Paying Attention Is Not In The Cards

(At our store, if a customer swipes a food stamps card that doesn’t have enough to cover the entire purchase, the POS will decline the transaction and then print out a slip with the available balance. We then have to type in the amount the customer would like to use and process the card again.)

Me: “Okay, ma’am, your total is [total].”

Customer: *swipes EBT card and the purchase is declined*

Me: *hitting ‘OK’ so the slip prints out* “Okay ma’am, it’s telling me that you don’t have enough to cover the whole tr—”

Customer: *cutting me off* “I know.” *swipes her VISA card*

Me: “So it printed out a slip telling me yo—”

Customer: “Yes, yes. I know.” *swipes VISA card again*

Me: “So now I have to type in the amount and run your card again.”

Customer: “I. KNOW.” *swipes VISA card*

Me: “Ma’am, if you want me to use the available balance on your EBT card I need to run it again.”

Customer: *getting angry* “I kn— Wait, you need to run it again?”

Me: “Yes, ma’am.”

Customer: “Oh…” *swipes EBT card*

(She’s lucky I was paying attention to which card she was swiping and was trying to help! I could easily have just hit the card button on my screen and the entire purchase would have been charged to her VISA instead.)