You mean to say expensive groceries are *expensive* and I have to *pay for them*?! I'm outta here!

My first retail job was as a temporary customer service assistant over the Christmas period, at an up-market national supermarket chain. The particular store was located on the edge of town in a retail park with several rival supermarkets close by (this detail will assume relevance later in the tale).

I'd only been working a couple of weeks by the time the serious Christmas shopping kicked in, and was still a real rookie. I'd already had a couple of eyebrow-raising introductions to the true nature of Customers, but this one family took the biscuit.

So it was the day before Christmas Eve, which also happened to be a Saturday. Management anticipated this to be the busiest and highest-taking day of the year, as everyone had the same idea to to get their final Christmas shop in before everybody else went shopping on Christmas Eve, and ended up all descending on the store at the same time. All checkouts were open all day, and each one had a queue stretching the whole way down an aisle. Managers had to police the lines to stop customers rioting and trampling each other. The turkeys ran out in the first few hours. I don't know how the stockers managed to make sure there was even any stuff still left on the shelves to sell at all.

So in the midst of this pandemonium I'm working my checkout, trying to get people through as quickly as possible, trying not to look as flustered and overwhelmed as I feel, and all the while wearing a ridiculous ""festive"" twist on my uniform. I'm stressed, a little humiliated, and feeling decidedly un-Christmassy. The next customers up are a youngish couple with a toddler in the seat of their trolley. The trolley is one of the big, deep ones and is completely full to the brim. They've got their Christmas dinner and all the trimmings, and party snacks, and mince pies, and desserts, and a whole lot of alcohol. Multipacks of beer, lots of wine, and several bottles of fancy liquor- I particularly remember they had this overpriced vodka that came in a bottle shaped like a skull.

I scan it all through and assist them with packing as much as I can considering the vast size of their transaction and the fact I have to keep my queue moving at all costs. Final item goes through, I do my usual spiel asking if they have a loyalty card (management insisted this step not be skipped despite having customers frothing at the mouth staring at me like they want me dead because it looks like I'm wasting time).

Me: "Ok that's everything! Do you have a $store card with us at all?"
Mother of the Family (MoF) (blankly): "No.."

Now even before this stage, I'd already sensed something fishy. I'm not a snob, but having worked there for a few weeks, I could tell by sight and their accent that these people were not of the socio-economic demographic that usually shopped with us. And the fact they were buying ALL of their food for the WHOLE Christmas holidays without having a loyalty card to get some benefit back was making me wonder what the deal was with these people all the more.

Me (determinedly perky): "Alright, no worries! That'll be $sum of money between £200 and £350, please!" (forgive hazy memory for precise details)
MoF (mouth agape): *shocked, incredulous silence*

Now, it was indeed a large total, but it was nowhere near the biggest amount that people were spending that day, and in fact was in the high-end of normal range for average transactions for the store at other times of the year, I later learned. You would think that in loading up a trolley's worth of high-end food and a lot of booze one would expect to leave the shop considerably poorer than you were when you went in. Apparently not.

MoF (blusteringly): "That can't be right, you must've scanned it wrong."
Me (still possessed of the notion that I might be stupider than the average customer and had probably messed up, sweating, frantically checking till screen for errors): "I'm sorry ma'am, but there doesn't seem to be any mistake, the total is $£amount!"
MoF: "This is fucking ridiculous, I'm not paying that."

Now it's my turn to gape, dumbfounded. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. This is beyond my experience and understanding. I just want to ask them, genuinely, if they didn't think to look at the prices of items as they picked them off the shelves. Not knowing what else to do, I press the buzzer to call for a manager.

Before the manager can arrive, the MoF turns to her partner and they swear at each other and me, grab their baby out of the trolley, and leave. Just leave the trolley full of perishable goods standing there for some poor stocker to individually return to the shelves. Leaving me and the queue they've blocked up behind them reeling, in silent awe at that level of stupidity.

As they stomp away, I hear the father say to the mother:

"Fucking daylight robbery. Let's just go to $notoriously cheaper rival instead!"

Maybe they thought it was a fun family day out to take their toddler around not one, but two, massively over-busy supermarkets and stand in queues for probably close to an hour in total two days before Christmas. Maybe they were entertaining a fantasy of being wealthier than they were and forgot about the actual paying money part. I don't know why they didn't just go to the other, cheaper, supermarket a few hundred metres away in the first place. Anyway, I just hope they checked the prices over at our competitors before they got to the end of another queue and the same thing happened all over again.