Uss Indianapolis

Barry Ferreira

Kathy Norris

College Writing

Feb. 15, 2005

Running The Front End

Day after day, I work at Home Depot. I've worked at Home Depot for 6 months. My position there is a cashier. A few months have gone by and all I do is show up and do my job as a cashier. The cashiers have someone who runs the front end along with every register in the store, and that person is a head ashier. After what I see the head cashiers go through, I would never want to be a head cashier for the rest of my life.

After four and a half months of working, I am just getting the hang of it. Being a cashier might sound easy, but over at Home Depot, it's not. There are so many responsibilities for a cashier to do; it is just as hard as being a bank teller. You have to be quick at looking up items, being familiar with items in the store, checking every item for the right tag, and the list goes on. The cashiers are tested weekly with a secret shopper to make sure the cashiers are on their toes. The money has to be added up at the end of the day, each slip, coin, dollar bill, check and card. If it doesn't add up, you don't leave until you find out where it went. The cashier draw cannot hold more then 500$ at one time. Each time you collect up to five hundred you have to send it to the book keeping. All these responsibilities add up and are overwhelming for a cashier. A head cashier is responsible for every register and transaction in that store, along with the flow of lines and customer satisfaction. It is a job I would never want.

Coming into work one day, I knew something was wrong. When I saw long lines forming down each Isle, people complaining that the wait was too long, and register lights flashing for help. There were no head cashiers available or supervisors who knew anything about the front end. At that time I was the only cashier who had been there the longest, so I was asked to try and be head cashier for the day. I did, and I knew what I was getting myself into.

I was handed a set of keys and I was in charge of the entire front end. This was a job I had never done or been trained to do, It started out fine no one had any problems Three hours passed, and I ran into my first problem. A cashier rang up an item twice and