So good evening TFR, This little incident happened about a week ago. First a little background. At my store, we're open 24/7 but our financial day ends at approximately 10PM every night. It's been like this for close to two decades and yet we still get people questioning our till change out procedure. You see every night we close of our self checkout machines at 9:30 so we can change out their internal tills. Usually it's done in about 15 minutes but Corporate wants us to have plenty of time in case there's an issue before the whole system changes over, registers and all.

So it's 9:50, self checkouts still closed until we can do a whole system change over and we have 2 registers open to handle the growing lines. This lady with green reusable bags comes up to one of the self checkouts and notice's their closed. She immediately yells for one of my younger cashiers to open the machine up. She's informed that they are closed and that the two registers are opened for her convenience. Well obviously she didn't like that because she stormed over to the line i was bagging in, mutter a few choice words under her breath. Well buy the time we get to Green back lady(GBL), we have to do the whole system change over. This is the following exchange i had with her.

GBL: " Why are you closing these up? I demand to be rung up immediately!"

Me: " Miss, we're doing a whole system change over. Our financial day ends at 10PM every night because we're a 24 hour store. We'll be back up and running in a few moments. It shouldn't be more than 4-5 minutes even if the system runs a bit slow"

She just mumbles angrily and nods. Unfortunately though, the other register had a bit of a card reader malfunction when we gave the order to pull the tills, so we had to manually type in the payment and rush the transacation. Simply added a extra 2-3 minutes to the change over, nothing major. Or so i thought. In the mean time, GBL's mumbling to herself and looking angrily at my staff.

Me: "Miss, is there anything wrong? you look rather upset?"

GBL: "I just can't believe they let children run this store after 10 PM. They're obviously incapable of doing their jobs from how young they look. Not one of you here can be over the age of 18. Why don't you guys have actual working adults here and not juveniles?"

Me: " Miss i can assure you that everyone of my staff members is not only over the age of 18, but very capable of their job. In fact i couldn't think of a better staff to have here tonight." I then pointed out the age of most of my staff members before she interrupts me.

GBL:" Why are you even defending them? It's not like it should matter to you anyway. You're just a bagger. I'm just saying they're acting like jueveniles. Just standing there chatting while we wait!"

Me: " Miss, First off I'm Senior Cashier. I trained everyone here tonight. So i can vouch for their level of ability. I also take offense to anyone calling my staff juevenile. Second of all, they can't do anything until our store accountant gets word from Corporate to change over the system and run his reports. So Miss if you would like to file a complaint with Corporate about their procedures, i'd be more than glad to give you their number. Now is there anything else i could help you with?"

GBL: "Never mind, just hurry this up!"

By this time the cashiers had gotten their tills and were on their way back, system had been rolled over as well. It's at this point that I put on my retail smile and attempted to kill GBL with kindness. Asking all the right questions and even offering a carry out. It obviously worked or she's very good at hiding anger because she turned into a rather sweet girl as the cashier was ringing her up.

A few staff members and i told the night manager what happened later that night and we've been promised that nothing will come of it. Sadly though an unrelated incident from when i wasn't on duty has caused corporate to come down on us as far as customer service goes.