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she scanned and again nothing happened. This cashier also dutifully double checked the coupon, the date and whatever else it said confirming to herself that the coupon was valid and commenced to do some computer, double whammy, "voodoo that you do so well kind' of stuff' and it really did not seem to do anything either so she rolled up her sleeves and did it all over again and then smiled at me as if to say "I got it!"

As I gave her my favorite credit card when she totaled it up and gave me the total. I again asked her if it took off the $25.00 since I could not see the screen and she looked at her computer screen and said "YES" so I proceeded to check o.k., yes, sign the credit card machine in order to process this sale.

Upon receiving the printed out sheet I looked at the bottom only to see that the discount was not $25.00 but $10.37.

"Just one moment, please", I said, "this is not $25.00 credit and you need to rectify this." The line was piling up behind me and she was not a happy cashier. However, she did take the printed receipt back and started to add it all up again and smilingly told me she had given me another $4.92 credit toward the $25.00 coupon.

Whoa! I do not know what kind of arithmetic they teach in school nowadays, but for the 74 years I have inhabited this planet $10.37 plus $4.92 does not equal $25.00!

Now she is getting annoyed and if I were a mind reader I could just about read it from reading the look on her face.

I know she was not happy as I firmly stood in my tracks and said you need to fix this before any of this leaves the store. Again she looked at the line of people behind me, picked up the phone to ask for help only to be told that the person who could help her was on a lunch break. With that she told the people behind me to go to the other register and she started in again.

After approximately 3 minutes I asked what the problem was. "Well, I cannot scan the coupon again because it was scanned once." (This was funny to me because apparently these coupons were not scanning in either store checkouts.) I simply said, "Look, this is really basically simple, get the total, deduct $25.00, add 6% sales tax and that is what I should be paying", She says, "But I have to refund the whole original order back to your favorite credit card and start all over again." "Well, if that is what it takes, then do it, because it will result in me being a happy customer, getting me out of your line and life and doing it correctly." Finally that is what happened.

The moral of this story is if you do not check out your receipts when you are done how much money a year are you losing? For the past 5 or 6 years I have started to really pay attention at all the checkouts and regardless of what kind of store I am in, invariably a price is incorrect or the cashiers counting of the number of items is incorrect.

I wonder what happens the day the earth stands still with no computers running, correctly or incorrectly and someone has to do some basic arithmetic to sell something, make change or give a refund!

Learn more about this author, Arlene Wright-Correll.
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