[Yesterday: 4+ miles]
Early this year I was travelling and I stopped at a gas station in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa (if I remember correctly). A young man came out and wanted to pump my gas. It turned out I was in the full service area. That was a bit of a shock. It’s been a long long time since self-service gas stations became the norm.
My policy at fast food places, or any food place that has self-service soda fountain, is that refills are OK. I assume that is acceptable, never had anybody tell me otherwise. So I usually buy a “small” and make multiple visits to the drink machine if I feel so inclined. Now, if I’m taking my food out I may buy the bigger size. About 80% of the time I just get water from the soda fountain machine anyway. I like the ones that have the soda water option as well as normal un-bubbly water.
So now the Wal-Mart stores are all shifting to self service checkout. Tonight we had a cart load of stuff and the 13 (13!) full service checkout lines were all closed. Not only were they closed, they were roped off. It was self service or the cigarette line, the only options. So we went through the self service line and did our thing.
I had picked up a small bottle of Round-Up in the garden department. I took it right off of the shelf, undamaged, unmolested in any way. I don’t even know how much it was supposed to cost. When we got to the scanner I tried numerous times to get the thing to register. I didn’t see a barcode on it anywhere. It had some other coding. I tried the “lookup” function but no joy there either. So I threw it in the bag and kept scanning. I brought it home and sprayed the weeds.
How hard am I obligated to try to work their machines to pay them for the stuff? Last time I was in there I left two items at the checkout because they had lost the barcode somewhere along the line.
I’m going to start a new policy: for pedestrian priced objects, if it doesn’t scan after a serious effort, it is my call what the price should be. Punch in a number and continue on. That’s the way the real-people cashiers did it. Good enough. If they don’t give me an option to enter a number then it is checker’s choice to leave it or take it.
If someone from Wal-Mart reads this and wants their money for the Round-Up, I am happy to pay. Come to my house and I’ll write you a check. We can look up the price on Amazon.