Wow! Oddly, that is something I never considered. But then, I’m not one who gets back in the car. I was born to winters, and will stand out in the freezing wind to wait or use the time to wash salt spray off the headlights and rear window. But yeah, don’t start pumping gas until you are done with the all the button pushing and then don’t touch stuff until the the gas flow is turned off.
Day 22. A 3-8 shift on a Wednesday, working with my mentor.
Biggest problem of the day was when someone gave me a scratch ticket that they’d won $4 on, and then wanted to put it, and $5, towards gas. It wouldn’t let me do it very easily. It kept saying that it was going to give him $5 in gas, instead of $9. When he came back in, my mentor was able to fix it-- we did it as separate transactions.
I gave myself a paper cut when I tore off someone’s lotto scratcher.
Sold a few pizzas, including one almost by accident. When someone mentioned that the slice of pizza they’d just bought was going to be dinner, I casually said that it doesn’t really cost that much more to buy a whole pizza. She said, “Okay, you convinced me,” and bought a whole one. I turned to my mentor with a smile on my face. “See how good a salesman I am?”
A couple of spots on the upcoming schedule are making me nervous. Of course, I’ve mentioned on several occasions that I’m going to be helping train a newbie. That shift is tomorrow. I’ve already texted one of my coworkers to get mass cooking instructions for taquitos and hot dogs. My mentor says if I run into trouble, I can also text him.
But right after that 3-10 shift, I have to go home, get my ass right into bed, and get up to work a 7a-3p shift, which I’m doing two days in a row. I’ll be working with two individuals who are underage and are thus unable to sell alcohol and cigarettes. God help me, I’m going to be the responsible adult in the room.
Could be worse, though. On the original schedule, I was supposed to work an entire 7-hour overnight shift by myself. But one of my coworkers’ relatives passed away, and she’ll be at the funeral over the weekend, so my boss (who will be in Canada this week) changed things around.
Whenever you’re dealing with the cash register fighting you about some weird combo, just make it two separate transactions. E.g. ring up and pay the winning scratcher, hand the customer 4 $1s, close the register, then ring up his $9 of gas taking his $5 and the 4 $1s back.
You’ll stay right, stay safe, stay legal, and avoid a lot of frustration. You’ll also be making yourself a LOT more immune to falling for the conman’s razzle-dazzle where you end up giving them $20 in change for a $5 bill, and giving them their $3 purchase too.
Ooof, that is the worst about working service industry jobs. I use to often work until 1AM, and have to be back at 9AM when I was assistant manager at a video store. My mother’s shift scheduling as a telephone operator made me realize my life was easy when compared to her scheduling.
Ah, yes. “Clopening.” Closing & then immediately turning back around and opening. You visit your home briefly, then unwind everything you did yourself the night before.
Isn’t that a weird feeling?
The humor writer Dave Barry once said something close to
I went to a doctor who seemed too young to trust. He seemed about my age. I’m my own age and I’d never trust me with such a responsible job.
The “I’m my own age” catch line is verbatim, but I’ve butchered the flow of the rest of his set-up. Anyhow, it was punchy and funny the way he wrote it. I’ve often thought that “I’m my own age …” line when making a step up in responsibility.
Day 23. A 3-10 shift on a Thursday night.
Very eventful day.
I was talking about art with the cat lady; she used to be an art teacher. I told her I’m not a visual artist but I can sing, and I sang “Yesterday” for her. She liked it. Then Door Dash rang immediately after.
At about 7:30, a lady came in wanting to cash in a $200 lotto ticket, and we had to say no because we didn’t have that kind of money in our drawers. Give me credit, I was prepared to call my boss for instructions.
A guy came in to exchange two propane tanks, and I couldn’t get the old ones to fit back in! They’re still in the break room.
No new girl today; got stuck with old slow lady instead. She got passed a counterfeit hundred, one of those motion picture ones, for the third time apparently. She didn’t even realize it until the safe refused it.
I did 800 in money orders, and yes, all those bills were legit.
Yesterday this guy wanted to buy some motor oil but balked at the price. What he didn’t tell me, I found out today from another customer – the price on the sales floor was 4 dollars less than what it actually was! So we pulled those tags, but honored the price for one customer.
We got’sch new puppies at home!
And besides, isn’t St. Louis, like, the ice storm capitol of the world?
Holy cow, how little attention was she paying?
I could understand if she’d been passed a counterfeit $1; I barely look at those things. But $100s, you examine with a motherfucking fine-toothed comb. She didn’t even think to mark the thing until after the customer had left the store!
And this is the third time she’s done this, apparently!
Something about that person’s motivation or ability to pay attention is lacking. If her attitude to accepting hundreds is “see a picture of an old-fashioned guy, see the “100” in the corner, good enough.”, well … that’s not good enough.
If the bad guys figure out she’ll accept funny money, it won’t be long before they’ll be back.
I’m going to bet your manager will solve this problem pretty soon.
I’m amazed she’s there after the second time. Heck in a union shop, you’d get taken off register at least after the second time and probably canned.
Are you talking about those markers that change color, that indicate if a bill is fake or not?
If so … wow. Y’all have access to those and she still accepts fakes?
(Can you see now how your attitude is both wonderful and rare in retail?)
Yes, yes, but you mentioned something about puppies?
