Back Up, Move On

Thursday, October 19, 2023

At HD, I am learning to use its powerful and user-friendly registers to become a backup cashier. I’m receiving hands-on training with real-time practice using the touch screens.

I am interested in this secondary position because it will break up normal workday routines. During customer-heavy periods, the lead cashiers call for backup cashiers, and by responding, I’ll brush up my register skills while gaining broader store-related know-how.

Learning has had me shadowing very experienced cashiers. I’m finding they know many repeat customers well. I had forgotten that pleasant aspect of cashiering–continuing old discussions, sharing wider observations, and telling new jokes. Of course, “unpleasant” occurs, too, when a customer rattles on and seemingly endlessly about worldviews that are opposite to a listener’s own.

Working in retail, or any other kind of business, requires one to sense situations that could become stressful and know how to be unresponsive and appear nonjudgmental. When someone goes off on views way different from my own, I listen politely, might even nod, but never comment. Hopefully, as a customer’s unpleasant thoughts and words drift off, so, too, may that person.

Dear Friends: I’m betting on demonstrating soon that I can manage a resister. Diana