Metropol

it's not often i suffer from a failure of mind that renders me completely buggered by my own stupidity, but today just such an event occured;

i was helping mrs lobster load a few items in her car before she left for work this morning, when, just before she left she informed me that we had run out of a certain maize snack component i have for lunch, so i ask if she has any change so i can buy some later. she hands me a crumpled tenner.

a few moments later, i get in my car to go to work and the petrol light comes on in my car (it came on during my journey home friday... i hadn't used my car since then and completely forgot about it, otherwise i would have filled up over the weekend to save the monday morning petrol panic).

anyway, i get to the petrol station and put about £8 in my car. enough petrol to do me for the next couple of days, plus enough change to get a drink and a bag of munchies for lunch.

so far so good.

except, that crumpled up tenner wasn't a tenner. it was a fiver. bugger. i didn't realise until i'd got to the checkout.

now, i'm fairly certain that people not having enough money to pay for petrol at the checkout is hardly an uncommon event. but anybody would think that i'd just raped a farmyard animal in full view of the children - and baring in mind that i owed a mere three quid there were all sorts of threats of the police being called and a stern assertion that i was fairly serious hot water. i had to wait for the manager like a naughty schoolboy waiting for the head teacher.

i felt pretty annoyed with myself that i hadn't checked the note beforehand - i was 100% certain it was a tenner and it was an genuine mistake. the manager did later apologise for her tone with me - the threat of her calling the police didn't concern me - i really don't care about that - by the time they'd come out the issue would have been sorted (if they'd even bother) - it was just that it was assumed i was criminal. so stupid considering that i was just 3 quid short.

i was able to settle my payment issue by going home and getting the cash and i've learnt a very important lesson.

has this happened to anybody else here? and did you have a similar experience with the checkout staff?

I've had this issue twice. Once in my hometown due to a cheque not clearing and therefore account being empty and another time due to managing to drive to another town and leave my wallet at home.

The first time I ended up having to leave my mobile at the forecourt go home and raid the house for spare cash (in the end it was paid up with a collection of £1 notes my dad had been saving for no apparent reason).

The second time I had to go into the shop and sheepishly apologise and the woman was pretty pleasant but made it quite clear my licence plate had been recorded by the CCTV and if I did not return that evening as I promised they would call the police. She said it politely though.

Either way though, these places surely have insurance for this exact purpose like any other shop. Little shops with signs such as that awful "Nice to touch, nice to hold but once broken consider it sold" really annoy me due to this, it just implies you're being cheap and not insuring for breakages. The number of people who used to bang into carelessly placed wine stands in M&S over the years I worked there and smash a good £60 of wine at a time were never once asked for any money.

But yes, it does appear to some to be one of the evilest crimes known to man, but then it entirely depends on the checkout operator you get. I'm sure Grindon would have let you off in exchange for a kiss back in his Tesco PFS days.

Well I always use Pay@Pump if I can as it saves time.

That reminds me, how do the staff "know" at a glance which vehs have paid at pump and which are promising to pay at kiosk but then drive off?

Anyway, it happened to me once. I'd left my cards out of my wallet to enter them all into my computer and...

I basically gave them my word as a gentleman that I'd be back and they were happy with that. Oh, and a signed form and my car registration number and a photograph. But I think it's the word they really bought. I'm a very respectable person after all.

They need to arm pay@pump pumps?

How come?

Well, guv, ya see, I thought that too, but then "My Local Asda" have completely automated not a soul in sight pay&pump pumps which activate the second your card authorises.

Sainsbury's once told me they wouldn't arm the pump until it was actually placed into the hole in the car where the petrol goes in. The technical term escapes me, one could say I'd had a brain failure.

Oh and I really dislike Asda's horrible drive-thru kiosk system where you have to drive ten yards like a moron and get a chip and pin pad hurled through your window in the pissing rain, I refuse to use their petrol due to them

Actually this all reminds me.

A couple of days ago I went to tesco and got a pump which I was *certain* was giving me aerated petrol. It looked cloudy, had an odd frothing noise as it came out, was generally jittery and the full tank was slightly more expensive than you would imagine.

I didn't cause a fuss because I thought I was probably wrong and I'd have just looked like a prat. I still think I'm wrong actaully.

Hymagumba wrote:Sainsbury's once told me they wouldn't arm the pump until it was actually placed into the hole in the car where the petrol goes in.

I've had that, just the once. It was Sainsburys in Street (Somerset) if I remember rightly.

There's no way I'm going to insert the pump head into my hole while there's still the last blokes £65 on the display, so I drove off without buying any of their lovely fuel in the end.

They tried to say it was company policy, but I've never had it happen in any other Sainsburys.