POS

You may have noticed I am blogging about Blondie’s new wine bar endeavor.  After a couple of taxing months, isn’t it good we can [nervously] laugh about it?  Or I should more accurately say…. isn’t it good my carefully negotiated blogger’s agreement allows us to laugh about certain things that shall not include the staff, customers, or menu. 

Which brings us to the point-of-sale (i.e., cash register) system at the bar.  If you’re in the trade, you call this the “POS system”.  [If you’re the designated bookkeeper you call it “the important part”.]  Blondie’s POS system is an app for the iPad!  How cool is that!  It’s so cool.....my iPad disappeared [just when I was getting good at Boggle].  The servers just have to be sure they’re ringing up real customers and not the ones on my Farmville game. 

But the greatest part of this POS system is it’s on the web.  So those of us keeping score at home can….well….keep score at home.  Log in any time of the day or evening and see exactly how many tickets are open and who is ordering what and how much she can afford to pay the bookkeeper.  But Blondie thinks this interest is like spying on her.  Silly girl – accessing the footage from the shop cameras is spying on her, the cash register stuff just lets me stay involved, which allows me to help in a number of ways: 

• I can correct her whenever she gets a key statistic wrong.  “No – I think it was five bottles of the barbarella that you sold, not four.  By the way, what IS a barberella?” 
• I can offer helpful hints:  “I’m surprised you didn’t suggest a glass of the mongrano to table 32 since they liked the vilosell so much” [she REALLY likes it when I also make wine recommendations – armchair sommelier] 
• She’s not the only one who gets to know the customers:  “Was that Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton at table 14?  Nice champagne – what were they celebrating? “
• And I can keep an eye on things.  “That table of 1 sure drank a lot of wine with dinner.”  [Oh  yeah, I forgot I was at the wine bar for dinner tonight.]

I am a little worried, however, that my login ID may be deactivated before I can check on today’s events.