So one of the scenarios that slows work down enormously at work is when a customer brings an item to the counter and you scan it through the till and the price registers as more than the customer is expecting.
We have a non-stop flow of work inside the dispensary. It is hard to explain the volume of work in the form of prescriptions to dispense, dosette boxes to compile, and a heap of administration tasks in connection with our patients and suppliers. The phone rings all day with patients asking questions about their medication.
So when a customer comes to the pharmacy with a mascara that scans as £8.99 and they say that the label said £6.99 my heart just sinks. The only way I can know is to leave the dispensary, trek across the shop floor, try to make sense of the labels which are often all mixed up, figure out which mascara the customer has, find the matching label and clarify the price the store is advertising the product as. If we have advertised it as the lower price, the manager’s will do a refund of the price difference and check the pricing, perhaps replacing the label if there is a mistake.
Only…there are some rules that make the task a nightmare. If I have scanned the product at £8.99 it is sitting there on the screen. If I leave the till to go and check the shop floor, I have to log out of the till, only I cannot do that until the transaction has been voided. Only I am not allowed to void transactions. Only a manager can. The manager’s are usually on the shop floor or upstairs in the office. I cannot leave the till to go and find the manager because it leaves the till vulnerable. So I have to wait for a passing member of staff and ask them to find the manager.
All this time the customer is looking at me as if I am hopeless….and I am thinking of all the work piling up in the dispensary. Eventually the manager comes along and voids the transaction. Then I go and try to figure out the labels for the mascaras. As far as I can see, the customer is right, our label says £6.99. Only I am not authorized to change the price of that the product scans as, only the manager can do that!
The manager has disappeared again. This time I am free to go and search for her. I have to ask the customer to wait again, while I check all parts of the shop floor and then run up to the office. I cannot find her anywhere. Eventually she reappears, apparently she was in the ladies.
The manager looks after the customer and corrects the label. I have just lost twenty minutes to one stinking mascara! It can be incredibly frustrating when this happens several times in a day.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? 