When I walked into work today, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. The powers that be have delivered us a small safe to sit under our 'supervisors podium', storing change so that we can issue it to the tills without trundling up to the cash office.
You're probably thinking, how unbelievably sad and demented can this boy get? You've probably got a picture, an accurate one at that, in your head of me walking in, spotting the thing and my eyes lighting up like a child's at Christmas. Yes, Yes, I know. But when you spend most of your waking life in Food Place, anything new and improved is something to get happy clappy about, believe me.
But is it an improvement? It dawned on me this afternoon that this new contraption would run out of change eventually. Which would mean going to the cash office and carrying a huge bag full of refill stock down. Still, it's got to beat running around like a blue-arsed fly. And I've worked out my method. We shall keep a base float in there of two thousand pounds (I've even broken it down into denominations in accordance with what we use!). This float can be chipped away at throughout the day as the tills require change and, once a day when the last change run is done, we can take the sheets to the cash office, add them all up, tap them into Bob (the cash office computer) and restock from the cash office safe. It just means the small safe will have to be counted whenever I do a cash office tender count, but I can live with that.
I'm yet to discover how the customers will react to the new safe. You might be thinking, but surely, it's none of the customers' business where you store the change? Well, you're wrong. They'll make it their business. Especially the woman I mention the other day in my 'weirdos' post. As soon as she realises, she'll start poking about behind the podium, under the pretense of looking for a pound coin she dropped, to see it. And then there's all the customers that will come over and disturb me while I'm clearly busy counting the coins in the bloody thing. I mean, you just wouldn't do it would you? If you were in a shop and you required assistance, you just would not go up and start bothering a member of staff that was counting money would you? Oh, but the morons will...
Keeping within the theme of improvements, I decided that the cash office layout had become boring and required changing. I do this from time to time. Colleagues have noticed that I seem to alternate between having a clinically tidy office, that looks totally bare because it doesn't have a scrap of clutter in it, and going for the 'fuller' look. Today I changed over to the 'fuller' look. I went round the other offices and stole equipment such as paper-tidies, pen cups, plastic trays and baskets, and re-furnished the cash office with them. Nobody will find out about my thievery as only four people are allowed into the cash office - unless somebody spots their paper-rack on the camera monitors (eek). I even unscrewed and made-off-with a shelf from the Training Room so I could re-jig the wall shelves in the cash office. I was bored of them all being perfectly aligned, so I've moved the planks up and down for a zig-zag look.
I was actually considering buying a Yucca plant from the store to add as a finishing touch.
Wendy will kill me when she sees my handiwork. Just as she's getting used to where I moved everything last time I refitted the office, I move it all again. In fact, last time I reorganised the office, I did so because I was sick of all the clutter and I threw away one hell of a lot of stuff - she still thinks I just tidied it away into drawers (eek, again). She'll kill me if she finds out I scopped out her collection of broken pens.
Sharp-eyed readers may also have noticed that I've changed the colours of this blog template. I'm far too lazy to make my own design, but I will at least commit to rejigging the colours from time to time. When the weather turns sunny and nice, I might just go orange and yellow.
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4 comments:
How big is your change safe, and main safe?
When I first started at Pizza Hut I went in and thought to myself "Why do they have a 5ft high and 3ft wide safe?". I now realise, they ram anything of any possible value in there, as well as many tubs of change. It is quite funny when another retailer comes round and goes..."Have you got any £1 coins?"...and the manager goes "No sorry I haven't been to the bank yet"...then calls me to the back, opens the safe and shows me the 1000 pound coins that were delivered the same morning.
The safe also serves as a meeting point as it so huge as well as occasionally being used as a dining table or bar.
The checkouts keep their safe in the front end office so customers can't interrupt those who are counting it. In fact, nobody can because the door is locked when they're doing it.
I don't think the cashiers tend to need change that often. In 6 months of doing the job I think I only had to ask for change a couple of times and they were usually late nights on the express tills.
Everything is filled up first thing in the morning and the main bank seems to be able to make it last the whole 24 hours.
The change safe is about 1.5 feet wide and 2.5 feet high and contains tubs for each coin denomination.
The cash office safe is 5 feet high by 3 feet wide, but there's no room for junk in there. It stores one set of float boxes (each till has an A float and a B float which are used on alternating days) whilst the other set is stored in a lock box next to the safe. There's tubs for the loose change bags and the bulk change (full bags as delivered) are stored in the bottom compartment.
We use about 1000 pound coins each day as our store takes a very high proportion of our trade in cash.
On delivery day, the cash office safe could have up to 8000 pound coins, 1250 50p, 750 20p, 300 10p, 100 5p, 80 2p, 40 1p.
Re: Al's comment, our cash office used to be on the front-end, behind the kiosk so the change could easily be issued from the CO safe. Since the cash office moved upstairs two years ago we've been making do with running up and down as our policy stipulates we must do three change runs each day so as not to overload the tills with bagged coin. Now though we have our new ickle safe :)
In Wilkinson's, I've noticed, they store change in small cupboards underneath the packing area on each till.
I suppose the checkouts have to keep their change safe nearby as the cash office is at the back of the warehouse and down some stairs.
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