A young couple comes in and picks out some wine and couple cigars. Carrie starts to ring them up and all of sudden the register displays PPPPPPPPPPP. Carrie hits buttons and turns the key to off, on, mngr, etc., but nothing works. I punch a few buttons, nothing. Rats. The register either blew up or we’ll have to read instructions on operating our digital cash register. I hit the paper feed button to see what Carrie rang, up, but the paper doesn’t move. I grab and pull the receipt and get a half inch of paper. It’s out of paper. Why didn’t it say “PAPER” instead of PPPPPPPP. There’s no red line on the paper indicating the end of the roll. (bought it on sale at costco). put in a new roll of paper, business as usual. Now there’s going to be young couple telling other about the OLD couple that couldn’t operate an electric cash register.
I was one of the first three EPOS salesman in the US. We argue among us who was first. It was great selling products that were in great demand and with few competitors.
one of the wine shops I went to while living in England didn’t even have a cash register. The employee at the front counter would add-up the total by hand — on the flaps of the boxes being used to load the wines! I’d be lying if I said I didn’t check the total before leaving the parking lot; they were never off — not even by one penny!
btw, it’s one of the best wine shops I’ve ever been to … in some ways, it is the best.
We traded these in for $15 the smaller ones we had refinished for $50-$75 and gave to friends who had bars in their basements. Some go for over $1000 today.
Funny what memories these bring back. We usually sold cash register based on clerk theft. When the owners told us that their clerks were honest we had many why to argue the point but we always removed the drawer to find a bunch of cash and asked so how did you balance out? Boring but in many bars even today you will see an upright slim chrome model we called the bartenders friend. The easiest sale was to a new bar owner who had one. We would ask “Do you want to make your bartender a bar owner?” That usually clicked with him.
Lastly I do remember trading out an eight drawer monster from Levy’s bakery in Queens and finding over $600 (in the 60’s) and more cockroaches then I had seen in my life.
Hey Randy, in my shop I am using a very good quality cash register from discounttillrolls.ie. From last 4 years I have not faced a single. The typical cash register of the mid-20th century, through a system of keys, levers, and gears often electrically driven. Cash Registers are simple machines to operate but we have to take care of some basic things such as
Cash registers have to be used according to the instruction manual; any other way will result in an error code.
Cash registers must have paper rolls in the printer. If no rolls are used some machines refuse to operate, others will be damaged after a few hours.
Paper dust will occur after prolong use of a machine. As with any machine it needs a clean.