A $10 Difference

So it was the middle of a rush. Where we had three cashiers on the registers and I was over in petcare helping customers get crickets and fish.

When our first cashier came over the radio telling us that there was a customer here who needed to speak to a manager. 

Which I was busy helping customers at the fish wall and my other manager (thankfully I had a second one on duty at the time) was helping to backup cashier at the register along with my petcare person. 

So it was a bit before any of us could break free to help this customer. 

I ended up being the one out of the two managers able to approach the customer first as my other manager was dealing with another customer who was wanting their receipt looked up.

But this customer -who was rather patient to wait a good fifteen minutesish before I could get to them.

Was waiting because they claimed that they'd been shorted around $10 in change. 

As apparently they were one of 'those' customers that cashiers hate that buys like a $5 item and uses a $100 to pay for it. 

And their change back was $93 something.

But when they got to their car and looked at their change....they realized there wasn't enough money there. They had their Twentys and their Ones and their assorted coinage. 

But there was no $10. 

It wasn't a situation I had to deal with before.

And apparently policy is that we would take down the customer's information and after we close down the tills for the night we'd count them out and if there was a discrepancy aka more money in the till than there should have been, then we would call the customer the next day to get their money.

And like I remembered that policy would be to shut down the till and count it out to make sure it's accurate. 

But we were literally in the middle of a rush. We had all three registers going and a never ending line of customers waiting to be helped. It wasn't a good idea to completely shut down one register for like twenty minutes to count a till and make sure the customer was telling us the truth.

And like the cashier wasn't helpful as they were like "yes I remember helping this customer but I thought I gave them their $10 though I think I gave it as two $5 since we were low on tens." 

So after doing a brief conference with my other manager.

I decided to believe the customer. That they had been shorted.

Because like...$10 honestly isn't that much and the fact that they were willing to wait a good twenty minutes or so to get this ten dollars made it seem far more likely that they were telling the truth. 

Like I could see it being more of a lie if the customer was like "I was shorted $20 or $60!!" or something.

but $10. Yah. It's not a lot of money in the big scheme of things, but is a lot of money when you've broken a $100 and expect that $93 back. 

And the fact that they had all the bills neatly stacked in their hand along with the change.

Yah like...who would look at a store in the middle of a rush, slip $10 into their pocket and then go back and claim that they were shorted?

I'm sure there are some crazy people who do that.

But overall likelyhood was that the customer was telling the truth.

So when there was a clear moment between customers I opened up the till and gave them their $10 and sent them on their way.

And thankfully. I was right. 

Because when I counted the till after we closed that night. It was accurate.

Well...as accurate as tills can be. I think there was like a 25 cent discrepancy. 

Which it's not a big deal if the tills are over or short a few coins. Mistakes happen when giving out change after all.

But thankfully it wasn't a $10 discrepancy. 

So yay for the customer getting their money and being truthful. lol

Until you next find these words;
I'll be watching the leaves. 
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi