FrontEnd Trooper wrote:

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Be like wind and flow around any obstacle. Be like stone and remain unmoved by any opponent. Use perfect form, perfect technique for every order. Do not become distracted. Make your mind like steel, and focus!

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 lol xD

 

I got the first two down easily. I needed earplugs for the last.

snailshell wrote:

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Honestly, though... ring/tender is pretty much luck of the draw. If you have a week where you don't get that many crazy customers, you'll have a great ring/tender. If you get a lot of price checks, slow customers, work during Senior Discount Day, etc., then you'll have a crappier ring/tender.

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I must have had the worst draw then.

 

Back in my "career", I had plenty of patience for people who were slow. I didn't really care 'too' much about the ring tender, since front end already knows that I don't mess around.

 

But there's this one old lady... she only buys like 10 items max.

 

No worries, right? Ten scans, swipe a card, then be on her merry way. BUT... no. For one, she will NOT let ANY of her items touch the scanner, belt, or the counter. She also only wants certain baggers and cashiers. No, she wasn't racist, she's just very picky for some reason. I guess since I'm the only one who "put up" with her slowness that I ended up with her basically all the time.

Anyway, she would actually ask me to SLOW down, while she takes her time to read whatever pops up on the screen. She wants the items bagged immediately, so I can't keep scanning.

Easy enough, right? NO! If it were, I wouldn't be telling this story.

She wants her items bagged in the most ridiculous ways. The one quart of milk she buys must be wrapped in plastic BEFORE being placed in a paper bag. You may NOT use more than three paper bags, but you must make sure to "distribute the weight" (in her own words). Add that to whatever little thing she picks on. At that point, I ALWAYS feel bad for my bagger that I end up sending the bagger away (for their sake) so they can be more productive. We also can't use another cart for her, unless we wipe the cart down top to bottom with the sanitizers.

 

Oh boy, I'm not finished yet, y'all.

 

Here comes the payment. She has two primary methods: card and check. Oh wait, she would wait to give me her Kroger card until the VERY end. But you know what that results in? Sale prices not being reflected while I scan them. No matter how many times I tell her "ma'am, the sale prices will be applied if you'd just let me scan your Kroger plus card now". But no, she insists on waiting until the end. So now, I'm waiting to tender her out while she goes over the updated prices on screen.

Right. Time for her to swipe her card, right? NOPE!

She's going to take five minutes digging in her purse for her debit card. That debit card that she just had out five minutes ago. If I were to point that out to her, she would say "No no that's not it!" while she keeps on digging. How do I know that the card she will eventually use is the one currently at the counter? Because she was kind enough to tell me in previous times that it's her only banking card.

 

Ok, minutes later, she swipes the card. We're in the clear now, right? NOOOOOOOO!

 

She huffs. She puffs. Why? Because she has to enter her PIN, as well as to select cashback and confirm the total. You remember when I mentioned that she didn't want her items to touch the counter? Well, she doesn't wanna touch the keypad. So, I have to prep some hand sanitizers and paper towels for her to use after. Meanwhile, she struggles with the keypad because she can't press it hard enough... even though the touch screen's pretty sensitive. We have to go over the process several times because she keeps making mistakes.

There are times when she can't "find" her card, and have to use a check. I quote her the TOTAL. After quoting it multiple times, she still gets it wrong, and so I have to have her correct it. I then patiently wait for her to show her ID.

Actually, I remember her accusing me of taking her card, constantly "Are YOU SURE that you didn't take it?" and "Are you sure you gave it back to me?". Note that I haven't even received ANY payment from her.

 

Ok, we're done? Haha, silly you, we're not.

 

She will then take her sweet, sweet time, rearranging the items we've bagged, right in front of us. That's another 10-15 minutes (I kid you not). She will then ask one of the clerks to help her outside. She tips them a dollar at best, a nickel on average.

EDIT:

 

Why did I mention this drawn-out story? Because that's when I had a scan rate of 27 items/minute plummet down to 1 after only one customer.

-- Edited by NutritionWhore on Sunday 11th of January 2015 03:02:52 AM

FrontEnd Trooper wrote:

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Oh dear lord. Well, sounds like she's got severe OCD or something of that nature. We have a lot of interestingly insane regulars, but none that give me that kind of shop. That'd drive me nuts.

Back to tips and advice, does securing the terminal during the order (ie when waiting on a slow customer) help your percentage? I know it seems to help with items per minute.

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Back in the old days (also known as the days gone by), yes. Though, supposedly, it no longer does.

Submitted request to sticky this topic.

Amendments can be made if requested.

Also forgot one of the most important ones, memorize your produce codes. The most annoying thing is that I can't tell some apples apart just by looking at them (e.g., Gala vs Braeburn vs Fuji) but there's usually a sticker on them anyways.

Eh.  You pretty much have to bag as you go at our express lanes.  They're set up basically the same as a U scan machine where the bags are on a small carousel.

At the beginning of the order, put all multiples of items on the other side of the scanner except for one. Then, when you are ready to start scanning, scan the one item (x) number of times. This gives the customer more time to unload their cart and the bagger more time to bag the items without being penalized.

If a customer accidentally asks for "cash back" on the machine when they didn't mean to, tell them not to hit "no" (which would cancel the transaction, making them re-slide their card), tell them instead to hit "other" for the cash-back amount and to enter "0" in the box. (I've not yet tried any other options. When I do, I'll write back.)

A piece of paper or a plastic bag wrapped around cards that won't read works wonders. Also, try sliding the card up instead of down.

Make sure to tear off the backs of any gift cards before starting the order. (The ones that require you to remove them before scanning)

If you try to scan multiples of the same item, the register scanner will hesitate to ring it up (to prevent double scanning). If you alternate different UPCs, this will not happen. Try this on those pesky Kool-Aid packets!

