Not What I Mean By Liquid Assets
I’m doing my weekly grocery run, and the very first thing the cashier scans is a case of mini juice boxes. She carefully counts them one by one, forty-four in total, instead of, you know, just multiplying the four rows by eleven. I don’t say anything. I’m not in a rush, and I don’t want to embarrass her.
Then she takes out one juice box, scans it, and multiplies it by forty-four on the screen. The price pops up: $7.50 each. My total instantly jumps to $330.
She keeps scanning other items like nothing’s wrong.
Me: “Whoa, hold up. That case of juice boxes isn’t $330.”
Cashier: “Yep, it is. I just scanned it.”
Me: “But… $330 is too much for orange juice.”
Cashier: *Pauses, frowning thoughtfully.* “Hmmm. Yeah, I guess. I dunno.” *Shrugs and tries to move on.*
Me: “I think the entire case is $7.50, not each one.”
Cashier: “No, I only scanned one juice box, so they’re $7.50 each. There are forty-four of them, so that’s $330.”
At this point, I’m not even sure I can get her to stop long enough to void it.
Me: “Can you just… think about it one more time?”
She finally sighs and calls for a manager. We wait several minutes until he arrives.
Manager: “It’s $7.50 for the whole case. Just scan one unit.”
The cashier brightens up, relieved.
Cashier: “Oh! Okay, got it now.”
And with complete confidence, she moves on, like we didn’t just almost buy a semester’s tuition worth of juice boxes.