Well, like I said, when I said she’s a slow old lady, I mean she’s literally slow. She doesn’t have the energy for this job, nor the mental acuity, quite frankly. Last night, she was scheduled to leave at 9 and I was scheduled to leave at 10 and be replaced by the night-shift worker. She didn’t think I could handle being alone by myself for an hour, or something, and offered to stay an extra hour even though she’d already counted down her drawer. I called the boss with her offer, and she agreed.
And then slow old lady basically stood around and did nothing for an hour but what I explicitly asked her to do, like do some light cooking here and there, because if she were to do even a single cash transaction on her drawer, she’d have to recount the entire thing, and obviously, I wasn’t about to make her do that. Essentially, she did fuck-all for 45 minutes before she decided to go home. So that was a waste of matrix hours.
Day 24:
A 7 am- 3pm shift on a Friday, the day after I worked a 3 pm to 10 pm shift. The 7-Eleven version of a “close/open”, considering we don’t actually close. I relieved the same person who relieved me. And I did it on only about half an hour’s sleep. I couldn’t get comfortable last night. My mattress is shit and it’s too cold in my trailer.
Very early in the day, when I was with the 18-year-old and two other people, two women wearing Air Force fatigues came in. I was thinking, “Oh, okay. ROTC? Or from a nearby air base?” Then two more came in. Then five more, and before we knew it, a metric shit-ton of airmen were in our store. 28 cadets and 2 officers, who had been crammed like sardines into two large white vans. I actually said out loud, “We’re being invaded!” Hehe!
They made a beeline for the food we’d prepared ahead of time, the drink cooler, the snacks, and of course, the restroom. They were traveling from Raleigh to Langley. And they were a great, very friendly, upbeat, professional group of people. It was a pleasure serving them. The female cadets were kinda cute, too. Though they all looked like little kids to me, at the age of 40. They left our restrooms in flawless condition, too, even though a lot of them used them.
I learned two new skills today: How to package our baked-in-store cookies for sale, boxing or bagging them, and labeling them, and how to manually type in barcodes when barcodes won’t scan, like, there’s a partial tear, or a fold in a Gatorade bottle or something. This last one is a skill I wish I’d learned about, oh, 22 shifts ago. I’d been solving the problem by having the customer tell me the price and doing it as a “grocery w/tax”, which puts faith in the customer that they’re telling the truth (which, unfortunately, is sometimes a big ask), and also messes up the inventory.
My favorite customer (the very nice one who always makes me feel good, not the cute gay guy I’m mildly crushing on) came in for a coffee refill but forgot to bring her wallet with her. It’s like $1.35. I waved her through. Last time she was in here she bought an entire stock case full of water; I ain’t tripping about a dollar-thirty-five.
I had, at minimum, three people bitching to me about our prices today, as if I personally sit in the back, twirling my moustache, trying to think of what I can do today to make life harder for the common man. The third time, and possibly the first two times as well, I responded in a way that I probably shouldn’t have: “If you want inflation to get better, tell Putin to get the heck out of Ukraine.” One woman disagreed with me and blamed it on Biden. “I blame Biden for everything,” she said. If I’d had the spoons, and been off the clock, I would have pointed out that the Inflation Reduction Act was passed through the House of Representatives with about 95% of Republicans voting against it, because they care more about hurting the president than helping the country. But I figured I was already pressing my luck. I figure I’m going to stop bringing politics to work with me, except in the case of Mr. Jerry, who comes in every day and never has anything positive to say about the administration. Him, I can disagree with and know he won’t get me into trouble. She, on the other hand, is a stranger.
My mentor and another new guy, who’s not nearly as good as I am, quite frankly, came in to relieve me at 3. My mentor got last night off for dental surgery, and today, he can’t talk. Poor guy.
I wanted to end my shift by having them cook two egg rolls for me for the road, but other new guy burned them pretty badly and I didn’t want them. So I got a deli sandwich instead. Poor substitute. When 7-Eleven’s egg rolls are perfectly cooked, they’re so tender.
Another 7 am to 3 pm shift tomorrow, and then I’m off Sunday all day for church.
I did! Look for a picture soon.
And speaking of co-workers who need not be here anymore but somehow haven’t been fired yet, we have a woman who’s flagrantly stealing hundreds of dollars from us, even going so far as to tear off scratchers, and we’ve got her on camera, and she’s still gainfully employed. (Moreso than the rest of us, because she’s making more money, because of her little scheme.) Apparently the boss is waiting to take care of her until she, the boss, gets back from Canada.
Sounds like the old slow woman is also good at cadging extra hours of wages for not working. Since it appears you’re by far the most dynamic and honest employee at the place, you can assume many (most?) of the others will likewise try to lazily piggy-back on you in one way or another.
Oh, no. No, no, no. You’ll just get sucked into endless debates. Always respond to politics/religion/race/anything else potentially inflammatory with something bland and noncommittal.
I work a register, too, and put up with constant bitching about prices having gone up. (I like the mental image of twirling a mustache, esp. since i
I’m a woman.) I always respond along the lines of, “Well, everything sure is more expensive these days!” and follow up with a comment about have you seen how much chicken costs at the grocery store now, or something like that. They’ll agree, things do in fact cost more, and usually some lonely little brain cell will light up at the concept of meats etc. being more expensive, so yeah, your damn pizza costs a buck or two more than last year, Karen.
But never, ever, go into the specifics of geopolitics or what have you.
Customers do a lot of weird shit, but never in the history of humanity has Bubba ever looked a 7-11 clerk in the eye and said, “You know what? You’re right. Thank you for changing my mind.”
“You might be right,” or “Well, ain’t that something?” depending.
Just don’t say “Well bless your heart!” 