the store, then it would be reasonable to expect the checkers to know how to deal with wampum as well.
Checks may not be on the bleeding edge of technology, but they are far from obsolete. Same with cash. If both are accepted at the market, then it is incumbent on the cashier to know how to handle them. It’s not like the OP asked to pay in bushels of sasaphras root.
Nope. The error was strictly the cashier’s. Or the manager’s, who should have provided proper training.
cue sappy commercial music
Insert Picture of unshaven slacker cashier
Sally Struthers Copy: “You know, its not easy going through life Stupid. The inability to do basic math has made management positions an almost unattainable dream for Johnny. Without a job, he’d be robbing someone’s house just about now. Here at Safeway, we want to help. We’ve given him a job. Now, won’t you do yours? With a job, he has pride in himself once again. Look at the smile on his face and how clean he keeps his polyester apron.”
" And, for just $27 extra per transaction, you can keep little Johnny employed at Safeway. Won’t you help…?" 
If you think I do not understand that the cashier was the moron, you are a bigger moron
Even if this had happened in some bizarro universe where the computers ruled and humans could not question their authority, why was the customer supposed to pay the twenty seven dollars? The cashier made the mistake - let him pay for it. This guy was clumsy, stupid, and trying to evade responsibility.
All of which is completely and 100% irrelevant. If the store accepted beaver hides and tobacco and a customer says “I’m going to pay in beaver hides and tobacco”, then clerk should know how to ring up ‘beaver hides and tobacco’. I don’t care how much more convenient debit/credit cards/retinal scans/cash are for the transaction, the customer is operating within the store’s own policy. (It is perfectly legal for any store to refuse to accept checks- the store does accept checks- therefore, store should know how to process checks.)
I once had a desk clerk ring up my $200+ hotel tab THREE TIMES, billing my credit card each time. It took almost half-an-hour that I didn’t really have to spare for her to adjust it off and for me to assure that my credit card would be billed for $200 rather than $600. However, the clerk was apologetic and polite, she was stressed and busy, it was a stupid mistake- I’ve made them myself, many times, as a desk clerk even- I never got mad. I don’t hold it against the hotel, I bear no enmity against the clerk, I even laughed and told her to calm down, that I wasn’t upset, I just want to make sure I’m not charged etc… No biggie.
Now if the clerk had told me “I don’t have time you’re just gonna have to make sure of this yourself” or said “Fuck it, I don’t know what’s goin’ on here” and been not the least bit apologetic or had been the least bit insolent, I’d have been furious, I’d have written letters, etc… I can forgive a mistake- I can even forgive downright incompetency to a degree (we all gotta eat and we don’t always have a wide choice of jobs) but unprovoked rudeness is absolutely inexcusable whether you are the customer or the customer service person.
If you have a customer service job, I don’t give a flying fuck if you’re being paid $200k per year or $5.75 per hour, you should demonstrate proper manners and customer appreciation. This is not saying that “the customer is always right” or any of that “you have to take crap for minimum wage” bullshit, it’s just saying that social skills and formal niceties are more than a little important and that if you don’t demonstrate them you should not work in customer service. Period. No room for argument.
The rude should be eaten. (Anyone know how to say that in Latin?)
That’s what we would do where I work. Enter the amount as cash so the register is happy, and let it go. The problem is that most cashiers don’t understand that the “amount tendered” window means absolutely nothing. There are no records kept of that part of the transaction. All it does is tell you the amount of change to give. I really don’t think that most retail places include this as part of the training.
And yes, the cashier in this case should have been, at the very least, severely reprimanded. There’s no excuse for that kind of attitude around a customer.
and then when he tried to drive off and the off duty cop pulled a gun on him…
Agreed, all you’d do where I work is input another cheque for $27 to finish the sale and everyone - the till and, most importantly, the customer - is happy. In terms of difficulty to fix it’s a 3/10 at most.
Amen. I cash up all the tills where I work and at least once a day a saleperson will come up to me and say “I’m really sorry, but I hit the £20 button when someone only gave me a £10 so till x will be £10 short tonight”. I used to be patient and try to explain it to them, but now I’ve given up and just say “Well, we’ll have to take £10 out of your wages this month to balance it out, ok?”.
And, of course, the cashier in the OP was a moron, and an unspeakably rude one to boot.
That won’t help either, when you’re balancing registers later and your cheques are short $27, and your cash is over $27. The best solution is to enter the money you receive that matches up with the transactions. Yes, I HAVE spent more mornings than I would like to remember trying to balance the damned register after people with a cavalier attitude towards accounting just make up figures to cover their errors.
My husband’s story about cashiers not using basic logic is from when he was buying books for a year at university. His textbook purchase should have come to hundreds of dollars, but there was a new system in the book store, so they had to do all kinds of messing around (enter the price, reduce it, re-enter it, crap like that). At the end of his very large purchase, the cashier came up with a ridiculously low number like $30 or something (when each textbook alone cost more than $50). She just asked him for $30, without blinking an eye. As a student, he paid the $30 and ran.
Occasionally a cashier at Safeway will make a huge mistake and come up with $3000 for a couple bags of groceries. When that happens, we look at each other and start laughing, because we both have working brains. “Wow, those apples have really gone up!” I like to use up my change paying for stuff, though, so I keep a very careful eye on the transaction. Giving someone $21.50 for a $16.50 charge (so you get a five dollar bill back) has to be approached with extreme caution, but it still goes haywire sometimes.
Working in customer service does not make you a martyr! I’ve done my time in retail, and I have to say, it gave me a deep appreciation for people who do it as a career. I’m not talking about the snotty college students who work retail because “I have tuition to pay and the schedule fits my school schedule perfectly. I hate customers, but oh boo hoo, poor me, I’m paying my own way through life”. I’m talking about the people who actually go in and work their asses off and earn a living to provide for their family, and actually enjoy working with people. God knows I prefer sitting at a nice office desk; the only contact I have with people is my co-workers and over the telephone. Anyway, this kid screwed up, and he was rude. No amount of “you should have used a better technology” or “give the kid a break, he’s in customer service” changes the fact that a job is a job, and if you are incompetent, you deserve to get reprimanded, retrained, or fired.
And on re-reading, your cheques would balance but your cash would still be out. See why this isn’t a good idea? It’s hard to figure out later.
Something like oportet edo rudis gens. (literally “one should eat rude people” AFAICT).