Lesson Learned

I stopped in to my friendly neighborhood Rite-Aid a couple of days ago to redeem a few coupons for some free items, and take advantage of a rebate offer. The cashier was a dear, elderly lady whom I have seen many times before. She's not exactly the brightest crayon in the box, but she is very sweet.

In the process of checking me out, she rang all of my items up, and then proceeded to enter the coupons. For the free coupons, she needed to enter the prices of the items. The first two weren't a problem, because the item prices still appeared on the small computer screen in front of her. The third item price had already been edged off of the screen however, and she was unable to figure out how much the item cost. So, she asked me if I remembered what the price was. I told her I did not... and she just stared at me, obviously unable to figure out what to do next.

After a few seconds of awkward silence, I turned around and quickly walked back to the shelf, where I found the item price: $7.99. I went back to the counter, and told her what the shelf said. She entered the discount, and I paid the total, which was a little lower than I expected.

When she handed me the receipt, I looked it over, and found an error. Although the original price for the item I checked was $7.99, it was actually on sale for $6.99, so I received an extra dollar off. Now, I like this checkout lady, and I've seen her co-workers complain about her level of competence before, so I was immediately concerned that she would get in trouble for this error. So I said something, figuring that I would be told that Rite-Aid could handle missing the dollar.

When I pointed out the error however, she did not understand, so she called a co-worker over to help. Her co-worker was also unable to figure out what to do next, so she asked me to wait while she went to find a manager. Several minutes later, she returned, and explained that the manager told her that if I just give her a dollar, she could ring it up as non-taxable.

So, I gave her the dollar, saved myself the six cents, and learned a lesson for next time.

That dear, sweet lady is going to call for a price check. ;)