To think common sense is dead?

[TheRightHonerable]

Today I nipped into M&S to take advantage of a 3 for 2 offer. I only shop there for special treats.

Bought 3 items at £8 each and 3 items at £1 each. So going through the tills I kept the 3 £1 items separate and asked the cashier to pop them through as a separate transaction.

The cashier, a supervisor, questioned why and I explained I’d rather save £9 than £2. I assumed it would be no issue but she wouldn’t drop it and started arguing with me that it made no difference and the till will automatically deduct the cheapest two items.

‘Yes but that will be two £1 items rather than one £8 and one £1’ I said, but she wouldn’t let it drop and refused to do the second transaction. In the end I had to go to the self service. At first I thought she was judging me for being a cheapskate but no she was adamant that she was right and I was wrong.

It just baffles me, surely this is common sense? Surely it’s basic maths? Surely you expect a cashier to understand the offers on or at the very least not get defensive and rude when disagreed with.

Urgh how annoying! Yanbu!

That's hilarious - id have just gone to the self service initially because I'm scared of being judged

To be fair chasers don’t get paid much. I would really expect any degree of critical reasoning skills.

Perhaps the machine would automatically save the higher amount for you rather than the lower amount and the cashier was just desperately bad at explaining this?

Either way though, they should ring you up as per your request.

Common sense died a long time ago.

M&S are weird. I returned an item I bought for cash, that cost £19.99. I handed over the item, receipt and a penny, and asked for a £20 note. She refused, saying they had to give me £19.99!! So she gave me £19.99 exactly. I then handed it back to her, with the extra penny, and asked her to change it for a £20 note. Which she did. Meanwhile, there's a queue of customers waiting!!

I would have had to do it and then have her void it to prove a point.
The Pudding.

I think tills at M&S, and boots, automatically calculate it so the items are ranked so you would have got the higher priced items free, rather than the £1 items.

Next time, say "this is for someone else so I need it separate"

@Velveteenfruitbowl if you mean cashiers are a bit thick, you should really check your own post for spelling mistakes and cut back on being so sneery 😐

Sadly, common sense is not all that common.

What @MrsSiriusBlack1 said.

Many stores are correctly set up to order the offer items by price and then take every 3rd item off.
She probably thought you were crazy because their tills do it correctly.

@Lifecraft did she count the change again as well to make sure it totalled £20 before giving you the note?

@TeenPlusTwenties it would still take off the two cheapest items, which would both have been £1...

Are you the cashier?

@Velveteenfruitbowl. Really? On what do you base your opinion about 'thick' cashiers?

I got chatting to one cashier in our local Tesco last year who, it turned out was about to start her first year at Cambridge university.

Can't remember what she was studying but I imagine she had quite good powers of critical reasoning.

Yes, the cashier the OP is talking about does seem to have been a bit confused, but equally, making unfounded sweeping statements about a huge group of people just became of the job they do really does smack of a lack of critical reasoning.

"To be fair chasers don’t get paid much. I would really expect any degree of critical reasoning skills."

Oops.

@ GiveHerHellFromUs - it would still take off the two cheapest items, which would both have been £1

No, it wouldn't. I don't know about M&S, but In this situation, boots order it so the 3rd and 6th most expensive items are free. Possibly M&S do the same.

@GiveHerHellFromUs - if the till did as @TeenPlusTwenties described, it would be as the OP wanted, i.e.
Item 1) £8
Item 2) £8
Item 3) £8 - REMOVED
Item 4) £1
Item 5) £1
Item 6) £1 - REMOVED.

Ordered by price, every third item removed. Some stores state this in their offer T&Cs.

I used to work in M&S. The till would have ranked them and saved you £9, no need for separate transactions.

Whenever I've done this in M&S, the till has automatically deducted one each in each category - i.e. in your scenario £9 gets taken off. So I suspect she was arguing because she couldn't see why you wanted to do it in a more complicated way.

My old manager at a very well known make up counter asked me how to calculate 30% out of something.

“I used to work in M&S. The till would have ranked them and saved you £9, no need for separate transactions.”

I can’t tell you how much I love this answer 😭😭😭

It's just possible that using the tills every day she knows how they work?

With the M&S refund thing - I often have to refund out the correct amount of money from my till, so that the 'refund' amount is the correct amount from the receipt. Not so bad if it's only a penny, but if you'd handed her £30.01 and asked for a fifty pound note back (unlikely, I know) then the receipt and the amount you've refunded wouldn't tally and Questions Would Be Asked.

So she may just be a stickler for keeping the paperwork right.

I would have had to do it and then have her void it to prove a point.
The Pudding

And felt a twat when I was stubbed out