Changing things up at the Quickstop

A lover of animals and listening to music, the Quickstop cashier Rebecca Lamoreaux likes to keep life interesting. In her opinion, going through life doing the same thing is boring. 

“If everything’s the same, it gets kind of bland,” she said. “But if there’s something slightly different it kind of brings a little more fun to relish.” 

Lamoreaux approaches her job no different.  

Lamoreaux, a sophomore studying computer science at Utah State University, began counting people’s purchases using pennies when she worked in the Hub from 2019 to spring of 2021.  

She got bored at work one day and decided to change things up. 

“I started playing around with saying it in cents,” she said. 

When stating a customer’s purchase amount, instead of saying something along the lines of “$6.50,” she would say it in terms of pennies. For example, 650 cents. 

She ran into a few problems, however. 

The Hub tends to get busy, making it hard to hear over all the noise.  

Masks and restrictions made it even more difficult to communicate with customers in the Hub, as Lamoreaux began playing with the idea during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.  

After transferring from the Hub to the Quickstop, Lamoreaux was able to expand on her idea. The quiet, more intimate nature of the Quickstop made it a lot easier to interact with customers. 

Soon she began experimenting with dimes and nickels. 

“Dimes I can do pretty quickly as well as nickels,” she said. 

The hardest coin for her is the quarter. Sometimes it can take up to half a minute for her to count all the quarters in a purchase amount. 

During one of her shifts she developed tricks for each coin and began practicing. For example, when counting the purchase using pennies, Lamoreaux simply states the amount, ignoring the decimal. 

With dimes, she reads the amount with the decimal moved one numeral to the right. For nickels, she doubles the amount of dimes. 

This practice became such a habit that she began doing it by accident after her manager told her to stop.  

Now Lamoreaux only does it for people who ask her to, those who she recognizes as having enjoyed it in the past or for people’s change only. 

Over time, counting people’s change morphed from simply trying something new into a way of helping customers feel comfortable. 

“My general approach is just try to you know make people feel a little more relaxed,” she said, “or have a little fun.” 

She said she also does it so customers feel rich. The large number from counting coins, usually in the hundreds or thousands, sounds a lot bigger than the normal amount. 

“It surprises them a little bit,” she said. 

Counting people’s change isn’t the only way Lamoreoux likes to mix things up — she’s also brutally honest. 

When customers ask how she’s doing, she responds with the truth. If she’s having a bad day or if she’s tired, she says so.  

“That way they have the ability to be brutally honest too,” she said. 

Lamoreaux has found that, for the most part, when she responds honestly, so do her customers. 

“College students are tired more often than not I’ve found out,” she said. 

Her genuine approach has helped her personally.  

“I feel like I can talk to people a lot more freely,” she said. 

It also helps hearing that other people are struggling or tired or overwhelmed too. According to Lamoreaux, it’s comforting to know she’s not the only one. 

Lamoreaux believes it’s important to embrace her genuine self because it changes things up, it makes life fun. 

​​ “If I can help them have a little fun while they’re just getting a snack,” she said, “why not?”

Photo by Bailey Rigby