Cashiers, how often do customers pay with checks? Do you accept them?

22 comments

  2. Never. Worked at several retail jobs and no one has ever tried paying with a check. I know it happens, never seen it though.

  3. I was a cashier at various fast-casual eating establishments in my younger years…

    Only for large catering orders from trusted organizations. Walk in customers, never.

  4. I’ve worked retail in various jobs for 12 years, both large and small businesses. Never worked in a business that accepted checks. I can only remember being offered a check once.

    (A much more common issue is people trying to pay for a $5 order with a $100 bill when I can’t make that much change.)

  5. The last time I worked retail, around 20 years ago in a large department store in a mall, we occasionally had someone try to pay with a check. There’s one story I remember well which explains why so many places don’t take checks anymore:

    One night I was in some remote department, this register that rarely got any traffic, and was stocked with merchandise that sold poorly.

    After a generally uneventful shift on a slow day, it was coming up on closing time. I was looking forward to going home, so I was just about to start to close out my register. The announcement comes over the PA that the store will be closing in a few minutes, and that now is the time for any final purchases.

    Only moments before I key in the code to shut down the register, a man walks up, with his wife and two kids in tow behind him. He’s got an armful of merchandise he wants to buy. Okay, I’m here to do my job and check you out: so I scan all his stuff, bag it, and am ready to finish this when I ask how he will be paying for it.

    He says it will be by a check. Okay, he writes a check for the entire sum (~$400), and hands it to me, and is reaching to just take the bag and run off. However, I have to tell him:

    “One moment sir, I have to enter the check into the register first”.

    You see, we can’t just accept checks outright, in fact, we don’t even make the say on it. We have to first enter the ID number they used to identify themselves for buying with a check, so I key in his Driver’s License number first. The registers also have this little scanner that reads the MICR numbers on the check and verifies whether or not to accept the check. I guess it’s some kind of credit verification or looking for bad checks on the same account or some other red flags.

    Well, our little check verification system refuses to accept his check. It says I have to take another form of payment. He gets irate and says to run it through again. I take this moment to look at the check. . .

    It’s drawn on a two-party check, drawn on an out-of-state bank (and he’s from this state, so he’s paying with a check from a bank that’s out of state to him), with a home address listed that didn’t match the Driver’s License, and wasn’t even from the same state as the bank, much less his ID. It’s like a textbook case of a check not to accept. I try to politely tell him that I can’t accept the check, and I can still accept cash, store gift cards, or credit & debit cards.

    He gets irate, and says I’m insulting him by saying his checks are no good, and that I’m being a very bad sales clerk for treating a customer this way. He’s getting very dramatic on me, acting like he’s putting on a show or something. He’s demanding to see my manager (who clocked out about 5 minutes ago, my manager was always first out the door), demanding I give him store credit to make up for this insult, demanding I accept the check or he’s never shopping here again, demanding my full name (instead of the first name on my name tag) so he can call and complain about me to my boss. Then says he owns stock in the company and will make sure I’m fired if I don’t comply (I happen to know the store is privately held by one family, and he doesn’t have their surname).

    I notice that his wife is blushing bright red, averting her eyes, and looks utterly mortified. The younger of his kids pipes up and says:

    “Daddy, you do this every time we go shopping!” To which he snaps his head over with a vengeful glare and shushes her and returns to me to continue trying to browbeat me into accepting the obviously bad check.

    By this point, other sales associates are walking by, taking their final register take for the night to the office upstairs and clocking out, and some of the lights are being turned off. I know that if I don’t shut down soon, the store manager or security will be along in a few minutes. I was betting that security was already watching this entire spectacle on the security cameras.

    I make my stand and tell him that in no uncertain terms: I’m not allowed to accept a check from him on that account, I cannot override it, I would be **fired** if I just accepted it and gave him the merchandise, and the store is closing, so please pay with another form of payment or please leave.

    He gets an outright angry grimace on his face and says that he’s never been so insulted in his life and my manager, my manager’s manager, and my manager’s manager’s manager will hear about my bad attitude the next day, that he will go to the media with the story of how insulting they are to their customers, and that I will regret the day I ever crossed him. His family in tow, they leave and from a quick glance, they got into an argument out in the parking lot.

    I cancel the entire transaction, leave the bag to be reshelved the next day, quickly close out my register, and am taking the bag up just as the manager supervising the close was coming out to ask what happened. I told him I had somebody trying to pull a check scam as the store was closing, and was hoping to use the urgency of closing the store to get me to accept an obviously fraudulent check. He nods and takes my money pouch, as I clock out and end that day.

  7. I worked at kohls and we’d occasionally get older women whom paid with checks, but it was pretty rare.

  8. I worked as a cashier at stop and shop between 2014-2018.

    Many times. Not just old people, but middle aged people too. I’m surprised by all of the “never” answers.

    I massively preferred getting checks over a customer handing me cash.

    I got a 20 second break when I sent the check into that printer looking machine, have them sign on the prompter, and then resend the check in the machine again before handing them then check and receipt and then looking at the next bastard with a full cart in my line.

  10. I’m not a cashier but I do see customers pay with checks at the grocery store. It is rare and the customers who do are generally older in age, even elderly. Maybe like 1 in 150 interactions I see it.

  11. Never. I’d say about 70% of all transactions are with cards and the final 30% is cash. I don’t even know how to read or write a check, truth be told.

  12. It’s been years since I worked at a grocery, but it used to be fairly common. I still see people pay for groceries with Checks occasionally when I’m checking out – pretty sure the Wal-mart near me takes checks too. There’s a whole approval process, they need a driver’s license, etc. so it slows things down.

  13. When I worked retail for 10 years I quit in 2017ish we had a check at least once a week. I despised them, they took too long.

  14. I’ve seen exactly one person pay with check. She was like 60 years old and it was in the middle of nowhere, KY.

  15. I work in a beer distributor and we get them about 50% *(with card purchases making up the other half)* of the time for wedding catering due to the cost. We also get them for deposits on the kegs so that they can be returned through the mail once we get everything back.

    As for day-to-day transactions, we only have two customers who pay with checks. We won’t accept them from anyone else for regular purchases because they used to bounce so often. These two are long-time customers that have been buying beer at the store longer than I’ve been alive, so the owner trusts them.

  16. When I worked at Ross (in 2014), I think I did a check once. everyone paid with debit/credit/cash. Mostly credit cards tbqh. Like sometimes several credit cards.

  17. Sure, they are instantly converted to digital. Customers hand over a blank check, the check reader reads the MICR for routing and account number, prints out the info and endorses it and scans it to digital format. It is basically an EFT. We hand the check back to the customer and it is marked VOID.

  18. I worked at a golf course for many years. It was not typical, but checks were fine to pay with. Usually, when they were used, they were used to pay large amounts(over 1k) for loyalty programs(i.e., pay a certain amount of money and get extra golf/whatever). Regardless, we had the training to process them for any transaction, so in the unusual situation in which someone just wanted to play and pay via check, we could certainly do it, and very occasionally we did.

  20. There’s a restaurant in my city that only takes checks or cash. No cards at all. If you need cash, they have an ATM in the back of the place that charges a hefty fee. It’s also the highest volume non-chain restaurant in probably the entire county.

  22. I was a Target cashier when I was 16 in 2004. My first job.

    Checks were rare back then. They must be virtually unheard of now.

    It’s been a while, but I remember having to feed them through a machine that presumably scanned them.

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