I'm not sure how other stores are, but I find it odd how in my store, people tend to be thrown into self-scan with almost no training. Cashiers will get scheduled for a night shift, and then be asked to give the closing self-scan person a break, not even taking the time to find out if that cashier has ever even run self-scan before or not. Basically, that's how everyone that knows self-scan at my store was trained. 15 minutes of training after the supervisors realize "Oh whoops, we scheduled someone for this late night shift to give self-scan a break when that person doesn't know self scan. Here, self-scan person, train them for 15 minutes and then they can give you a break. I'm going home now."
It seems like a REALLY bad move to me, since it means you're leaving someone with almost no training to run self-scan, at a time where you're the only front end person there. No supervisors. No managers. No actual lanes open. When they did that to me, I was only able to make it 5 minutes into the person's break before having to call her back over from her break for help, because I had no idea what I was doing, since 15 minutes of training on a busy night is no where near good enough to prepare you for that.
And now I'm getting scheduled for closing shifts, starting last week (this is only my 3rd week since I was "trained" on self-scan). I don't really understand what the logic is behind putting people new to self-scan at hours where they're alone to run it. I'm just lucky that so far I haven't run into any problems I couldn't solve myself yet during the hours where I'm alone. Those kind of things tend to happen earlier on when I have someone to ask at least.
The of course, there's also the fact that some of the front-end supervisors act surprised when they realize I don't know everything about everything there yet... despite the fact that I'm only on the front end about 2-3 days a week since I'm split between three different departments currently (all of which fight over what hours they can get me, since we're short-staffed and they want as much help as they can get), and this is only my 3rd month working here.
And then I have the added frustration of having to constantly run around and try to track certain people down to figure out what my schedule for the week is actually supposed to be, since my File Maintenance hours keep either getting messed up (getting scheduled for days where File Maintenance doesn't happen) or end up getting left off of my schedule completely, meaning by the time I track down the people I need to talk to and get schedule stuff changed, my schedule for the week winds up being way different than what it was written down as. And then I end up having the store manager ask me why I'm tired, and why I'm making mistakes at Self-Scan. I'm already working with insane schedules as it is (going from working morning one day, closing the store and getting off at 1:00am the next to day, working 12:00am - 6:00am the next two days, then working an early afternoon shift the next day, etc.) It kinda makes me wonder just how much they're expecting out of me.
They can't change your schedule past a certain time. Just do the work that you're scheduled to do. If you can't for whatever reason, it's their problem, not yours.
I trained on sco for about 20-30 min and then i was put on it by myself on a sunday afternoon. you sorta get the hang of it. then i started doing closing and have done it every week for a few years. while i agree it's a little stressful, really all someone can do is teach the basics and then go over and help when things go wrong.. if you try to explain/train EVERYTHING that can go wrong at once, the person will get super confused. just gotta learn and go with the flow that you will be annoyed/frustrated at some point.
uscan cashiers go through the same phases when learning:
1. hey this is pretty easy, cool something new!!
2. woah that was busier than before but hey i did alright, let's do this!
3. ok cool this was an easy day
4. oh ****ing christ this is horrible and stressful i hate this job i hate everyone i hate uscan WTF this is so ****ty
5. wow everything seems so much easier now cool i can do it
6. ok this is routine and boring
Uscan freaks me the **** out!!!!! I had 10 minutes of "training". When I need help, the manager (or whoever the **** he is) yells at me, or ****ing worse, they tell me they'll be right there if I need help but when I need help WHERE THE **** ARE THEY??? I can't see them anywhere! Then all 6 things start beeping at you at once, someone wants ****ing copenhagen out of the locked up thing from hell, so I need to fight with that, find the right ****ing copenhagen, fight to lock it back up, and oh, THERE"S the ****ing manager, or whoever the **** he is, in from a smoke break, yelling at me that the dumbass that pressed God knows which buttons and ****ed everything up still needs help while some old lady who talks and moves slow as **** is asking me about 5 cents off a ****ing egg or something while another customer is shoving coupons in my face and another one needs carded because he has a cart full of alcohol and looks ****ing 15. Oh, yeah, I'll take the ****ing uscan anyday. NOT!!
