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'Never underestimate the person behind the register.' was one of the lessons we took away from a Point-Of-Sale system installation in a fast food restaurant. W

'Never underestimate the person behind the register.' was one of the lessons we took away from a Point-Of-Sale system installation in a fast food restaurant. When the first customers came through the drive-through, we were surprised that the teenagers taking the orders had calculated the tax and order total, to the penny, in their heads. By the end of the day, we'd developed our rule, confirmed by further experience in other stores and other states.

doorhammer 12y ago
Were they calculating it or had they "just" memorized the vast majority of common product combinations? I ask that, because I worked at 7-11 in Oklahoma for awhile, years ago. The Ok 7-11's are their own separate corporation. We didn't have scanners for anything except cigarettes, and it didn't take long before you knew total price, including tax, someone would have to pay for various combinations of standards prices (.99 + .99 + 1.05 + .59 or what have you). Mostly just a pedantic difference, but I thought I'd throw my experience into the mix. Still pretty crazy when you get someone that's been there awhile and knows basically all of them. I think my closest experience to this was when I was an order picker at a warehouse with no computers. We had guys on forklifts that seemed to know where every single item was in a warehouse with thousands of bays, and could tell you not just where something was, but what the number of the bay was. Pretty crazy.
fred_durst 12y ago
I wouldn't be surprised in this case if they were just memorizing the final price of different combinations of orders. I imagine this has a lot to do with the intense time pressure. Often the time to check the computer loses you 5-10 seconds, which in a fast food order environment would make the difference between slow and fast. We saw order pickers that just memorized their pick sheet when it was printed out for them and never looked at it again until they dropped off their pallet. They would also reorganize the pick order in their head for the most efficient route so trying to keep looking at what was an out of order pick sheet was a big time sink for them. So while we were thinking of trying to print the items out in the most efficient order, we realized they were already doing it themselves and wouldn't look at it anyway.

doorhammer 12y ago

Were they calculating it or had they "just" memorized the vast majority of common product combinations? I ask that, because I worked at 7-11 in Oklahoma for awhile, years ago. The Ok 7-11's are their own separate corporation. We didn't have scanners for anything except cigarettes, and it didn't take long before you knew total price, including tax, someone would have to pay for various combinations of standards prices (.99 + .99 + 1.05 + .59 or what have you). Mostly just a pedantic difference, but I thought I'd throw my experience into the mix. Still pretty crazy when you get someone that's been there awhile and knows basically all of them. I think my closest experience to this was when I was an order picker at a warehouse with no computers. We had guys on forklifts that seemed to know where every single item was in a warehouse with thousands of bays, and could tell you not just where something was, but what the number of the bay was. Pretty crazy.

fred_durst 12y ago

I wouldn't be surprised in this case if they were just memorizing the final price of different combinations of orders. I imagine this has a lot to do with the intense time pressure. Often the time to check the computer loses you 5-10 seconds, which in a fast food order environment would make the difference between slow and fast. We saw order pickers that just memorized their pick sheet when it was printed out for them and never looked at it again until they dropped off their pallet. They would also reorganize the pick order in their head for the most efficient route so trying to keep looking at what was an out of order pick sheet was a big time sink for them. So while we were thinking of trying to print the items out in the most efficient order, we realized they were already doing it themselves and wouldn't look at it anyway.