Cashier

A cashier is a person who rings up the goods or services that the consumer wishes to purchase. After all of the goods have been rung up, the cashier then collects payment for the goods or services exchanged. In one form or another, cashiers have been around for thousands of years. In many businesses, such as grocery stores, the cashier is a "stepping stone" position. Many employers require employees to be cashiers in order to move up to customer service or other positions such as produce.

Cashiers are at risk of repetitive strain injuries due to the repeated movements often necessary to do the job, such as entering information on a keypad or moving product over a scanner. A less-current meaning of the term referred to the employee of a business responsible for receiving and disbursing money. In a non-retail business, this would be a position of significant responsibility.

With an ever-larger proportion of transactions being done using cash substitutes (such as checks, credit cards, debit cards, etc.), the amount of cash handled by such employees has declined, and this usage of the word "cashier" has been largely supplanted by the title comptroller. A business (also called a firm or an enterprise) is a legally recognized organization designed to provide goods and/or services to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, most being privately owned and formed to earn profit that will increase the wealth of its owners and grow the business itself. The owners and operators of a business have as one of their main objectives the receipt or generation of a financial return in exchange for work and acceptance of risk. Notable exceptions include cooperative businesses and state-owned enterprises. Socialist systems involve either government agencies, public, or worker ownership of most sizable businesses.

The etymology of "business" relates to the state of being busy either as an individual or society as a whole, doing commercially viable and profitable work. The term "business" has at least three usages, depending on the scope — the singular usage (above) to mean a particular company or corporation, the generalized usage to refer to a particular market sector, such as "the music business" and compound forms such as agribusiness, or the broadest meaning to include all activity by the community of suppliers of goods and services. However, the exact definition of business, like much else in the philosophy of business, is a matter of debate.