So yesterday I worked my first shift at one of my two new jobs -- in addition to resuming my Mon-Fri position back at the local community college, I took a job clerking on Saturdays at the local comic shop. Interesting experience so far. I've worked two other retail positions in the past -- at the bookstore for the past 10 months or so and at KB Toys in the summer of 2000 -- but those were both major chains and, as such, everything was pretty technologically up to date. If someone paid with a credit card, you swiped it and that was it. At the bookstore, if someone paid with a check, you scanned it through the register and the check was processed electronically, such that we actually gave the now void check back to the customer because it wasn't necessary to keep it.
This comic shop, however, is still pretty much in the dark ages of retail, which means calling the credit card companies and punching in merchant ID numbers and waiting for approval codes and the like. And I'm really kind of surprised that not even the inventory is done via a database -- the computer we had in '88 could've handled that sort of thing -- but it's very much a paper and pen and highlighter kind of place. Weird. (more...)