Yes, the title may sound funny, but realistically this item brings real fear into many who go anywhere near it. The funny part is that in some ways it should be feared as I will be explaining in the next couple of posts.
At the heart of many cash registers is a computer, not a sophisticated one but still a computer of sorts. Sometimes it does what you want and sometimes it does what it wants no matter what you do.
Way back in the days of Woolworths, our old cash registers were NCR branded machines. These machines were simple devices with multiple keys for different functions. When first using the register, you had to put in your employee number, which was a matter of typing in the numbers then hitting the NO SALE key. However, sometimes, the cashiers (I am also guilty of doing this on occasion too) got stupid and forgot to input their number and just hit the NO SALE key instead. By doing this, the cash drawer opened and one always hoped that nobody except the on-duty manager saw you do it. It was surprisingly that we were NEVER robbed because accessing the register would be so easy. Any register not on the front end of the store was handled by a department person and they were given a register key to unlock the register when needed to use it. Again, it was important that the register was locked when someone walked away from the register.
The biggest issue with these registers was that it was extremely easy to make errors with this system. Amongst the problems include under ringing, over-ringing, and even not ringing up merchandise at all. While the third item can happen under any system, the first two could easily be avoided if care was taken. And that is the big IF. Many employees over the years were terminated because of the other two ways and sometimes it wasn’t even intentional.
The normal register key put the register into REG mode. However, there were other keys that would put the register into other modes. The X mode was when a reading on the register was to be taken or to put change in the drawer. The Y mode was used by managers to do a cash pickup when the screen indicated that there was a limit. It was shown on the screen as a half an 8 on the far left side of the screen. The bad thing about this is that the symbol could also be seen on the customer’s side of the LCD display and which means that a customer would know when the drawer is loaded with money. Again, how we never got robbed really surprised me! The Z mode was used at the end of the week to clear out the weekly sales numbers and get tallies for the various departments being counted for the week. This was dangerous if this was done by accident and yes it was done many times and it makes weekly tallies that much harder to calculate.
The register keyboard also featured the standard TAXABLE and NON-TAXABLE keys as well as 10 special keys used to track weekly sales. During a sales week, a sticker was placed on the front of the display that listed what each of the special function keys were used for. For example, a popular use was “25% off Toys”. and “25% off Watches”. After typing in the dollar amount, the cashier would hit either TAXABLE, NON-TAXABLE, or one of the special keys. The special keys would automatically do the price reduction from the price input. There was no scanner on these registers and EVERY single item in the store had to be individually priced. Guess who spent hours pricing stuff? ME!! Later, I will discuss pricing and inventory control.
This approach lasted for about 7 years until we received a new toy: brand new registers and modern ones at that. These new registers were manufactured by IBM and the manuals consisted of about 200 pages of how-to usage. I was the first person to read the manual one afternoon cover-to-cover. Mostly skimming over a lot of the information as it was repeated over and over. Above anything else, these registers had scanners, which simplified the entire process of inventory control. Now, merchandise could be checked to see if it in stock in almost a real-time manner by going into the office computer. However, only managers could do this and because it was only updated daily it wasn’t always accurate, but it was closer than wasting time looking for nothing.
The new registers featured a two-line LCD display of about 12 characters and when the display wasn’t in use it would scroll “Thank You for Shopping at Woolworth” or whatever was programmed into the main office computer. The confusion of keys such as TAXABLE, NON-TAXABLE, and function keys were all eliminated by these new registers. It was like heaven.
I do believe that these new registers was a huge plus to the company, but inevitably led to its eventual downfall because ways that employees could rip off the company no longer worked and huge inventory discrepancies were no longer the norm. It was only about 2 years later that the company started shutting down stores. Coincidence, I highly doubt it.
I don’t really remember much about the registers from HQ except that the scanner cord was about 15 feet long and could easily strangle an employee if not careful. Seven weeks of employment really didn’t allow me to remember much of those registers except for how dirty they were, but then again the whole place was always dusty and dirty. Maybe it was all that dirt that clogged my mind about my memory of their systems
Of course, nothing could compare to Staples registers, which leads to the next topic.
Up Next: The Evolution and De-Evolution of the Staples’ Register System
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