Thursday, August 13, 2009

Does the night count as a win or a loss?

Saint Louis has a trivia obsession. Rather than doing car washes or bake sales, most groups do trivia nights for fundraisers. I did the SPH Relay for Life trivia night earlier this summer and had a great time. Since the local bars also tend to have trivia once a week, Katie and I decided to try our hands it last night.

We got there a little late (Mythbusters was a little too good), so there we no tables left. We ended up joining a team of two older guys to "pool our resources". The trivia was fun, but getting hit on ALL NIGHT by a 43 year old was decidedly not fun. However, at the end of the night, we won first place.

I would do bar trivia again, but ONLY if I had a group of about five people with which to go. No more "pooling resources" for me.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Stupid Target Fruit Snacks

I admit it. I'm a Mott's fruit snack addict. Really, any fruit snacks will do (well, most any - the cheap HyVee ones are hardly worthy of the name). However, Mott's are made with apple juice and I feel slightly less guilty about eating multiple packages in one sitting. I bought another package today from Target, and once again they are all melted. I'm going to have to make a pit stop at a different Target in order to buy good ones and return these.

Monday, August 3, 2009

I just needed the register to work

I got to work this morning and, once again, the money aspects of closing weren't done. After taking twenty minutes to finish that up, I tried to clock in on the computer. No dice. I tried all the various ways to clear out yesterday's information from the log to start a new day. Still no dice. At this point, I called both of my bosses, and both of their recommendations didn't work.

It was time to call tech support.

I started by calling the tech support number listed in the manual. This number didn't work at first, then gave me a "this number is no longer in service - please call XXXXX" message. So I called the new number.

Now, I hung pretty fast, but I'm sure the tech support automated message would have been less adult than 5 seconds I heard from that phone number.

I then tried the tech support number on the register itself. This number was also not in service, although it did forward me to an annoying voice mail service. So much for 9 am to 10 pm Mon-Sun.

I finally got the correct number from my boss, but the phone decided to revolt. It would not call multiple numbers. Once I realized that the problem was on my end, I called tech support on my cell phone. Hallelujah - I finally got through.

At this point, it was noon and the store was supposed to be open. However, since I was the only one working, I decided to continue dealing with register problem. It's not like I could sell anything at that point. People were, of course, waiting for me to open today. Two ladies waited 20 minutes before leaving. Then, while I was following tech support's instructions up front, more people were waiting outside and actually pounded on the door for me to let them in. I would if I could people.

The tech guy had to remotely install some software and said he would call me back when it was ready to go.

I finally opened the store at one, still no registers working, and we had to manually record all transactions for the day. And of course this was a busy Monday, something that happens maybe once every six weeks.

When I left, the registers still weren't working.