42 pounds of Bananas

I did not mean to be away from this blog for so long this month.  The first few weeks of the school year are very busy.  In the last few weeks our activities have started back up, we had school open houses/meet the teachers nights, and homework.   Homework is my least favorite thing about going back to school.  This post though, is not about school, it is about this lovely bag of bananas. 

This week I really needed to go to the  grocery store.  I was waiting for a check that was overdo to arrive before I went.  Finally on Tuesday night close to midnight, I saw that it had hit my account.   Wednesday afternoon, my daughter and I went to my favorite grocery store.   We got all of our food, and went to the check out.  I did notice that my bill seemed higher than it usually is, but figured we bought more than normal. That ended up not being the issue in that moment.  When I ran my card through the machine, it was declined.   That has never happened before.  I knew I had money in the account, and it showed as available. I tried the card again, in case I did something wrong.. again it was declined. There was starting to be a line behind me.  I asked the cashier what I should do.  The cashier sees me in the store a lot.  She said she would put my cart in the cooler until I found out what was going on.  I decided to go back to my house so my daughter could change her clothes. It ended up being a lot warmer than she had planned on, and she was wearing a sweater.   Just before I got all the way home, I realized what had happened.  I had used the WRONG card.  I have an older card  in my wallet that links to an old account.  I do not normally deposit much money in that account, so there was not enough in there to cover the groceries.  I called the bank just to make sure.  Everything was okay with my account, and I had just used the old card.  I went back to the store, and picked up my cart of food .  The cashier was happy to hear that it was just a silly mistake. She had been feeling really bad for me.   At that time I really should have looked at my receipt, but I was just so happy that I got my groceries, that I didn't really think about it.  

I make a short second stop, and then take home all of my groceries. As I was putting them away, I looked at my receipt.  I wanted to see if I had any offers to claim for my shopping apps.  I was very surprised to see that my bag of bananas cost $18.69! (they should have been about $1)   No wonder my bill was higher than normal.  My 2.4 lbs of bananas at .44 a pound was accidentally entered as 42.4 lbs!  Oops!   I finish putting my food away.   My son had to go to Robotics, so on the way I make a third trip to the store. There was a different cashier working the register at the time, but she also knows me as well.  I show her the receipt.  She agreed that there was definitely an error.  I had brought back my bag of bananas in case they wanted to weigh them again.   Another clerk came over, and opened  a new lane for me.  She gave me back the entire amount I had paid for the bananas. I figured she would re-weigh them, and charge me the correct amount. Instead, she told me I could have them for free after all the trouble I had with my groceries that day.  I thought that was really sweet of her, and told her that it was still my favorite store.    The time I arrived the first time at the store was about 12:40 p.m..  By the time I finally finished putting everything away and got my refund, it as just a few minutes before four.  It took me over 3 hours to get groceries.. no wonder I have a hard time getting anything done. 

There were a few things that I took away from this situation.  I need to always check the receipt BEFORE I leave the store.  I need to take my older card old of my wallet, and you can buy 42 lbs of bananas for under $20.