My favorite part about working in merchandise was the ability to pick up shifts almost anywhere on property. I say almost anywhere because there were certain locations where you needed special training to work. For the most part, if you do pick up one of those shifts, the leaders at the new location will just not put you in the area you're not trained in, but for resorts you must be tobacco and alcohol sales trained to pick up shifts there at all. I don't know how this worked in other locations, but in Dinoland it was always kind of annoying to come into work and see lots of merchandise cast members from other locations there. Because these cast members were not trained on games, they would have to be on the register all day, meaning cast members whose home location was Dinoland would likely be on games for most/all of the day.
Speaking of games, merchandise actually includes a couple of different areas that you may not have realized are actually part of merchandise. In addition to the retail aspect of this role, merchandise also includes running the carnival games in Dinoland, food service (like at the Confectionary on Main Street, or resort gift shops with dessert cases), photo sales (at the end of rides), and stroller, wheelchair, ECV, and locker rentals.
As far as any role on the college program goes, I would say that merchandise was pretty laid back. This does totally depend on your location, but in general merchandise was not a stressful role. (I'd be stressed out on the carnival games, but I'm just talking about merchandise in general.) Merchandise included a lot of time spent merchantaining (entertaining guests with the merchandise) and stock shifts were particularly relaxed in terms of roles on the CP. During a stock shift, you can take your breaks whenever you want and be more independent throughout the day than you can while you're tied to the register. In some cases, like in Animal Kingdom, you also got a more comfortable costume!
For the actual cash handling, register part of merchandise, it was pretty comparable to retail at any other location. Of course there are some things you need to learn that are specific to Disney, like how their POS system operates, and the different ways to use dining plan snacks or certain other discounts, but for the most part it's pretty basic cash handling sorta stuff. The one thing that would occasionally cause issues at the register was discounts. If the merchandise cast member is doing his or her job correctly, the person who uses a discount (Disney Vacation Club, Disney Visa Card, Annual Passholder, Cast Member, etc...) needs to be the person paying for the merchandise. So if you have an annual pass that you show to the cast member, but your friend hands over her credit card, the cast member is supposed to ask that the person who the discount belongs to pays. (And they also need to show a valid photo ID.) Occasionally guests would get really cranky over this policy, but it was just one of those "I didn't make the rules, I only work here" sort of things that you would occasionally have to deal with. The worst ones with regards to this would be cast members whose family or friends try to pay while the cast member discount is being used, which absolutely cannot happen as once the cast ID is scanned a different credit card being used would look really sketchy and everyone involved could get in trouble. The other issue was annual passholders, who assumed this information was stored on their magic band, but really it's not, and they still need to carry the discount card that is mailed to them.
At Disney, merchandise cast members are not responsible for counting drawers at the end of the night, which was nice, and in some locations they aren't even responsible for taking the cash out of the drawer. The only other kind of weird thing I would say about the Disney POS system, is that I thought it was at times surprisingly slow, and/or touchy. If a child (who doesn't have charging privileges) scanned his or her magic band while a transaction is in process, you most likely would have to start over ringing because you'd get some weird error message. And when the Wi-Fi was being picky the register could get really slow, which I just thought was sorta unexpected for a company like Disney.
Overall, I would highly recommend applying for merchandise, because even though the basic task of retail isn't all that exciting, having the flexibility to work different locations, pin trade with guests, and merchantain really make it worth it. Merchandise also has some downtime involved, so you can actually get to know your coworkers really well, which is harder to do with other jobs on the program. And depending on your location, you can have a little bit of variety in the kind of shifts you work. In Dinoland I could be on the register, on games, doing photo, or stocking, and other days of the week I could have picked up shifts somewhere else altogether, so the variety and flexibility was definitely nice compared other roles where you're given a location and you aren't able to go anywhere else.
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