Cathy wrote:

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NutritionWhore wrote:

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They have difficulties hitting "zero" three times. I swear, they look at me like as if I'm telling them to put in $999.99 and hand me the change.

 

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 I always tell them to hit "0" just one time, and it works.  I don't understand why the pinpad will not continue unless you do that... it already has "0.00" as the default, so the logical thing would be to not require them to hit 0 at all.

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 Not for our store. It does display $0.00, but once they've hit cash back, they either have to enter a series of integers greater than 0 (x > 0), or hit the big red button to cancel. They also just can't hit one zero, since "$ .  0" is NOT a valid entry in our register. They also can't just hit "OK" since the keypad is waiting for input from the customer.

missygail wrote:

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In my store you have to unload the customers basket yourself in order to scan.  We have the new touch screen system.

Is there a way to speed up your ring tender effectiveness under this situation?

I try to set up my station before I sign on, bags, extra kroger cards, large bill check pen, paper towels, cleaning spray, pens.

There is not a way to set aside an order (suspend it) without a floor supervisor's or managers scan card. What can I do when a customer takes off to go get another item or we have to send someone for a price check or back to the meat market to get a price label our computer freezes up and we can't just move to another register without an override.

I have studied our Cashier Performance Summary Reports and found that most of the people with high Effectiveness % are the ones who have overrides. How is this fair to those who have to wait for the person with the override to get off of a register before they come do an override or have to spend their time to go get the override scan card from the person who has it?

If you ask me the whole #'s system is out of whack. I understand you have to have some way of making sure all cashiers are being effective but ....

how can you say that a 60 year old who stays at their express register and has to wait on a customer who has 33 items, discuss why the 8 coupons are for the wrong items and then wait on them to write their check  can get their scan rate up???  There are only about 5 older customers who trust the computer to fill out the check for them.  The older customers usually prefer to come to the older cashiers.

 

 

 

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There are a few things to keep in mind:

 

1) If you have to send someone off to get an item or price-check, the best you can do is simply "total" the transaction and wait. If they have more items on the belt, great. Get the item price-checked while you finish scanning those. If not, Total it and simply wait it out, not much you can do in that situation unless your management is willing to Override a Suspended Transaction long enough to get a price-check (most won't).

2) Not sure how it is at your store, but at ours, those with Override Cards can't Override during their own transactions. They need a separate Override from another Manager just like any other cashier. Also, if someone is in a check-stand for only 15 or 20 mins out of the day (usually a manager-level employee), odds are their Tender Effectiveness is going to be much higher than if they're like a regular cashier who is in it for 4+ hours simply because of the way the system calculates it. The main thing to pay attention to are the employees who are in the check-stands regularly.

 

Despite all that, you can still get decently high. I don't know about other stores, but in ours, our goal is to simply be at 110%+. If you can hit that goal, you're considered doing all right. Just the other day, I hit 138%, and I was at the register for about 5 hours in the day, hitting around 17.xx Items per min. And that was with multiple issues throughout. Having to bag with paper, using customers own bags, doing a ton of apparel (our apparel is 70% off at the moment), and just the general stuff you have to deal with.

 

Point is, don't fuss over being "at the top", especially above management and those who are only in the registers for <30 mins out of the day on average. Focus on simply meeting the goal your store sets (in my case, 110% or above). The rest will come with practice and as you get it down. I've only been Cashiering for around 3 months or so, and I'm already one of the highest on the charts in our store (which is well above the division average too).

Anonymous wrote:

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Biggest word of advice: SECURE YOUR TERMINAL.

It's easy to forget but if you're EVER EVER EVER going to be away from it or doing anything else then Nosale - Signoff is your best friend. I use it half a dozen times in a single transaction because of how slow people are.

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 Which is probably doing nothing for you. Most divisions eliminated all the things that would pause your time several years ago.

What is the big deal about entering Plus Card at the end?  I haven't officially started yet.  Waiting, but as a customer, I am one of those people who like to see the "Savings add up,"  so to speak.  LOL   I always hated having to put my card in first, but usually relent to the cashier.

 

If you do the plus card at the end, it adds X amount of seconds to the order as the discounts run, while if you do it at the beginning, the discount is automatic with the order.

That's what I was told at my first store, at least.

 

I just got told to up my score but I find it really really hard to care - speeding up our transactions by their metrics and rules makes customers mad.

What do you do with the customers that hand you their card first without having anything unloaded from their large cart? Those customers tend to get mad if you even hint about unloading their cart.

I wonder if ring tender is calculated differently at different stores. I've had people at my store that have been here for ages, but are only in the low 90s. Our cashiers' ring tenders are quite low compared to many of the threads on this board.

When you talk about 110s, 130s and 140s, are you talking about ring/tender speed? In our store and division, it's a decimal - .50 or below is what we're aiming for. Our No sale-96-signoff operator performance gives us the items per minute, customers per minute, and ring/tender speed. It doesn't show individual ELMS percentages.

Mandatory scanning of produce upc is definately not policy. If I were you I would continue using numbers. Im new to this forum. I am the fastest in my district with a 132 being my highest percent. Many tricks are used to get this freakishly high of a tender. If anyone wants to know them reply to me.

I will keep this childishly simple, so that even you imbeciles here can grasp it:

Don't fk up on your drawers. There are cameras on every one. I am watching all of them. That means I am watching you too.

If your drawer of off my a cent, I will write you up and I will fire your worthless ass.

 

Co Man Joe

Anonymous wrote:

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- I always try to scan the kroger card first. It helps the time.

 

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 I find that it really doesn't matter with small orders.  However: it is best to scan before an order because sometimes, sale items don't come off if that card isn't in first, and it's hard to explain it to those people who act like they are on that damn Extreme Couponing show.