Clay Fest day 2: Terminator
Oct. 11th, 2015 08:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrMy work shifts this year at Clay Fest are both the same: first shift (10 am to 1 pm) sales clerk at a credit/debit station. I tend to get put in the busiest station, because I've proved I'm fast and reliable, and because I hate being bored.
This year we're busy almost from the start; first transaction happens about quarter after the hour, and a line quickly develops. We move 'em through as fast as we can, but there's a new factor: the chip.
All our card readers have chip slots as well as magnetic swipes, and you have to use them. Quite apart from the legal liability--we're responsible for a bad card if we swipe instead of chip--they won't let you ignore them. Try to swipe a chip card and the screen tells you to insert into chip slot instead.
Very quickly, a few issues come up. Some cards--including everything issued by Barclay Bank--aren't properly entered into the system, it seems. Try to use one, and you get a CALL OPERATOR message, which might as well be a CARD DENIED, because experience proves that calling results in a 20-minute runaround, after which they still refuse the charge. Two of my customers this morning have to leave their pots on the holding table while they arrange for different payment.
The bigger issue, though, is bandwidth. Chip cards verifying with the bank apparently use more than swipes, and since my machine and Till 3's share a phone line, Sandy and I have to get in the habit of checking each other's status before slotting in a card. If we both try at once, the system takes forever, and then dumps both transactions. Vaguely risqué calls of "Are you in?" "Just coming out, your turn" punctuate the morning.
In the afternoon, I'm back in my booth talking with customers and pulling out restock. A woman comes in to tell me how many pots she's bought over the years, how she gives them as presents. These interactions always seem to be about the past, am I'm left with the conflicting feelings of I'm glad you like my work so much and Couldn't you possibly buy something today? This time, though, she puts my favorite kestrel baking dish in the top of her already brimming basket, and sends her husband off to the holding table as she picks up the owl pattern covered casserole. And comes back after I've restocked baker and casserole and buys both of them (over $200 in pots).
Plus the serving bowl I put in the gallery sells. It's a good day.
Every year I try to buy something new from a different potter. This time I get a twofer. Bonnie Stambaugh and I trade for one of her koi tiles, and I finally collect one of Cheryl Weese's painted lady bowls. And Denise picks up a beautiful porcelain lotus-bud tea bowl from Amy Minter.
This year we're busy almost from the start; first transaction happens about quarter after the hour, and a line quickly develops. We move 'em through as fast as we can, but there's a new factor: the chip.
All our card readers have chip slots as well as magnetic swipes, and you have to use them. Quite apart from the legal liability--we're responsible for a bad card if we swipe instead of chip--they won't let you ignore them. Try to swipe a chip card and the screen tells you to insert into chip slot instead.
Very quickly, a few issues come up. Some cards--including everything issued by Barclay Bank--aren't properly entered into the system, it seems. Try to use one, and you get a CALL OPERATOR message, which might as well be a CARD DENIED, because experience proves that calling results in a 20-minute runaround, after which they still refuse the charge. Two of my customers this morning have to leave their pots on the holding table while they arrange for different payment.
The bigger issue, though, is bandwidth. Chip cards verifying with the bank apparently use more than swipes, and since my machine and Till 3's share a phone line, Sandy and I have to get in the habit of checking each other's status before slotting in a card. If we both try at once, the system takes forever, and then dumps both transactions. Vaguely risqué calls of "Are you in?" "Just coming out, your turn" punctuate the morning.
In the afternoon, I'm back in my booth talking with customers and pulling out restock. A woman comes in to tell me how many pots she's bought over the years, how she gives them as presents. These interactions always seem to be about the past, am I'm left with the conflicting feelings of I'm glad you like my work so much and Couldn't you possibly buy something today? This time, though, she puts my favorite kestrel baking dish in the top of her already brimming basket, and sends her husband off to the holding table as she picks up the owl pattern covered casserole. And comes back after I've restocked baker and casserole and buys both of them (over $200 in pots).
Plus the serving bowl I put in the gallery sells. It's a good day.
Every year I try to buy something new from a different potter. This time I get a twofer. Bonnie Stambaugh and I trade for one of her koi tiles, and I finally collect one of Cheryl Weese's painted lady bowls. And Denise picks up a beautiful porcelain lotus-bud tea bowl from Amy Minter.