Thursday, January 15, 2009

What is a Package?

I needed to get some poster board for my son's cub scout den project. I decided to go to Target yesterday. I had some coupons for $0.75 off any one kraft cheese. Target sells the string individually for $0.55 so it would be free with the coupon. I have 10 coupons. I get 10 packages of cheese and the poster board and some construction paper.

The cashier rings everything up. She counts the packages of cheese, enters "9" and scans one. The register shows that I bought 9. I say, "Oh, I thought I got 10 of those." She takes them out of the bag and re-counts. "Nope, there's 9 here. Do you want to go back and get one more?" I don't want to hold up the line. "That's Ok, I'll get it next time." So I remove one of my coupons from the pile and hand her 9 coupons for $0.75 off one kraft cheese.

She scans the first coupon and it beeps. It beeps because the coupon is more than the price of the cheese and the computer is prompting the cashier to enter the correct value, which in this case would be $0.55. But the cashier does not seem to know that. She looks at me and says, "This coupon is only good for the packages of cheese. You bought the small ones." I show her where it says, "any package." There is no size specified. Usually they say something like, "any kraft cheese 6 oz or larger." But this coupon didn't. It's good on "any package of cheese."

"I don't think this coupon is good on this. You didn't get a package."

Really? It looked like the cheese was in a package when I put it in my cart! I didn't take it out of the package. I tell her, "Usually they adjust the price of the coupon down the $0.55 since that's how much the cheese costs."

She decides to take the coupon and says, "I hope I don't get in trouble for this."

I go to the car and check my bag. I take out all of the cheese. I count 10 packages. I'm not worried about her getting in trouble for the coupons (I've checked the Target coupon policy). I'm worried that she's going to get in trouble for not being able to count to 10.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

THAT is worrisome!! For her....bonus for you! :)

girlytwins said...

Hilarious!! I am laughing so hard right now cuz I have been in almost exact situation with Target worker before.

Michelle said...

And this is why she's a cashier at Target and not running the world ;)

Anonymous said...

Ha! That poor woman. Can you imagine what it must be like to go through life that confused?

Elizabeth said...

I started working back when you counted up from the total sale to the dollar amount that was tendered in order to give change...drove me crazy when they invented the "idiot proof" cash registers for the math challenged...I bet there are alot of clueless people pushing for mac/credit purchasing...then you don't even have to make change at all!
Pax. E