Sunday, May 17, 2009

Frugal The Checkout Chick

I noticed a few nights ago that my local Woolworths has opened six self-service checkouts. The thought of being responsible for doing the checkout job myself with the obvious scrutiny scared me, a little. I'm not going to pinch anything but the thought of people thinking that I might try to steal something worries me.

Perhaps that goes back to when I was about 10 years old and went to the supermarket by myself when my mum was at a fabric shop run by a friend of hers. I spent a lot of time in the lollies section considering what to spend my money on and in the end decided that nothing offered good enough value. As I went to leave through the checkout, which was manned by the daughter of the shop manager, she tried to check my pockets. She said, "I know you took (or stole) something." Being accused of shoplifting horrified me. After informing my mum about the incident my parents accompanied me to the shop that night and confronted the manager and his daughter over it. I received an apology as I hadn't done anything wrong.

So, with slight trepidation, I went to the shop a couple of nights ago and served myself. After finishing checking the groceries I placed my mail that I had collected in one of the bags. The machine said, "Unexpected item in bag. Please remove," or something similar. So it obviously measures the weight of your goods. Interesting experience and no false accusations.

Now I can add checkout chick to my resume.

2 comments:

Susan Ham said...

Ooooh, yes, I remember it well. You were absolutely outraged, and justifiably so. The girl overstepped the bounds of her authority in trying to 'frisk' you, too.

Anonymous said...

What a nasty witch!! It has happened to a great deal of people. I like those self-checkouts too. Lol Annette