Yes and no. Weights and Measures verifies the accuracy of the volume, by comparing an actual gallon of output to what the dispenser displays. When I worked in a gas station, the dispensers (the actual pumps were in the tanks) had stacks of gears to correlate volume to price, and you changed the price by moving the gears up or down the stacks. These days, it appears that the money display is electronically calculated against the output volume.
I used to read the meters at closing (small odometer-like counters) and math out how much revenue that would be for each dispenser (based on price), then compare that to the till. But the volume totals never lined up with the fractions for each sale, so the numbers would balance to zero about once every 15 months or so (like that Halloween night, with the mushrooms and – uh, nm).
If a vendor can tweak the electronics to make the price fractions of a cent per gallon high, he could rake in extra cash every day, and no one does gallon/dollar math in their heads, so it would go entirely unnoticed, unless a customer pores over every receipt and starts to see consistent overages.
My take is that the entire story took place in the past. He told part of the story, and then revealed the actual outcome.
I suspect his thesis was that like his co-workers, he’d get from here a bunch of “get a life,” and “it’s only three cents,” responses, and those responses would have been sharply muted if he revealed the whole story.
Having gotten unvarnished reactions, he then revealed the actual outcome.
The store making the local news for shorting customers happened about 4 days ago.
The story wan’t really all that interesting when it was just a weird exchange over three cents. Finding out that the store was cheating so many people sheds a new and interesting light on the clerk cheating a customer out of three cents.
I find it entirely plausible that any office he complained to over 3 cents, rang to tell him the gang was behind bars and he had done his duty.
I would. It wraps things up.
The only recent news I could find about shortchanging customers was this article about a guy suing Hershey’s for not putting more Whoppers and Reese’s Pieces in their boxes, but there’s a better than average chance that the litigant named is the OP.
I did find an article about a whole bunch of Houston gas stations which have been cited for overcharging customers. It looks like the Texas Dept. of Agriculture has been involved in a pretty big sweep for the last… wait…
OP confirmed as secret agent of the Texas Dept. of Ag.
Is “counting backwards” a fancy way of saying subtraction? I’m not really sure what the difference is or ever being “taught” that but I do most math in my head without being taught (and sometimes can’t explain how I get the answers). It sounds like some fuzzy, new math (though apparently it’s an old thing) that unnecessarily complicates things - sorta like going through so much trouble over 3 cents.
In Australia and NZ, we did away with small coinage, and round up or down for cash transactions, (exact for electronic). But the best thing we do is include tax in the total price so it’s not a complicated surprise addition.
Someone came back to the register to complain that her change was short a penny.
I looked at her. “Well, what if you do that to every customer?” I hand about 200 cash customers a shift, and I am not that desperate for two dollars.
The cashier next to me had a penny sitting on her register, and I asked her to please give it to me. As soon as she stopped laughing, she did. I gave it to the customer.
I’m always behind that sweet little old lady diligently searching the bottom of her purse for that last penny. I mean, it’s was $2.87 and by damn, she was going to give them $2.87, even if it’s one coin at a time.
