Chile Forum

what is this very odd and not at all efficient (imo) way of buying stuff? anything from buying a sandwich to purchasing nail polish to buying a hardware item. items are kept behind a glass counter, you must point to what you want. then they write up a slip for you, pass it to someone who packages it, who then passes it to someone who rings up the sale. all of this could be done by ONE person...and why can we not pick the item off a shelf ourselves? please explain this odd, time consuming and rather ridiculous way of doing things. i know i cannot change they way things are done...but can anyone explain this silliness to me?

(1) shoplifting by the public
(2) theft by employees (read other threads about this issue) - separate functions, especially a separate cajero/a is key to control of employee initiated theft of goods, services or money

There are many large places that allow you to pick things off the shelves but under the watchful eyes of many security personnel of course.

Yes, as EEUU says write up a slip is the "poor men control system" for inventory, is very popular in small business to avoid theft

I've been told (okay, perhaps I was too gullible) that some folk even regard "ant theft" as their right and are all but incensed when hindered from engaging in it.

Yea, and not only in Chile, I remember a study years ago reccomended to be permissive with micro theft in American offices to increase productivity (abusive use of photocopies and such)

job creation i thought... but yeh theft is also another reason.. makes for very frustrating shopping experiences.. funny story. there is a large 'discount' type shop here in concepcion that apparently sells toiletries 'cheap'.. and the Mrs was hell bent on buying soaps..shampoos etc only from this shop.. now u go in there tell whoever is behind the counters what you need (so basically u need to know what u want) they write a slip and u go to the cashier to pay.. now get this.. its a relatively big discount store.. very popular by the looks.. you would think they would have a few cashiers... nope.. they have max 2 on at any given time.. the line is at least 10-15mins long if ur lucky.. and the savings?.. about 5% if that.. 5% would be ok if you spent like a million pesos (saving of 50,000 pesos) but we probably spend maybe 10,000 pesos a month on toiletries maybe less so we'd save maybe 500 pesos.. so I calmly explain to the wife that if we just bought everything in the one place ie Lider or Santa Isabel then we'd not only save on transport but time too and if we were smart we'd buy on promotions thus making the trip to the 'discount' place unnecessary .. luckily she agreed...

I use to know guy in the States who worked for a big department store. He constantly was robbing the store blind by double entering returns, canceling them, and generally making what appeared to be mistakes on the till and receipts. The funny thing was, that the company published the error statistics. In fact, because his scam depended on the till and he really knew how to work a till he was very careful not make extra mistakes and get flagged. The company was loosing something like 30% less over just the regular error rate of normal employees (either that or they where all ripping the company off too).

yea, employees rip off stores and offices everywhere in the world. In the States however your cashier system is setup so that employees tills have to be closed out at each shift. If they don't match, someone is pulling money out of their pocket or getting fired. I have even seen management mark bills, run the till, and call the cops and arrest the employee on the spot. There are ways to control it without needing a dozen people, mostly through automation. On the other hand, if management is lazy or the owner can not trust the middle management and employees are relatively cheap, then more makes sense.

I think the single biggest issue is the employee loyalty to the company. The companies don't care about their employees, the employees are really not going care about the company. Throw in middle management that either does not care about the company either or is completely incompetent, and you got a very inefficient disaster.