I went to the grocery store last night to pick up ingredients to feed people tonight. For general interest, (and very little relevance to the rest of this post), here’s the menu for dinner tonight:

BBQ chicken quesadillas
Arroz Rojo (Mexican red rice)
Homemade salsa and guacamole
Homemade Citrusade (9 lemons, 9 limes, 4 naval oranges, and a ton of sugar and water)

So I was at the grocery store picking up ingredients, and I get to the register with my food and the cashier starts ringing it all up. Then, she suddenly pauses and said something along the lines of “dammit, the scanner’s not working”. She asked me how I was paying, and I told her I was paying cash.

Then she eyeballs the rest of my groceries and says, “Tell you what, I’ll charge you $20 cash for your groceries, but you won’t get a receipt.”

Vaguely confused, I said eloquently, “Huh?” She repeated herself, and waited for my response. Still confused, I said, “Err… Okay?” She then bagged all the groceries, I handed over my twenty and left.

As I walked toward the bus stop, it suddenly (and really, rather belatedly) occurred to me that I might have just done something illegal. At the time, it didn’t seem like too weird of a thing for her to have done, especially if she was a manager or the owner or something along those lines. But the thing is, I don’t think she was a manager or an owner. The sane thing for her to have done would have been to direct me to the cashier next to her or something, not just bag my groceries and take my cash.

What if this is a scam she’s been running for a while, and she just pockets the money, and I just aided and abetted in a misdemeanor? I couldn’t exactly go back and say, hey, listen, er… so I kind of paid for these groceries but I’d like to pay for them again, please.

I felt kind of guilty because if I were quicker on my feet I might have realized in time to do something about it, but I also felt kind of happy that I got a good deal on my groceries, and then that in turn made me feel guiltier, because I’m profiting from the whole thing.

Anyway. Just a weird thing that happened to me last night.