Wish You Could Separate Yourself From This Transaction

Me: “Hi. How are you today?”

Customer: “Do I have to separate the WIC from the rest of my purchases? I was here last week arguing with a dumb cashier that I didn’t need to separate the WIC from everything else.”

Me: “Well… you don’t have to, but if there is an error with the card, it would take less time if the WIC items were on their own transaction.”

Customer: “Why would there be an error? What do you mean, it would take longer?”

Me: “The way our system is set up, we can’t just abort a transaction that has been entered in WIC mode even if the WIC is canceled. We’d need to void off every item and then start the transaction over again.”

Customer: “That’s dumb. I don’t need to separate it.”

Me: “No, you don’t need to separate it.”

I ring up the transaction and her WIC card has an error.

Customer: “What’s wrong with this dumb machine? Why isn’t it taking my WIC?”

I start to manually void each item instead of making her empty out her cart and scan the items.

Me: “There was an error with your card. I need to void all the items and enter them again in a new transaction.”

Customer: “This isn’t my fault!”

The customer after her said I was surprisingly patient and polite, which made me feel good.