On the first part of my article I have talked about the reasons why I wanted to have price scanners on our shopping carts. For this part would be the other function of the shopping cart that I wanted.
With regards to the total sum of all the items in our cart, isn't it great if we can actually know the prices of all the items that we got? Well for me I still write the prices in my market list and I even have an estimated price right beside the item. It is something that my dad asked me to do recently. He wanted me to place the estimated price of each items so that I would know how much money I would need. Since almost all of the items that I get are our basic needs, I have already memorized some of its prices. I can even join The Prize is Right game show. LOL. But yesterday afternoon, there were some items that have increased in price. I do not know if I have the prices wrong before but there was actually a big increment. So I had to adjust some the items that were on my market list to be able to fit my budget.
After my groceries, I told my dad about the increase in prices that he even gave me a loud HUH! And then he said that it is really hard these days especially it is pandemic, economy is down and a lot of people are jobless and can't have a job even if they wanted to. He even said that we are all going to die because of the increase in our basic commodities. As much as I wanted to pity myself, I couldn't because I already had that the other day. Everything that he said were true and that we just really need to use our money wisely.
Since we already know the amount of our carts, we would not be worried if we have enough money for all the things that we got right? Again I wanted this so that we can skip the part of writing the amounts and then computing them before going to the cashier. It can also refrain us from constantly checking at the cashier's monitor if we have exceeded our budget or the hassle of cancelling a specific item that is least of our needs.
Honestly I really doesn't like cancelling items that have already been punched. Remember I used to work in a food industry and cancelling of items is already a bad record for the cashier especially if you have to void the entire transaction. Yes cashier's need a manager's code for cancelation and voiding of items and he/she still has to write a written explanation for that. Though it may be different in supermarkets but we know how much of a hassle it brings not just to the cashier, manager and customer but also to the staff who would return the items on the rack and also the people in queue.
I remember one time when the person in front of me bought a lot of items in a small health and beauty care store and she forgot to present the senior citizen's card and booklet. She just remembered it after she had paid all of the items using a credit card and asked the cashier if she can void the transaction so she can avail of the senior citizen's discount. The cashier agreed and even told me to wait a little more. By the way, this happened this year and I was only going to buy 2 bar soaps that I forgot to buy when I was in the grocery. There was only 1 cash register that was open. The person in front of me was a madam. I know she was rich as I saw her came down a BMW car but she should have thought of me when she requested to have her transactions voided. But both the cashier and the customer didn't think of accommodating first so I ended up not buying the soaps.
I know that we just have to be understanding when we experience this kind of inconvenience as it may also happen to us or it had already happened. For us yes, it happened to us most of the times before when it was just me and my mom especially if she does not have some extra money to pay for the other items and all she had to do was to cancel some of them. Did it already happened to you where you had to look at the cashier's monitor because you are afraid that the money you have wasn't enough? Or have you also cancelled some of the items that have already been punched? I somehow picked up my mom's style when doing the groceries. She would first have all the important items punched first and the least important last to prevent cancelling of items. If she still has enough money, she will then choose from the remaining items in the cart to have it punched. My mom is not a market list type of person as she is the type to get what she wants or what she thinks we need. That when it is paying time, I would sometimes tell her that she's like a giraffe and a tarsier for always looking at the cashier's monitor. She would also tell the cashier to punch slowly because she doesn't have extra money to pay for the overage.
So I think the really best solution for that is either we write or compute first all of the items that we bought before proceeding to the cashier. However it is very time consuming. When I have already got the items on one side of my paper, I would stop and stay on the side to compute how much my shopping cart cost. And if I have already finished buying the rest of the items on my list, I would stop and compute them all again. Yes I know I have already estimated the prices but there are times that we are not aware of the increase in prices. That is why I always write how much my items cost. Although there are also times when I don't feel like writing that I would just add them all when they are all in the cart.
But to make our lives easier, I really hope that someone would invent the shopping cart that I wanted. Don't you want it as well? Or what it is that you want to be invented in the future?
