so i was in the produce aise, making my selection, bagging it, and dutifully weighing it and putting the sticker on. then out of the corner of my eye, i see a woman with a bag of some kind of fruit take one out of the bag, put it on the scale, and put the sticker on the bag. now, i guess she could be buying mangos or something that's sold by the piece as opposed to the weight. so if you have a bag of 4, you could feasibly take 1 out and type in that you actually have 4 and get a correct sticker. but i guess you could also do this by weight if you are dishonest.
then, when i got to the register, i noticed that the cashier rung up my apples by typing in their code, even though i had bothered to weigh them and put the sticker on the bag. it made me wonder if they do this because people often "underweigh" their items. i wanted to ask the cashier, but there was someone behind me, so i didn't.
anyone ever work at a grocery store and have some insight? i'd just never thought about it before! although now, i've realized that this would be very easy to do in the self-checkout aisle. maybe i'll turn to a life of crime...

Re: paying for veggies and fruit at heb
Actually, it won't work in the self-checkout aisle. The place where you bag your groceries weighs your items, so if they don't match what you scan, it will cause an error and you'll have to bring a cashier over to fix it.
ETA: Cheating won't work at self-checkout. You can use the stickers, but it will compare what you scan to what it weighs when you put it in your bag.
My Bio (wedding pics added 7/6)
My 101
My HEB self check out lanes let me use the stickers
And when i got to a check out person, when I have the stickers on them it's 50/50 if they use the code or the stickers.
I'm not surprised people cheat it. Whenever there is an honour system, someone always takes advantage.
That's pretty lame of her if she was underweighing the produce. I've never actually noticed whether they weigh or scan the produce. Sometimes I'll put a few things in a bag together, but usually only things that are priced per item.
On the subject of people doing questionable things, yesterday DH and I were at a very nicely landscaped shopping center and we saw this guy stealing rocks from the landscape. Not like he picked up a neat looking little pebble and put it in his pocket. He picked up a few big rocks - like the kind you line a flowerbed with, carried them to his car, came back, picked up a few more rocks, carried them to his car, and over and over. DH went back in the store to tell the salespeople, but I'm not really sure what he expected them to do. But come on, stealing rocks?
Ditto.