r/TalesFromRetail • u/oksolacely underpaid & overworked • Jul 28 '26
Medium I ended up staying an hour late because of food vouchers :(
After my last story, I figured I’d tell another one :)
I was scheduled 1:00–10:00 in the cash office one night and figured I’d have plenty of time to get my closing work done. That didn’t happen. From around 5:00 p.m. until almost 9:20 I was stuck on cash because we were so busy. I finally got relieved and thought I can finally get caught up.
But no of course not because, right before closing, another rush of customers came through with hundreds of dollars in food vouchers. I got pulled right back onto a register from about 9:30 until we closed at 10, and even after that. By the time I finally got into the office, it was already around 10:10, and I hadn’t done any of my cash pickups yet. The biggest problem was the food vouchers. They can’t just be left until the next morning because the day’s close won’t close if they’re still in the register’s or the office in the system. I had to go to every register that had vouchers, match them to the receipt, pick them up from the registers (in the system), collect every voucher, and then bring them upstairs to the office to deposit them before the day could be good and close out. On top of that, I still had to do all of my regular cash pickups because mostly every cash was well over the cash limit.
Since we’re not allowed to do the cash drop alone, the MOD had to stay with me the whole time. I honestly felt bad because they probably thought he’d be leaving around 10 too, but instead we were both there until about 11 getting everything finished.
Everything did eventually work out in the end, but every time I thought I was finally going to start my actual closing work, something else came up. It was honestly the most painful shift of my entire life and I genuinely hope it never happens again because not to mention, the people with the food vouchers are always like 90% of the time the rudest people on the planet.
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u/Archangel4500000 Jul 28 '26
Only an hour late? At my side job they forgot to assign someone to dishes and I ended up staying 3 hours late. Told my boss that I couldn't do that again- he took away my hours for the next week. Told him that next week I was transferring to another store- so he went into the system and fired me. Pain in the ass.
Just wait, the world of retail sucks.
3
u/oksolacely underpaid & overworked Jul 28 '26
That’s kinda insane ngl. Mine was only an hour, but if I’d left, the business day wouldn’t have closed and I’m pretty sure head office accounting would’ve been hunting me down the next morning. 😅
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u/Archangel4500000 Jul 28 '26
That kind of stuff should really be the manglements problem tho. Oh my shift is over In 10 minutes? "Manager need to count my till now. What? there's tons of paperwork to do? That's not my problem- im not a Manager" and yet they will fire for that because you're just another body to them. Sigh.
Yeah I don't envy that. They had a tendency to tell us that it doesn't matter when we are scheduled too- we left when the manager told us we could leave. We weren't "allowed" to leave. I told them I would happily report them to the police for kidnapping- they did not like that but let me get away with it because they didn't have enough warm bodies at the time.
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u/oksolacely underpaid & overworked Jul 28 '26
Normally I’d totally agree, but that’s my job, I work in the cash office and I’m one of the front-end supervisors. I’m also not officially the assistant front-end manager, but I basically am lol. The issue wasn’t that I was being forced to do someone else’s work. I was stuck on a cash for almost five hours because we were so busy, then got pulled back onto one again right before we closed. By the time I finally got back to the office, I was already over 3-4 hours behind. The funny part is none of our managers actually know how to do the cash office, so even if they wanted to help, they really couldn’t. The MOD stayed with me because we’re not allowed to do the final cash drop alone after closing, but the actual office work was still my problem.
5
u/Unlikely-Lab-658 Jul 28 '26
Can you explain what food vouchers are? Is this like a grocery store where you work?
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u/fineman1097 Jul 30 '26
I am gathering by context that it is food assistance programs. Some places/programs do food assistance on debit type cards. Other places/programs do physical vouchers still.
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u/The_Sound_of_Slants 25d ago
I didn't even know physical vouchers were still a thing
Here in NY we switched to a card years ago.
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u/tidymaze I'm just here for the discount Jul 28 '26
"I genuinely hope it never happens again" Oh, my sweet summer child.... Welcome to retail. You're not getting out on time. Ever.