I live with my boyfriend who owns a coffee shop. People tend to scramble a few 10c or 20c coins to pay for the coffee, so we always have plenty of them laying around. I usually use them to pay for groceries.

I usually go to the same store because they have self-service checkouts so the cashiers don’t have to count the ton of coins I pay with. I always go about one hour before the closing time (because of work), take a shopping cart, pick up €50 to €100 worth of groceries, and pay at the self-service.

It never was an issue until recently. An employee stopped me as I approached the self-service area.

Employee: “You can’t take shopping carts in here.”

Me: “I’m planning to pay with a lot of coins. It would take ages for a cashier to count it.”

Employee: “It doesn’t matter; there isn’t enough space in the self-checkout area for a shopping cart.”

That’s bulls***; you could fit at least four of those carts beside each other, and somehow people with prams and buggies were allowed even if they were taking up a lot of space.

Me: “Whatever.”

I took my cart to the cashier. The shop was closing in about fifteen minutes.

My total was around €100, so I handed her a few money bags with my 10c and 20c coins. They were mixed up and not precounted.

Cashier: “You should really take this to the self-service area.”

Me: “Well, it’s somehow store policy that I’m not allowed over there with a cart, so unfortunately, you’ll have to count all these coins. I’m in no rush, so you can take your time. Thank your colleagues if you want to.”

I left the store twenty minutes past closing time. If I was using the self-service, it would have taken me five minutes.

I have a tremendous memory for useless and vaguely questionable information. I’m working in a grocery store. A woman comes through my line with a bottle of children’s cough medicine.

Me: “Could I see your ID, please?”

Customer: “…What?”

Me: “I need to see your ID for the cough syrup.”

Customer: *Scared* “Why?!”

Me: “This cough syrup contains dextromethorphan, which under the right conditions can be distilled to make meth, so it’s an eighteen-plus-restricted item.”

Customer: *Relaxing* “Oh, okay. I was worried that I was going to give my kid something bad.”

I haven’t had a complaint about getting ID’ed for cough medicine yet. I think that if the explanation doesn’t satisfy them, the long drug name baffles them into not saying anything.

This was five or six years ago. Apple and Google Pay had not long been introduced here in the UK when these incidents happened. I had a smartphone, so I was able to use that brand’s mobile payment app with no worries.

Though the only “limit” is what you personally have in your bank account at that time, at this time — and for some stores who had not taken up [Mobile Payment] — the limit was set to £30, the contactless limit.

I went into a shop and got a “meal deal” and some things for the house. The meal deal consisted of a sandwich, a drink, and a snack pack of crisps for £3. My total came to around £12 overall, and I advised that I wanted to pay via card.

The cashier totaled it, I did the [Mobile Payment] thing, and my phone beeped. The payment went through, the cashier’s drawer opened, and the receipt printed, indicating that the payment was okay.

Cashier #1: “What?! What just happened?”

Me: “I used my card. It’s on my phone—” *points to it* “—so I just use it as an ordinary card payment.”

Cashier #1: “NO! You are trying to steal from us! You did not present your card!”

During the transaction, the supervisor was behind her filling the cigarettes and lotto scratch cards, so they had seen the whole thing.

Supervisor: “Sir, I know you’re not trying to steal. I use [Mobile Payment], too. I know you have paid, so feel free to go. I think I have some staff training to do.”

Me: “Thanks!”

I have been there several times since then, but the first time I went there after this incident, the same cashier was there. She just gave me a look and I said:

Me: “Don’t worry, I am not stealing; I will use my magical phone!”

She did not find that funny.

A few weeks after this, I was with my mother at a different shop buying some furniture and garden stuff that came to £30.

“Great!” I thought.

I tapped the phone, beep it went, and I paid for it.

Once the receipt printed, the cashier looked at me, the till, the receipt, me, the till, my phone, and me before finally taking the receipt and handing it to me.

Me: “Isn’t [Mobile Payment] a wonderful thing?”

Cashier #2: “Sorry, but is that what you did with your phone? Paid?”

Me: “Aye, set it up a few weeks ago. I can use it for unlimited payments for shops that support it, for any transaction of £30 or less.”

Cashier #2: “I have heard of it, but I haven’t seen anyone use it. Now I know it works! Looks simple.”

Me: “It is!”

We said our goodbyes, and Mother and I left.

[Mobile Payment] can be confusing, folks. Just don’t go stealing from people, eh?

The local grocery store is a fairly small one. The self-checkout section has a grand total of two stations. I go in one weekend at a naturally busy time. The store’s understaffed and the lines for both self-check and manned registers are long.

As luck would have it, one of the self-checks is down. [Man #1] is using it, and when he runs his card, it crashes the entire system. After a cashier moves him to a manned register, the other self-check becomes free and I step up to it.

The cashier comes to the crashed self-check, puts solid plastic signs over the screen and scanner that say, “Out Of Order”, and walks away.

[Man #2], who was behind me in line, proceeds up to that register.

Man #2: “Why does this say, ‘Out Of Order’? There was a guy just using it.”

Me: “I think it crashed when he went to pay, and they haven’t rebooted it yet.”

I turn away and start scanning my items. I get through two before he speaks again.

Man #2: “This thing isn’t working!”

The cashier who helped [Man #1] comes over after hearing him.

Cashier: “It’s out of order. I put signs up.”

I was first in line when the register crashed. [Man #2], right behind me, would’ve seen them bring [Man #1]’s items over to another register and the cashier put the signs up.

Man #2: “Yeah, I saw those. I took them off.”

He proceeded to put his groceries back in his cart and huff off.

Relate:
Self-Check Yourself Before You Self-Wreck Yourself, Part 4
Self-Check Yourself Before You Self-Wreck Yourself, Part 3
Self-Check Yourself Before You Self-Wreck Yourself, Part 2
Self-Check Yourself Before You Self-Wreck Yourself

I work in a department store that sometimes has charity sales. You can donate an item of clothing and get so many coupons or donate $5 at the register and get the coupons, as well. These coupons are item coupons, which means they apply to individual items. To apply them, the associate has to select the item on the register and then scan the coupon for each item that the customer has a coupon for, so it’s usually faster to scan the item and then the coupon and then move on to the next item.

I have a customer come up with a cart full of stuff ten minutes before closing. She has a lot of stuff — to the point that we hit the register’s limit of the number of items it can have in a transaction. (That’s forty-four items, for the record.) The entire time I’m scanning her items, there is no sign of her having these coupons, and I’m expecting to explain the $5 donation and then apply the coupons to the highest-priced items. Instead, I tell her the total, she pulls out this massive pile of coupons, and I have to go back and manually select and apply the coupons to each item. By this point, it’s five minutes after closing and my manager is calling and asking why I haven’t closed up yet.

I manage to get the coupons applied and scanned, and then we get to payment. The customer wants to use two cards to pay. My system doesn’t allow me to do that (debit/credit are considered the same in the system) but there is a workaround where the customer can buy a gift card for the amount and then use that gift card as a payment option. The other option is to cancel the transaction, do the gift card transaction, and then re-ring everything. My manager has to come out and reopen a register so this customer can use her second card to pay.

The reason she was buying so much stuff? There was a story on the news about an asteroid coming near the Earth, and she thought it was going to hit and cause the apocalypse and was stocking up.

Related:
The Couponator 39: The Yarn Of Time
The Couponator 38: The Sandwich Of Frustration
The Couponator 37: The Year Of Reckoning
The Couponator 36: The Counter-Coupon Cashier
The Couponator 35: Dog Food Day Afternoon