"Umm....Didn't I Give You a $20?"
Many moons ago, when I was a high school student working at my first retail job, the manager told me a simple rule: When a customer hands you bills, set them on top of the register while you make change. That way, if you enter the wrong number into the register, you can see your mistake. Or, if they try to claim they gave you a bigger bill than they actually did, you can easily check.
Many years of retail work later, I always always always put the bills on top of the register, but I've never had a problem of any sort.
Until recently. A customer's total came to $8.60. He gave me (I thought) a $10 bill. I entered 10.00 into the register and gave him $1.40 in change. That's when he said, "Umm...didn't I give you a $20?"
I looked at the bill I had set on top of the register. And.....he was right! It was a $20.
The moral of the story? I'm really, really, REALLY glad that I listened to the manager at my old job!
posted by mamurd @ 8:09 PM
4 Comments:
Do you count the change back to the customer? Most clerks these days just dump change into my waiting hand, bills and coins mixed together, and announce the total (as read from their cash register/computer).
I dump the change into their hand (and say how much it is), and then count the bills aloud before handing them to the customer. Which is good because I've gotten it wrong sometimes. Bills stuck together, grabbed a $10 in instead of a $5, etc.
Vaguely off-topic: I always give back the change first because it drives me crazy (as a customer) when clerks give me the bills first and then the coins. The coins always slide off the bills! Why do so many clerks do that??
After you give them the coins, don't you have to patiently stand there while they tuck the coins into their wallet or pocket? Do most people assume you have given them the correct coins, or do they count the coins? In the old days, the coins were counted backwards up to the nearest dollar, then the bills were counted. But if the customer only rarely checks the coins, why bother?
I do the "announce how much they just handed me" thing, too. I don't count the bills backwards, though. If the change is $4.24, then I hand them the 24ยข and then count out the four dollars.
I think counting the change backwards is rather "old school". The people who do that usually have worked at a store that didn't have a cash register. I've always had one, so I just trust the register to tell me what to give back.
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