When I count my till at the start of a shift, it may say be £99.97 (3p short). If I take £100 my till will be £199.97 at the end of the shift, because I check the money people give me thoroughly and do the same with the change. I do it for my sake as well as the customers, I don't want to give out the incorrect change because if it is over, I lose out, if it is short then I have to open the till which is a pain.
Every day I see my colleagues handing over money because their till is down. The people I have trained on till I have told that "When you are handling money treat it as your own because if it down it's you're paying". A couple didn't take my advice and were down either a round £5, £10 or £15 down every other shift. I did some magical retraining (or corrective coaching as Pizza Hut like it to be called) which involved me standing over them watching their cash handling techniques. I noticed both of them had their notes all crammed together in 3 sections next to each other. There are 7 sections for notes so I put £5 at the front, £10 in the middle and £20 at the back spaced apart so there is no way I can get them mixed up and give a £10 out instead of £5. I worked that out on my second shift.
So it was now obvious why they were always down a round amount, they were giving out the wrong notes. I rearranged their tills and told them this should help the problem. It has worked so far!
Therefore, you can now hopefully understand why I will be annoyed when I'm accused of short changing somebody. Fair enough, if I make a mistake you will probably notice immediately and it'll be sorted. BUT coming back 2 hours later with no receipt and claiming you were short changed by 50p is a out of order, and then crying about it when I didn't give you it because I refuse to give you 50p effectively, personally, because I don't believe you. Admittedly they were around 12, and I do have a bit of heart so instead of the money I offered a free pudding. They took it but I still don't believe them...
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As far as I am concerned if they don't come back within 10 minutes with their receipt and the money I gave them then they're out of luck. So two hours later without the receipt would definitely be a non starter.
If they really want to push the issue further I'll arrange for a manager to note the alleged discrepancy in the cash office so that they can see if there is an extra £5 (for example) in the till at the end of the day.
If the alleged shortage is greater than £5 then unless they tell me before they leave my sight they'll have to wait for the till count. This is policy and was brought in because a number of years ago it was apparent that a certain group of people were constantly claiming to be short by £5 or £10 and getting the cashiers to hand it over.
We don't get that many compartments in our tills. Four is the maximum for notes so each can have it's own compartment but they are one in front of the other. Some tills are missing the fourth compartment though so any £50 notes have to go with the £20s, which I hate doing. I think I would notice if I picked up a £50 rather than a £20 but I'd rather not take the risk.
I'm glad you specified the person was 12 though, I had an image of an adult crying over 50p for a moment there.
Seems like a lot of bother to come back for just 50p... I know myself I'd probably not worry, but I am in the habit of checking my change throughly.
I've done bank cashier work, and fortuneatley, you weren't expected to make up differences then, although every till had an "overs" pot where you put the odd pennies, pound coins and bits when you came "over", ready for when you were short.
I think my biggest "loss" was £200 just after I started; The idea was that you always wrote down the breakdown of the cash on the back of the cheque etc when a customer came in and cashed one. When you came short, you then did all the usual re-counting / re-totalling. When that fails to come up with anything, you start going through all the entries one by one, looking for adding up mistakes.
We found my £200 was when I cashed a £1000 cheque and inadvertantly doubled up on one type of note.
The manager rang the customer to ask if she'd noticed being given any extra money, and she went berzerk on the phone, saying she wasn't a thief etc etc.
Of course, I bloody knew what was going to happen next; She came in the next day, waited for my till, and gave me a cheque for £500 or something to cash. I made damn sure I didn't cock it up, and then had to endure her counting it back to me (cheek!) about 6 times, before she launched into a tirade about me and my "false claims".
Anyway, in more interesting news, could your Ice Cream Factory do this?
;-)
Bet practice is to keep any notes on top of the keypad until you gather the change.
Stops the "Oh I gave you a twenty" trick.
Sometimes though you think you are on top of it and cant recall any mistakes at all - yet seem to be a few quid down. Happened to me a few times before.
Has anyone ever had that trick pulled on them where punter one pays for goods with say, a twenty which has "happy birthday" written on it, then punter two pays for something with a fiver, gets change, and then claims they paid with a twenty, saying "it's a birthday gift and my mate wrote "happy birthday" on it" etc?
Nobody has ever tried that with me, although I think that would stand out enough when checking for authenticity of the note for me to remember that it wasn't them.
I also don't put the notes "away" until the customer has their change if this is possible. We have a few checkouts where there isn't another till behind the operator as it backs onto the lane for the next till. I won't do it here because it's all too easy for someone to stick their hand in there while the drawer is open. On those tills it's open and closed as fast as possible.
Mind, if I ever did catch someone with their hand in my till I'd slam it shut on them. I'd probably get into trouble for it but I think it would be worth it :)
It always irritated me when working on bar if the other bar staff were down.
We also had a 'surplus' jar where we could put any extra and take advantage of it when we were a little down. 95% of the time I was bang on.
However, the 5% of the time when I'm down, I like to be able to use the surplus jar - Touch annoying when you find it empty as your colleagues have been down every shift since they started at the hotel and have bled it dry...
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