Blogger 365 Day 39 - Knowing too much

I made a mistake. One of m character flaws is that far too often I have multiple things going on in my head at the same time. So while I may be doing one thing, there are always those odd little nuggets pulling at my brain in the background. Usually they are problems that I haven't figured out how to solve yet. Rather than just let them go or have someone else guide me as to what I should be doing, instead I let things just ruminate in the background, until I either have come up with a new idea to try, or have finally decided that whatever it is that I am trying to do just is beyond my mental or physical skill set.

One such problem was at work with our new register system. Most products you see in a gocery store have a bar code on them and at the point of sale that bar code is what is scanned to ring an item through the system. What is good about that obviously is that you have an ability to track products that are sold, it is very easy to pull up a report and find out how many, say 2 liter bottles of Coke, you have sold over an specific time period. The problem we have is that a specific number of our products do not have a bar code. Things like hot coffee, fountain drinks, made to order foods do not come with their own bar code, nor do we have the equipment to generate our own bar codes for them. Now we could buy rolls of bar codes, the problem with that though is the significant numer of products we carry that would need a bar code and the fact that each time you would have to buy the specific batr code for the specific item. In essence, a good portion of our back stock would be paper waiting to be used. That was the problem.

I left this problem roll around in my head for a few days until I came up with an idea, that being to just ignore the bar code entirely. As long as I could create a menu on the register with button, then the items in question would need to be scanned at al. Of course I have never done anything like this and certainly not with our new system, but if not me then who? If not now then when? So I poked and proddd a little bit the last few days and taught myself how to do some things. Of course by teaching myself these things I have once again increased my own workload, since I am the only one with even a remote understanding of how to do anything wth the registers beyond simply cashing out an order. I think I am getting dangerously close to the point where I need to be asking for a raise.