Of course with the bank regulations these days, that doesn’t work for paying on the spot - typically most decent-sized stores have electronic systems that hit your account right away.
Sometimes if stores have (not allowed by their credit card companies) signs up that say they require a minimum CC purchase, I’ll use a check instead if I don’t have the cash and no ready way to access cash.
It also makes me unreasonably nuts when I walk into a retail store and five different people approach me at five different times to ask me if I need help. I realize they’re obligated to ask. But in small retail shops during slow times when a lot of the staff is just standing around (which is usually when I go), surely they can hear that I’ve just been asked by three or four other people, right? I know they’re required to ask, but in general, I just want to be left the hell alone while I’m shopping.
When I went to India it was much, much worse. Service there is so wonderful and people everywhere are so very attentive that, being from America, for me it was overkill.
The very large guy in the office on the other side of the wafer-thin wall directly behind me sneezes in a way that makes me want to twist his trachea like I would wring out a towel.
“AAAAAAHHHHHHCHOOOOOOOOOOO!” he dramatically enunciates every 3-8 minutes. Just now as I was on the phone with a client he made his theatrical “sneeze”. My mild mannered client reacted with, “What the hell was that?!”
My ex sneezes that way too; is it supposed to be manly? I don’t get it.
That is almost true, but I can tell you I’ve spent 'way too much time behind people asking where to sign on the pad, asking if they can get cash back, having to be reminded to confirm the total, and so on. Heck, waiting for the receipt for a credit card or ATM customer can take as long as imprinting the back of the check and tossing it in a drawer.
You are simply flat-out incorrect. When the last item is scanned, the total is on the screen. I fill it in and the check is in the cashier’s hands before the last item is bagged. All she has to do is slip it in the printer and put it in her drawer. There’s no delay whatsoever. Unprepared twits slow down lines, not checks.
And, by the way, this is a small town and I’m trying to be courteous to the grocery store. I own a retail business, so I understand checks. When you write me a check for $100, I get $100. When you use a credit card, get $97 for that same purchase. Your card costs the grocer 3%. Thy have to raise prices 3% to compensate. So I’m paying more for my groceries because you want to use a credit card. Who’s the twit here?
I’m not wrong, although your sweeping judgmental overgeneralization is. If a store refused my card, they would be in violation of their merchant card agreement. There is nothing anywhere that says I can’t write “Check ID” on the back of my card. As long as I sign the card, I can write “Remove Clothes” after it if I should so choose.
When they check the signature (which they are REQUIRED to do), the “Check ID” written next to it is my request to look at my ID as well. Granted, there’s no imperative to obey my request and ask for the ID, but if they refused my card, I’d certainly call VISA on the spot to complain about them.
If everybody asked for ID when it said to ask for ID, it would be a whole lot harder to use stolen cards. Yes, I’ve had cards stolen and used.
I don’t know why you have such a crusade against checks, Happy Wanderer, but you need to realize that a slow or unprepared person will slow down your line whether they pay with cash, check, ATM card, credit card, or sexual favors. Your problem is with people, not with specific methods of payment (well, your problem in this thread is with overgeneralizing, but that’s a different story).
Little things, eh?
“Kitteh” - that is one little thing that makes me batshit crazy - I HATE IT! It’s not cute, it’s not funny, it’s just annoying as hell.
Husbands who call me at work when they are at home so that I can do something involving a phone call for them. Yes, you heard that right. He calls me to ask me to call someone else and ask them a question for him. Then call him back with the answer. He must really miss me… :rolleyes:
Simple questions are handled by our front desk, which is always staffed by multiple people during work hours. My phone doesn’t ring unless it’s a complicated question and complicated questions are better answered when I have all the facts and figures in front of me and I have ample time to look stuff up and dig through files and maybe even call other people on the phone – things better served by email.
I’m also just anti-phone.
