Convenience store onboarding is usually short. On day one a new hire learns the till, the parcel desk and where the cigarettes are, and a few days later they are on the counter alone. The manual covers scanning and the closing routine in detail. But the moments that rattle a new hire most come from outside the manual: the drawer is a few thousand won short at handover and the next person is waiting; a customer who looks very young puts a bottle of soju on the counter; at dawn the walk-in fridge is reading warm.
We have added a convenience store map to First Run. It is set in a company-run store of Haru24, a fictional convenience store chain, in a residential neighbourhood near a university. Choose the convenience store map in a new game and you start as new staff in one of five roles, Counter & Checkout, Ordering & Inventory, Floor & Display, Fresh Food & Hygiene or Night Shift & Safety, and work up to store manager.
This article covers the judgments where new convenience store staff get stuck, and how to practise them as onboarding scenarios. It is written for store managers, retail operations staff and the senior staff who share shifts with new hires.
What the convenience store map covers
The map runs on the same engine as the others, but its places and roles are built around a convenience store.
- Counter & Checkout: sales, the cash drawer, parcels and bill payments, and age checks for alcohol and tobacco. This role meets the most customers.
- Ordering & Inventory: setting order quantities by weather and promotions, logging waste and running stock counts.
- Floor & Display: shelves, price labels, buy-one-get-one signs and aisles, including whether the shelf price matches what rings up.
- Fresh Food & Hygiene: lunch boxes and hot food, fridge and freezer temperatures, fryer hygiene and allergen questions.
- Night Shift & Safety: long hours alone, deciding what comes first with drunk customers, power cuts and threats.
The scenes differ by role, but the judgment underneath is the same: stop, check, tell, and record.
Five judgments where new staff get stuck
All five scenes below are quests on the convenience store map.
1. The cash drawer is short at closing
At night closing, the drawer is 20,000 won short of the POS. It was a busy day, with two refunds. A new starter assumes it was their mistake and wants to make it up from their own wallet. That keeps the day quiet, but the cause stays. Nobody will know whether it was wrong change or a refund that was not processed. Blaming another shift straight away does not find the cause either.
- Excellent: count once more, write the difference into the closing record as it is, and tell your lead. Check the refund and void history and the POS journal alongside it.
- Good: count it three more times alone, and if it is still short, tell your lead the next morning.
- Risky: post in the group chat that the afternoon shift must have given the wrong change.
- Poor: put in your own money to make it balance, so it does not become a thing.
2. A customer of uncertain age buys alcohol or tobacco
Age checks are the judgment new staff face most often. They waver when a customer who seems like a regular says "they sold it to me last time," or when a senior colleague says "obviously an adult." The rule is simple: if unsure, look at ID, and if you cannot confirm, do not sell. We cover this in detail in Age Verification Onboarding for Alcohol and Tobacco.
3. The shelf price and the till price differ
A customer says the shelf label reads 1,500 won but the till charged 1,800. A promotion ended and the label was never changed. A new hire wants to explain that the till price is correct and leave it there.
- Excellent: apologise, handle it by the store standard with your lead confirming, then take that label down at once and check every spot where last week's promotion labels may remain.
- Good: apologise, charge the displayed price and go back to the till. The customer is sorted, but the label is still there.
- Risky: after the customer leaves, quietly change just that label to 1,800.
- Poor: say "The POS price is the right price" and charge 1,800.
A label problem that only the fixer knows about comes back at the next promotion. That is why the habit of looking for other labels with the same cause is part of the right answer.
4. The fridge ran warm overnight
At the morning check, the log for the kimbap and sandwich fridge shows it ran above the store standard for a few hours before dawn. It reads normal now, and the products look fine. The commuter rush is about to start. It is easy for a new starter to decide that a normal reading now means everything is fine.
- Excellent: stop selling from that fridge and set the products aside. Decide on disposal with your lead and the head office manual, request a repair, and record the times and temperatures.
- Good: call a repair technician straight away, but keep selling until your lead replies.
- Risky: move the products to another fridge and keep selling them.
- Poor: keep selling, because the products look fine and the reading is normal now.
5. Alone at night, under threat
The most important rule of a solo night shift is that people come before stock and cash. If someone with a weapon demands money, do not resist or chase them. Comply, avoid provoking them, and once you are safe, press the alarm, call the police and report to the manager. Leave the scene as it is.
- Excellent: do not resist; keep your hands visible and slowly hand over what is demanded. Do not follow. Once safe, lock the door, use the alarm and call the police, then write down a description. Leave anything the person touched alone.
- Good: hand it over as asked, but call the store manager before the police to ask what to do.
- Risky: pretend to hand over the money while pressing the alarm in front of the person.
- Poor: grab the stick under the counter and stand your ground to protect the money.
What happens when new staff cover gaps alone
Convenience stores run on few staff, so new hires spend long stretches deciding alone. When they cover a gap themselves because they worry asking will make them look incompetent, the problem does not shrink; it surfaces later. A short drawer is short again next month, and an unchanged label is wrong again in front of another customer.
The sentence to repeat most in convenience store onboarding is "stop, check, tell, record." In a store with frequent handovers, the record is the next person's first piece of information.
Notes for writing convenience store onboarding scenarios
- The standard is the store and head office manuals and the local law. Scenarios are a tool for practising judgment; they do not replace the rules.
- An option that skips an age check or edits a temperature record can never be the right answer.
- Do not praise solving it alone. Praise stopping and telling in time.
- Put in realistic pressure from regulars, seniors and rush hours, but do not let the pressure move the standard.
- In night-safety scenarios, never write confronting the person as the brave answer.
New convenience store staff checklist
- In the first week, do the cash count and handover routine yourself.
- Confirm which IDs the store accepts and the age-check standard.
- Check price labels together on the days promotions start and end.
- Confirm fridge and freezer temperature standards and who to call when they are out.
- Practise waste logging and first-in, first-out shelving with your own hands.
- Find the night alarm and learn the reporting order.
Ordering and waste are covered in Expiry, FIFO and Waste Onboarding, and handling unhappy customers in Complaint Handling Onboarding. The design rules behind the industry maps are in Industry-Specific Onboarding Scenarios.
Try workplace scenarios as onboarding quests
Pick the convenience store map in a new game and start with the judgments of your first shift. Play the Onboarding