This evening after returning from New York I drove to the local Stop & Shop to restock the kitchen. I had a list so that I wouldn't pick up anything I didn't need. Usually these trips go pretty quickly, thanks to technology. If you have a Stop & Shop card, you can check out a scanner. You scan items as you put them in your cart and then scan the "finished shopping" bar code at the register. The register downloads the information from your scanner and tells you how much you need to pay. And if you bring your own bags, you can pack them as you go along. Easy in and easy out.
Not today, however.
The ginger snaps (they are on my diet!) were 2/$5 according to the pricing on the shelf, yet they scanned at $3 each. I asked the person who oversees the automated registers, and she said there wasn't anything she could do, and I'd have to go to one of the regular registers where the price could be corrected. No problem, I said, and found the shortest line. The very nice cashier there managed to wipe all the data from my scanner when attempting to resolve the cookie pricing. A manager was called who was also unable to retrieve the data. Everything had to be rescanned and rebagged. In the end, they couldn't solve the scanning issue, so $1 from the store was added to the till to decrease my bill by the amount of the overcharge on the cookies.
Isn't technology wonderful?
Whenever I check out of a store, I know I'm in trouble when I can make change in my head faster than the cashier. I'm old enough to have worked as a cashier when the cash register only totaled the order. The cashiers had to count back the change manually. Once you had the method down, very rarely was your till more than 10 cents off either way. So why is it so hard to make change when the register tells you how much change to give the customer?
Another skill from my days as a cashier is packing brown paper shopping bags. Have you noticed how many of the "green" shopping bags are about the size and shape of brown paper shopping bags? One day a couple of months ago I observed a manager training a new employee as a bagger. I had my canvas bags, and she showed the new employee to pack the bags in the same way I used to pack paper bags. She was about my age, and I commented on the necessity of having to rediscover a lost art. We shared a smile.
Over the past couple of months I've become increasingly aware of how much more expensive it is to make healthy food choices. On those days when I don't take my lunch, I can get a sandwich, soda and chips for about $8.00 or so. If I go to the hot/cold bar and pick out things more in line with my eating plan, or get a salad and milk, it's more on the order of $10- $11. I can get a Wendy's Baconator combo with double patty, large size and a large Frosty for a little more than $11. When fast food is cheaper than healthy food, added to our over scheduled life styles, is it any wonder so many of us are overweight? And if you try to buy organic products as much as possible, which I do, that can increase your bill by as much as 25%.
Maybe I need to find a local farmers' market.
Hey, I didn't know you could do that scanning thing. But now with your experience don't know whether I really want to try.
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