Question

Question:Assume that you are a cashier and your manager requires that you immediately enter each sale when it occurs. Recently, lunch hour traffic has increased and the assistant manager asks you to avoid delays by taking customers’ cash and making change without entering sales. The assistant manager says she will add up cash and enter sales after lunch. She says that, in this way, customers will be happy and the register record will always match the cash amount when the manager arrives at three o’clock. The advantage to the process proposed by the assistant manager includes improved customer service, fewer delays, and less work for you. The disadvantage is that the assistant manager could steal cash by simply recording less sales than the cash received and then pocketing the excess cash. You decide to reject her suggestion without the manager’s approval and to confront her on the ethics of her suggestion.

Required

Propose and evaluate two other courses of action you might consider, and explain why.

Short answer

Answer

Two courses of action are –

a) Consultation with the manager

b) Introducing a token system for sales

Step-by-step solution

Course of action one – Consultation with manager

As the problem is only for the lunch hour, so the assistant manager’s solution is quick but needs to be authorized by the manager. If the cashier somehow manages to communicate with the manager and gets a clear message for acceptance or rejection then the ultimate decision can be taken.

Course of action one – Generating tokens

Another solution to the problem may be generating tokens to match up the sales. Even if the cashier is not able to communicate with the manager, he can still follow the assistant manager’s suggestion by introducing a token system either manually or automated. This token would enable to count the no. of sales in units and would be an easier way to match up the cash collections with generated tokens.