Coping With a Headache on Valentine’s Day : Business: A court-ordered drop in the county sales tax has shopkeepers scrambling once again to reprogram cash registers.

As if things weren’t hectic enough for florists on Valentine’s Day, the busiest day of the year, there was a new factor to contend with: Friday was the first day of the new sales tax rate in San Diego County.

“You’re kidding, right?” said a clerk at the Carlsbad Florist Co., who was still charging customers 8.25% tax. A court ruling Thursday had prompted a drop to 7.75%, as of midnight.

“It just went into effect last night, right? We’ve been so busy. . . ,” the clerk said, reaching for a seemingly constantly ringing telephone.

Just around the corner, though, Carlsbad Stationers was prepared. The owners had copied the brand-new tax schedules, provided by the State Franchise Tax Board, to give as a courtesy to local stores.

“Went to the Franchise Tax Board office this morning,” said Ralph Sommerfeldt, a salesman for the store. “We do this for the merchants in town; they rely on us to do it first.”

The California Supreme Court on Thursday refused to reconsider a December ruling that declared unconstitutional San Diego County’s special half-cent sales tax to build courts and jails. Retailers in the county were ordered to stop collecting the tax as of midnight Thursday, dropping the county’s sales tax to 7.75% from 8.25%.

The vast majority of shopkeepers appeared to have little trouble Friday adjusting to the lower sales tax rate. In this electronic age, it was just a matter of reprogramming their cash registers.

“I got my programming this morning, and got it done before the store opened,” said Joe Kraatz, store manager of Joe’s Paint & Glass Co. in Vista.

Kraatz and dozens of other retailers scrambled to places such as Leach Cash Register Inc., paying $25 or more for instruction sheets on reprogramming registers.

“We’ve had at least five tax rate changes in the last three or four years, and it’s not a good business because the retailers are frantic and upset, so they yell at our people,” said Alyce Leach, owner of the Oceanside firm.

Leach and her staff prepared do-it-yourself programming sheets for each of dozens of cash register models. They also provide over-the-phone instructions for panic-stricken shopkeepers.

“If they go into programming and they press the wrong keys, they’ve either wiped out some other program or some part of the machine, and they can wreak havoc if they don’t do it right,” said Leach.

But Leach said that the rush for programming instructions was lower this time, a fact she attributes to retailers learning how to adjust their machines themselves. Others, however, many not have heard about the new tax law yet, she said.

Lynn Carney, a sales clerk at Sunset Bikes in Oceanside, wasn’t too sure.

“I don’t know what the tax rate is,” she said. “I just heard about it last night.”