And the winner is.........

A couple of days I got to be the judge for a "Who is the Biggest Idiot" contest. Truth be told it was all rather unofficial. I was in line at the grocery store and the manager had to be called to the register. It seems that the woman in front 0f me was making a purchase for a tax exempt organization and forgot to give the cashier the tax exempt certificate before the cashier completed the transaction. The manager kindly and respectfully informed the woman that once the transaction is completed it is out of his hands. Now, having worked for this particular grocery store years ago, I knew that this was not entirely true. I knew that he could refund the order and create a new one this time making it tax exempt. But, should he have to? Should he have to pay for the labor of his employee because this woman did not present the certificate in time? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. It is clearly an opinion and everyone's could be right. Here in Florida most food items are tax exempt anyway. Certain junk foods, such as soda, are not, as well as prepared foods. So the majority of the time the tax paid at the grocery store is very little. I have beside me a receipt from a recent trip to the store. It is for $172.88 of which $4.08 is tax. The tax was for the diapers, wipes, ice pops, and a ten dollar bottle of wine. Four bucks is not significant compared to 172 bucks.

So how much was her tax you say? Hold on to your seat. Twenty six cents. She refused to leave the store until this was remedied. The manager even implied that the 26 cents was a measly amount that she should just come up with on her own. Was he right? I don't know, again opinions. So what did they do?

They moved to another register, because by now the line at this one was getting long. He got a cashier to void all of her items, re-ring them, and this time apply the tax exemption saving her the wopping twenty six cents. I wonder how much this cost him. Let's say he pays the cashier seven dollars an hour. He paid $1.75 just for the fifteen minutes it took to do all of this, and depending on how many hours the cashier works and how much his paycheck is it could be as much as another twenty five cents for the stores portion of the social security and medicare and this does not include worker's compensation just to get that woman her 26 cents. So he made his point by paying more than two dollars to prevent giving her twenty six cents.

How about her. What did she lose? Who knows. I am sure she ate dinner later, got home later, stayed in traffic later, stood on her feet longer. But by golly, she still has her twenty six cents. She continued talking about it long after the manager decided to do this for her. She was clearly upset, she was going to get people to see it her way. So, add to the list above, she got a little more stress for the evening. I bet that went well with her dinner. Maybe she should have gotten the ten dollar bottle of wine and had a small glass. It would have cost her sixty five cents in tax, but by golly, she would probably have felt a whole lot better.