For those who have never had the pleasure of working in a retail or similar environment, the “point of sale system” is the computer and software used to process orders and make bills. People who use these frequently call them POS systems, which is convenient, because in polite company we can claim it stands for “point of sale” with a straight face. This disgust seems to be universal, and I am certainly no exception about ours.
When I started working at the cleaners, our POS hardware was in the shape of four Windows 9x boxen with fat little CRT monitors. The software was a text-based menu with a gajillion options for all the various little nuances of order types and contents. It wasn’t what you might call newbie-friendly; I’m reasonably competent with computers, and the first time I walked up to it I couldn’t have told you what key to press to start a new order. It was, however, very efficient for familiar users. Because the whole thing was keyboard-based, and you could either use the arrow keys or hit a letter to jump to the most common choices in each menu, it became easy to speed through an order without stopping to look at the screen. The mice attached to these systems were largely vestigial.
In April, the owners started the process of purchasing a new POS system. It would come with brand new hardware and software: a shiny LCD touchscreen and a graphical interface where every piece had an icon depicting exactly what it was, and all we had to do was tap pieces to add them to an order. I found out about all this when I came in one morning to find two techs showing off the new system on an example machine. I was less impressed with it than I was with the fact that they both spoke Korean, Spanish, and English, in that order of fluency. (They were giving the demo to my coworkers in Spanish, but switched as needed when speaking to me or to Mr. and Mrs. Lee.)
I was suspicious, as I generally am of the attitude that graphics are ever necessarily an improvement, but I kept an open mind. It certainly did solve a few of the problems we’d been having with the old system. Most notably, it removed the hard limit of five items per order, which is a bit silly when someone brings in six ties and you have to split them up into two tiny orders. The computers would now control the conveyors directly, too, saving us a lot of time and attention while helping customers. And it had a robust customization system which allowed the user to configure it completely for the particular quirks of his business.
In retrospect, that last one should have been a red flag. It should never be the job of the corporate user to configure something to suit his own needs; if he’s already paying for the software and support package, it should come ready for him to use. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The techs, Sam and Thomas, left the example system set up for us to use. This was almost a great idea, as it gave us a few days to play around and get comfortable with it before it was adopted. A few days . . . during the work week. Days during which we would mostly be serving customers, detailing and marking orders, putting bags away, and so forth, leaving approximately no time at all to, say, play with the example system. We figured this out very quickly, but there was nothing we could do except keep working and assume we’d figure it out when the time came.
They did the installation on a Sunday, when the shop is closed, and right around 7:02 Monday morning problems began to show themselves. It was pretty easy to learn, sure, and we got the hang of basic order creation and detailing in no time. But the first time I heard one of the conveyors start running in response to a command from the computer, my jaw hit the floor.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Elena, who opens the store and had therefore been hearing it all morning, only shrugged sympathetically. I listened, aghast, as an awful little MIDI version of Beethoven’s Für Elise issued from a tiny speaker newly attached to each conveyor. It played as long as the conveyor was running, and then stopped.
“That actually plays every time the conveyor moves?”
I couldn’t believe that anyone anywhere could possibly have thought this was a good idea, but Elena confirmed it. As if this weren’t bad enough, at some point shortly thereafter we had cause to be running all three of our conveyors at once, using the new system’s ability to queue order locations for multiple clerks and retrieve them one by one. All of the conveyors cheerfully started up with the same music.
Out of sync with each other.
In three different keys.
I spent a dumbstruck moment imagining listening to that cacophany hour after hour, five days a week, and looked at the speaker boxes for some sign of a power or even volume switch. I found none.
“We’re going to have to break the speakers,” I decided.
We didn’t break the speakers. We didn’t find a way to turn them off, either. For more than six months now, we’ve actually been going about our business with this hideous chorus in the background. The customer response has been varied; one of our regulars, a former piano student, apparently has a traumatic recital experience associated with the tune and shudders when it plays. A couple people have mis-identified it as Brahms’s Lullaby or Pachelbel’s Canon. (This amuses me not because they’re wrong, but because they’re wrong while trying to show off how cultured they are.) Quite a few mistake it for a cell phone ringing. When we explain what it actually is, they’re as shocked as I was.
“Doesn’t it drive you crazy?” they ask.
“Honestly,” I tell them, “I don’t even hear it any more.” It’s true–my brain has learned to filter out the music entirely until someone points it out.
Oddly enough, that doesn’t stop me from humming along. Not with the melody, mind you; I sing alto, and am therefore much more accustomed to harmonizing. Over the months we’ve developed a nice little duet. I worry that one of these days one of my coworkers is going to notice and smack me for adding to the noise . . . unless they don’t hear my humming any more either.
All this is still just a taste of the horrors of the new POS system, but I’ll be kinder to you than it was to us and save the rest for another time.