...It was a rough night.
Like. Most of my shift things were fine. Some customers were more difficult than others. But overall I figured we had the day handled pretty well, even considering I was the only closing manager for the last part of the shift.
But it was frustrating because we ended up clocking out over half an hour late tonight. I didn't get home until like an hour after I was supposed to be off my shift.
Why?
Because things happened.
It started with counting the money in the safe.
Because somehow. In some way...we were $10 over. O.o
Like...not sure how we managed to get extra money in the safe unless creating change for one of the registers resulted in the discrepancy. But we were over there.
And then...when I went to close down the second register -as it doesn't see as much use as register 1 and 3 do because we try to keep social distancing as much as possible when possible.
Register 2 gave me the warning that the cash in the til...was under the amount we were supposed to have in the register.
As each register is balanced at the end of the day to make sure that they all have the same amount of money (if not the exact same bills/coins) for the start of the day in the morning.
But register 2 was short.
Which meant that we'd probably done a return at some point where we gave the customer cash back...but hadn't done enough transactions on that til where customers paid in cash to get the cash amount in the drawers back up to their needed total. *exhales*
Which meant I would need to basically do a loan between the registers to get the price up to the right amount.
Since we still had like 20 minutes to close...I ended up having my cashier switch to register two for the last part of their shift to see if we could get any cash transactions in to bring the total back up to its needed amount.
And in the meantime I closed down register 3.
And left register 1 alone because if we didn't get enough cash into register 2 from customers then I would need to still loan money between the registers to get the amounts correct.
Which wouldn't have been a big deal. Because I can count the tills pretty quickly....
Except we had a couple of customers who decided to ignore the closing time deadline and continue shopping in the store after we'd closed.
*exhales*
We had a mother/daughter duo at our doors at 2 minutes past closing time (we'd already locked the doors) begging to come in so they could quickly buy some food for their rats.
And my cashier decided to let them in only if they were quick.
They weren't quick in typical customer fashion.
And the little girl had the gall to come up to the register and be like "Can we buy a hamster?!"
"No." Was my short response. "We're closed." As selling animals can be like a ten minute process or so because we have to grab the paperwork, have the customer fill it out, get the box, put the animal in the box, make sure the customer has all the things they need to care for the animal---so No. We're closed. If the customer really wants a hamster they can come back tomorrow. But I wasn't about to do an animal sell AFTER closing when the customer arrived AFTER closing.
*shakes head* I don't get the people who do last minute shopping. Like...why didn't you realize you needed food earlier? Why did you try and get to our store and shop instead of waiting until tomorrow morning? Who knows.
But we also had another family in the store that in typical 'new owner' fashion. Had gotten a puppy and decided that shopping for said puppy 10 minutes before we closed would be 'enough time' to get everything they needed.
Like...if you're getting a puppy...why not buy most of the things you need before you get said puppy and then come in later to get any extras you need?
It's amazing how many people don't plan like that. They just go get their puppy and then are like "Oh hey, we need to get supplies too lets go shopping!"
Who does that 10 minutes before closing?
In any case the family shows up at the register a good ten minutes after we closed to buy everything when the husband is like "Hold on I need to grab a crate mat" and vanishes back into the back of the store.
Which...I'd thought he was talking about the flat beds you put into the crates.
But the dude comes up forever later with a crate pan....
Which the crate he's already buying comes with. *exhales* I could have saved us both the waste of time if he'd been slightly clearer on what he was going to grab.
In any case.
I get them checked out and out of the store. And go to shut down register 2.
Surprise. We're still short.
Not that surprising, but that meant I had to take time to play ring around the rosie with money and guesstimate how much cash I would need to transfer between drawers to get them to their proper dollar amounts.
To be safe I pulled like $40 from register one to put into register 2.
Which thankfully allowed me to pull the till from the register so I could go balance it.
Only.
When I did...the till was still short like $14.
O_o??? It left me confused because like...the till wouldn't have let me pull it from the register if it was still under the $ amount....
And after checking to see how much of a deposit I would need to make from the till...it showed a bit over $30 would be needed to be taken from the till and given to the bank.
O_o
Which how?!!? When I was short the needed amount in the till?!
Well. Turns out that the customer who bought the rat food...ended up paying us with a $50 bill.
And we have a special lockbox we place the bigger bills in so they don't just sit in the register.
Said lock box I had already checked earlier when I first attempted to close register 2.
And hadn't thought to recheck when I actually closed register 2 because I hadn't expected anyone to pay in that big of a bill right before close. *exhales*
But yah. It helped to settle all the differences and such I was able to get the till back up to it's needed amount and pull money aside for the bank deposit.
And then I got to register 1.
And discovered it was $10 short in the deposit.
Which...what do you know...I had an extra $10 from the safe count earlier. So it was a simple matter of placing the $10 in with the register 1 totals and walla!!
But by the time I finally finalized everything and got it all figured out...
It was an hour after we had closed. Which was half an hour later than we should have stayed.
No big deal.
Except.
When I went to set the security alarm for the night.
You know, to make sure no one breaks into the building...
The alarm wouldn't set.
Why?
Because earlier today we'd had people doing maintenance work on a door in the back...and apparently while they were fixing one problem...they messed up the alignment on one of the security sensors back there so it could no longer read and therefore wouldn't let us set the alarm.
I ended up having to call the security company. Get put on hold for ten minutes. And then explain the problem and then they had to remotely arm the building for us.
*exhales*
So yah.
Frustrating end to the day.
I'm not looking forward to having to open tomorrow morning either. XP Bleh.
Until you next find these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!
-Sarnic Dirchi
