grocery-store interface question

[cellio]

Today, as I approached the checkout lines with a dozen bagels, my salad, and a few other things, I found myself wondering about the specification of "12 items or fewer". (Fewer! They actually said "fewer" instead of "less"!) I assume they do not mean 12 individual items no matter how packaged, else you could never go through with a case of pop or a bag of potato chips. So do they mean 12 scannable things, or 12 items at the smallest unit size sold? Would my dozen bagels be ok in a pre-packaged bag with a UPC symbol but not if the clerk had to type in "12 @ [price]"? Or is the fact that it generates a single line on the receipt what matters?

These thoughts brought to you by "total items: 20" on my receipt, a need to maintain my reputation as a pedant, a desire to test posting by email, and caffeine deficiency. :-)

Comments

[cellio]

Now let's talk about that bag of bagels. Bagels are sold by the unit, not by weight. So if you instead had, say, a bag of apples that you hand-picked from the produce section, that'd be one item because the clerk takes the bag, throws it onto the scale, and processes a number.

But suppose instead you had a bag of cucumbers at 2/$1, or bagels at 50 cents each, or whatever. Does the fact that the clerk has to count the items affect things? (Well, either that or trust you when you say a number -- which, so long as it's plauslbe, they usually do.) This was my dilemma. I had gone to the bakery and hand-picked a dozen bagels.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

I don't think that the fact that the clerk has to count (or ask for a number) changes it, if they're all packaged together. If every item had to be scanned individually (for instance, when I buy 10 yogurts of differing flavors and, thus, barcodes), then I'd count them individually for the "12 items or fewer" count.

That said, two packages of spaghetti, even if the clerk types in "2@" and then scans only one, counts as two items in my mind.