The Pumpkin Dispute

Last night at work this foreign couple came through my line. The woman was waiting at the end of the register with the carriage and the guy was watching me scan the last item through. It was a good sized pumpkin. I looked at the code on the sticker, typed it in, put the pumpkin on the scale to weight it and then sent it down the belt. "You're total is $67.98," I said. The man handed me his credit card which I swiped and handed back. He then leaned over and peered closely at the screen then stepped back incredulously. Oh great, a price challenger. "No weigh 8 pound," he said matter-of-factly, looking at me to see what I was going to do about it. "Uh, what?" "Pumpkin not weight 8 pound. Not possible." He pointed at the screen where it showed that the pumpkin weighed 8.34 lbs. He grabbed the pumpkin and put it on the scale. "Weigh again." "I can't weight it again," I said and tried to explain to him that the order already went through. I called my manager Erin over. I had no idea how to explain what was going on, but luckily the crazy started his complaint over. "No way is pumpkin 8 pounds," he said, "man under sign tell me 6 pounds." He started digging through his bagged groceries and took out to boxes of pie crusts. "Weigh these. See if equal 6 pounds like says." Erin said, "If you want to reweigh the pumpkin I can take you down to the courtesy booth and they'll get you your money back." The crazy looked extremely upset and started shaking his head in distress. He sighed in frustration. "No, no, no. We talking about 50 cents here, money no matter. Your scale is wrong! Need to be calibrated!" He pointed to the line developing behind him and said, "Need calibrate because all those orders going to be wrong." How noble of him. "Right I see what you're saying," Erin said. She put the boxes of pie crusts on the scale and it weighed in as 6.19. "Obviously it can't be exact," Erin said. Ha. Now he looked like an idiot. He threw his hands up. "Okay! Just want to be sure. That's fine." Erin said, "We appreciate that," waste of time. The bagger reloaded the bags and the 8 pound pumpkin back into the cart and they were gone.