fuckyeahretailrobin: [Image Description: Background is several triangles in a circle like a pie alternating from true red, scarlet and black. A robin is sitting on his perch looking to the right. Top Text: “CUSTOMERS WHO CONSTANTLY.” Bottom Text: “JUMP THE GUN.”] There are many examples of this, but I’ll only list a few. Each has to do with impatient customers who can’t take two seconds to think, but just act. A common theme among all of them is that, if they’d just take a second to relax and wait, they’d realize I’ve got the whole thing under control. 1. The customer who swipes their card every 10 seconds. Our card readers in the checkout lines display “Please swipe your card to begin transaction” as the default screen. That is, when I’m scanning a customer’s items, but haven’t actually hit “total” for them to pay, the card reader displays those words. The readers used to say “Transaction not started,” which was better, but still managed to confuse customers into thinking I wasn’t doing anything at all, when clearly the scanner is beeping every time I scan one of their items. But I digress. I get at least three or four customers a day who swipe their card every single time they see the words “please swipe your card,” even if it’s obvious there’s no price total on the screen indicating that I’m ready for them to pay, swiping their card before I’ve even started the transaction, or at the stupidest, swiping their card after the transaction’s finished and I’ve given them their receipt. Sometimes I’ve even had customers whom I’ve told, “I’ll let you know when it’s ready for your card,” who still continue to swipe it without me saying so. It’s like they’ve got the memory capacity of a goldfish: every time they notice the screen they swipe their card, get denied, look away for 10 seconds, look back and notice it again, and the whole process repeats. 2. The customer who walks away without their change These people assume that swiping their card is all that’s required, if that. They’ll swipe and walk away, and I have to call them back for their change and receipt. When I’m working at the service desk, customers assume they just have to give me the item and let me scan it, and somehow I guess the money is magically returned to them without them actually receiving it. Like the people in number 1, I have to call back three or four a day who walk away without getting their money returned, which is what they came for in the first place. It even seems like it’s becoming more often the longer I work there, because customers in general refuse to stay for the entire transaction, no matter what they’re doing. 3. The customer that can’t tell you about their return without picking it up and waving it around This customer jumps the gun because they can’t just wait three seconds for me to do their return, they have to pick it up and show me everything about it, describing every detail about its purchase and why they want to return it, as if they’re scared I won’t know what to do if I don’t know all these things. When someone puts items to be returned on my counter I will immediately flip them over so the barcode is facing up, making it easy for me to scan, but these people will then pick it up again and flip it back over. I had one lady who did this, so I flipped it back over to the barcode side. She then picked it up again, and put the barcode face-down. So, I turned it over again, barcode up. And again she flipped it back over, talking the whole time.
