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Fish and Chip Shop

I'm going to be having a trail at a fish and chip shop and I'm nervous because, I'm not great at maths, and I know there will be a till but I'm scared I will get the change wrong or take too long. I'm also nervous about taking orders off the phone because I'm not very confident and I'm worried I wont be able to understand what they are saying or write down the order wrong :/
In a chip shop you need to be fast, friendly, confident and do everything correctly and I'm worried I cant do it :/
Any advice?
I've never worked at a till before and definitely not at a fish and chip shop, but I really don't think it'll be that big of an ordeal. Don't most machines just ask you for what the person is paying with and then automatically give you the change? If not though, you still shouldn't worry - you won't be dealing with numbers up in the hundreds, probably not over 50s, but if you still feel nervous about it I suggest you just give yourself some exercises involving change, so for instance write down a list of 10 subtractions (which are obviously within context, like 15 - 12.73 or 35 - 31.49) and try to go through them as quickly as possible. If you do this enough I think you'll find figuring out change like that will become progressively easier, until you find it's no hassle at all.

With respect to the order thing, try and make abbreviations if you need them so that you can write down the order faster. And just make sure to repeat back the order to them so that there's no confusion. If you don't understand what they're saying do not feel embarrassed to ask them to repeat what they said again. Trust me, it's much better to just ask them to repeat what they said than to have to deal with angry customers through the phone complaining about their mistaken order.

Wish you all the best of luck!! You can definitely do it, it's not hard, and within a few days you'll already get the hang of it.
Original post by Settle
I've never worked at a till before and definitely not at a fish and chip shop, but I really don't think it'll be that big of an ordeal. Don't most machines just ask you for what the person is paying with and then automatically give you the change? If not though, you still shouldn't worry - you won't be dealing with numbers up in the hundreds, probably not over 50s, but if you still feel nervous about it I suggest you just give yourself some exercises involving change, so for instance write down a list of 10 subtractions (which are obviously within context, like 15 - 12.73 or 35 - 31.49) and try to go through them as quickly as possible. If you do this enough I think you'll find figuring out change like that will become progressively easier, until you find it's no hassle at all.

With respect to the order thing, try and make abbreviations if you need them so that you can write down the order faster. And just make sure to repeat back the order to them so that there's no confusion. If you don't understand what they're saying do not feel embarrassed to ask them to repeat what they said again. Trust me, it's much better to just ask them to repeat what they said than to have to deal with angry customers through the phone complaining about their mistaken order.

Wish you all the best of luck!! You can definitely do it, it's not hard, and within a few days you'll already get the hang of it.


Thank you for all the advice! Its the trail tonight :/ hope it doesn't go too bad xD
Best of luck!! You'll do just fine!
Original post by govtandpolitics
I'm going to be having a trail at a fish and chip shop and I'm nervous because, I'm not great at maths, and I know there will be a till but I'm scared I will get the change wrong or take too long. I'm also nervous about taking orders off the phone because I'm not very confident and I'm worried I wont be able to understand what they are saying or write down the order wrong :/
In a chip shop you need to be fast, friendly, confident and do everything correctly and I'm worried I cant do it :/
Any advice?


Having worked in retail and hospitality (waitressing) for nearly 6 years, I can honestly say do your best.
It will undoubtedly go slow for the first few weeks but once you get more practice out of it, you will master everything perfectly.
Don't be afraid to ask any questions that you are unsure about to your manager (or colleagues if there are more of you) and be more confident about it.
When talking to customers over the phone, if they are talking to fast, don't be scared to ask them to repeat the order.
Also once you take their order, repeat it to them again. This is to ensure that no mistakes are made and prevent messing up their order as this can complicate things and then you'll have an extremely angry customer who will complain!

I used to work at Primark and if you've been to the till, you will see my point.
Like you OP I'm no maths genius especially when it comes to money.
Once I accept payment from a customer, I quickly enter the amount onto the touchscreen computer and it automatically tells me how much change I need to give back to the customer. If the customer wishes to pay by card then I don't need to give change back! Easy...but I'm not sure if thats the case for you though.

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