People (who are old enough to know better) who either do not know how to blow their nose or refuse to blow their nose and instead prefer to snort the slimey snot back into their throat - not once, but multiple times - and swallow the crud. This really gets on my nerves.
Whining. I have little tollerance for, but I am learning to be more patient with young ones who do this.
Having to ask several times for something to be done and be completely ignored. But maybe this would be considered a big thing.
Micro-managing. Even though I am a bit of a control freak, I despise having to micro manage and hate being micro managed. If i cant trust you, or you dont trust me, then we have a problem that needs to be addressed.
I work with someone who calls me and tells me to call people and tell them to call him. If you ask him for a phone number, he’ll respond something like “Call him and get the number for his ex-mother-in-law that use to live next door to that guy’s sister, who should have the number.” WTF?
Another little thing that sets me off is the constant characterization (IRL and on this board) of retail workers as slack-jawed, drooling morons. I’ve got two degrees, I speak two languages and I am quite well-read. Yet, all day long, customers treat me like I am far too simple to manage dressing myself in the morning when usually it is they who don’t understand anything about what they’re asking for. And I see statements like yours above on the board all the time and it really sets me off.
Maybe it bothers Audrey as much as it does me to be peripheral. I don’t ask for a lot, but when I say “Hi, how are you?”, the socially acceptable response is “Fine. And you?” or some variation. It is NOT socially acceptable to bark out your order. I and Audrey and the rest of the service industry is made up of human beings and we simply ask to be treated as such.
Writing a check that you know will not clear if it is presented immediately is illegal in the US. And in New Zealand:
InvisibleWombat, at my chain, writing a check is the most-involved form of payment. Even if it’s ready at the second the order is complete, there are multiple steps that still need to be taken:
[ol][li]Cashier presses Tender, then Personal Check.[]Cashier keys amount, presses Enter.[]Cashier puts check face up into printer for the MICR line to be read.[]Cashier removes check and waits for prompt on screen.[]Cashier enters customer’s license or other ID into the register and presses enter – keep in mind that Florida license numbers consist of a letter followed by 12 numbers.[]Cashier selects the type of ID or the state where the license was issued.[]Cashier waits for check to process.[]Cashier puts check into printer face down to endorse.[]Cashier removes check and waits for receipt to give to the customer.[/ol][/li]
For all electronic payments, the register procedure is the same. The cashier presses Tender then EFT and then waits either for the signature slip or the receipt. If it’s a credit card, give the signature slip to the customer to sign while their receipt is printing, and then it’s over. If it’s a gift card, EBT, or debit card, then we just wait for the receipt.
In order of speed at the POS, cash is fastest, then debit / EBT / gift cards, then travelers’ / manufacturers’ checks, then credit cards, then checks.
And you may understand checks at your small business, but if you deposited them at the rate we do, you’d know we don’t get $100 from a $100 check. There are charges associated with checks in the volume we deal with. There’s a flat fee for depositing checks, and there’s a per-check fee as well. In addition, there are the many checks that get returned. We get charged by the bank for each returned check and then we have to handle collections on the checks as well.
There’s also a flat fee for depositing cash, and there’s a lot of handling that needs to be done with cash that doesn’t need to be done with the electronic payments.
Understood. However, there are many legitimate reasons not to use email. If a person is in a customer service type role, IMHO it is that person’s job to respond in whatever way the customer feels most comfortable. I’d prefer email most of the time, too, for exactly the reaons you state. Sometimes customers just need to have a discussion of something, which can take much less time than email. Sometimes an answer generates another question. I sometimes follow up a phone conversation with an email, just to confirm the info, make sure there’s no misunderstanding or misrepresentation (either accidental or on purpose).
After almost 7 months of working here my boss still can’t spell my name. :mad:
Well, you’ve got to admit that “pbbth” is a bit off-putting for most people who have English as their first language. No vowels, and two b’s in a row? I’d probably misspell it, too.
sandra_nz is undoubtedly correct about people “kiting” checks, which is what it is called when you write a check with funds that are not yet in your account. Write a check on Wednesday expecting a payroll check to hit the account Thursday.
