Today I noticed a sign saying “We now sell CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) Passes. Ask at camera counter.”
So I said, “Cool, now I won’t have to go to the currency exchange.”
I went up to the camera counter and asked for 3 one day passes.
The camera counter clerk picks up his phone and makes an announcment, “Manager to camera, for CTA pass.”
The manager comes over, I tell her what I want and see her go into a room, (She left the door open) and I saw her open a safe, she got out what I wanted and handed it to the camera clerk who rang up the passes.
My question is why do they keep them locked up?
You think they could put them as part of a drawer total. OK I could see locking up maybe the monthly passes that are 86.00, so having a bunch of those in a drawer would make the drawer value go up very quickly.
But a one day pass is $5.75.
Any ideas? Or is it just a matter to keep the overall value of a clerk’s drawer as little as possible?
As you’ve deduced, they want to keep the passes secure because they’re easily convertible to cash.
I don’t know about Walgreen’s, but in many stores the cashier’s drawer goes with the cashier. That is, the amount of cash in the drawer at the beginning and end of the shift is tallied against the the transactions the cashier rang up. Having to tally up the number of transit passes in the same way they tally the cash is unnecessarily complex.
Incidentally, when I worked in a hospital I noticed only one nurse on a given shift had the key to the narcotics drawer, and only that nurse could dispense the narcotics. Same idea.
The local variety stores that carry the transit passes don’t actually own them, they are just agents for the transit company. And like kunilou said, they’re almost as good as cash.
I hate having to buy them at the camera counter because there are always 3 people ahead of me trying to figure out how to get all their photos duplicated or something.
I was wondering 'cause when I was asst controller for a hotel, in both places I was, the front desk clerks would sell things like stamps or passes for transit, and we counted them as part of a bank.
Each front desk clerk has his/her own bank. If it was say $200, the say 4 passes of $5.00 (then the cost) and say 5.00 in stamps would be part of the bank
Cash = 175
Passes = 20
Stamps - 5
Total = 200
It’s easy to account for. A pass sold for cash is still cash and if a pass is sold for credit, you just set up the POS to charge the credit and take out of your cash on hand. So the bank balances still. It’s really easy to do
But I though maybe at Walgreen they don’t get their own drawers