Yes, it’s of course a type of check fraud, but people do it all the time.
And when cashiers scan the check, the money is not instantly removed from the account–the scan is merely to insure that the account is active. That the bank account exists. Without calling the bank, most stores have no way of checking if you actually have the money in your account. This is why they do that tedious phone number/ID number thing. So they can find you if you wrote them a hot check.
If you write a check to a store who doesn’t bank at the same place you do, chances are good you’ve got at least a couple of days before the funds will be removed from your account. Sometimes up to a week, if they don’t do daily deposits.
Signed,
Audrey (whose mother used to be a bank teller)
12 a.m. and 12 p.m.
Places that have perfectly functional double doors at the entrance . . . and then keep one of them locked at all times.
Why? Do you just enjoy seeing your customers bonk their heads on the door all day?
Don’t answer that.
That drives me nuts, too. The a.m. and p.m. mean “before noon” and “after noon.” How can “noon” be after itself? And besides, “noon” is one syllable, where “12 p.m.” is three.
I understand that things are different in big cities, and in different types of businesses as well. I see the “don’t accept checks from these people” lists in gas stations. But in my bookstore, I’ve had five bounced checks in six years. With four of them, I called the person and they apologized and asked me to resubmit it. I did, and it went through. With the fifth, the person drove in to the store and paid cash. My total net loss due to bad checks in six years: zero.
I’m sure your point-of-sale system is quite different from mine or the one at the grocery store I was talking about. They press one button for “Check” and one for “exact amount.” They slide the check into a printer which auto-detects it and prints the endorsement on the back. It then goes in the drawer. For a credit card, they’d still press the same two buttons, and then wait for a receipt to print, hand it to the customer, wait for the customer to sign it, check the signature, and put the original in the drawer. The check is quicker. In my store, the credit card processing isn’t integrated into the POS system (it’s a $1,000 option), so I have to swipe the card, punch in the last four digits, punch in the amount, wait for it to dial, and so forth. Credit cards take far longer than checks or cash for me.
I also understand that big banks do things differently, and that depositing hundreds of checks a day incurs different charges than my handful per day – but in this town with this bank and this volume, I pay a flat fee to process up to a certain number of checks. I have no per-check charges. $100 in cash is best, a $100 check gets me $100, and a $100 credit card transaction costs me $3.00.
People (namely my mother-in-law) who have started calling the house asking if I’m in labor yet. My due date is TODAY and you’re the kid’s grandma, ferchrissakes! You’re going to be there to take the video, woman. We’ll call you - didn’t we call you last time?! You don’t need to call every single day to “see how I’m doing.” When something starts up, you’ll know. GRR!
This is what credit cards are for. You use them to pay for your groceries now, then pay off the balance after your paycheck comes in.
I wish those electronic credit-card scanners were standardized, instead of being subtly different at every store. It would go a lot faster everywhere if the manufacturers could pick one way of doing it, and it were the same at every store.
Oh lord… I thought I was the only one! I work (volunteer) at a hospital, and it just irks me to see this… Luckilly I work nowhere near the front doors.
Sadly, the other thing for me… I suffer from depression, and thus, whenever I have a bad day, or a bad experience, or whatever, my friends and relations shrug it off as “Oh, you’re just having a depression attack.” Lord knows, my emotions cannot actually ever be -valid-.
To play assholes’ advocate for a moment, in loud bars some people (especially those like me who have a partial hearing loss) can’t hear for shit, and probably tend to assume that the inaudible words coming from the bartender’s mouth are “what can I get you?” or some variation thereof. A “please” is still in order, of course.
I, at least, respond appropriately to the question “how are you?” (I.e., with a customary and meaningless “fine,” because let’s be frank: neither you nor any other service person who asks the question really wants an honest answer in return…)