Benefiting from Other People's Mistakes

We've hit a run of good luck lately, in the form of confused cashiers, mostly.

First, we went into Chick-fil-A last week to redeem our February calendar card offering. I'd looked in the app before we went in, and the choices were either of the soups or an ice cream. When we went in, I told the cashier that I wanted the chicken noodle soup for me, and the ice cream for Mal. She asked someone via her headset about the February deal (it was a mystery offering, and this was maybe February 2?).

"It's soup or chicken nuggets," she told me. I told her that was fine; I'd take nuggets but still wanted to order an ice cream because I'd already promised Mal. We also got a large fries and a large drink.

When the cashier rang it up, she looked surprised and said, "Oh, it didn't take the chicken nuggets off." Meaning I was right. She finished the order, and when I looked at the receipt, I realized two things: First, I should have gotten the soup I got and then a tortilla soup to bring home to James because the soups are $3.89 and the ice cream is $.89. But also, she'd gone ahead and given us the nuggets for free, too. So we paid $4.14 for a large drink, large fries, soup, 8 nuggets, and an ice cream. Woo hoo!

Next was yesterday at Chuck E. Cheese. I went because this week only, they have a buy-one-large-pizza, get-one-large-thin-crust-pepperoni-pizza free. Their pizza isn't great, but the larges are like $13, so for two pizzas, which Mal loves, it'd be worth it. Plus, we had some credit left on our play cards from last time.

I told the cashier, "I'd like to get a large cheese pizza, and then I have this." I handed her my phone, which she looked at, and put the promo code in. I ordered a drink and upgraded to a take-home cup because Mal loves them. She said, "That will be $4.30." So she gave me the pizza I ordered for free, with no other pizza purchase. We ended up spending less than five bucks, had a ton of pizza, a fun time, and Mal got a rocket launcher, Airheads, and some gummy ring pops with his tickets.

Also, not to brag, but on our very last play credit, I did the wheel and got 100 tickets. It was quite the drama.

But still...

For all the money we saved and free stuff we received, yesterday I made a mistake that cost me a bit, too.

Chuck E. Cheese is really close to James's new office, so we went to meet him for his lunch after our lunch. In fact, he ate two slices of pizza while we walked around the Domain. I promised Mal we'd go to a candy store, and the closest one to where we were?

When we walked in, I realized that we were screwed.

See those little boxes? They're $7.50. EACH.

Mal ended up with this one box of gummy pig mommies and babies. It's interesting; he will only eat one or two at a time, then asks for (plain old, cheap) gummy bears. I don't know if it's because these aren't candies aimed at children, so they taste different, or if he has some inherent sense that they're special and doesn't want to waste them. I'm sure it's the first, though.

Oh, but there was cashier confusion here, too. The total, including tax, was $8.12. I handed the very well-dressed gentleman a five, 3 ones, a quarter, and two pennies. HE HAD AN IPAD IN FRONT OF HIM. Why he didn't just punch it in is bizarre to me. But after probably 15-20 awkward seconds of his staring into his palm, I said, "I just did that so you could give me back 15 cents and I wouldn't have any pennies." He looked at me blankly, and I willed "15 cents" to him so he would MOVE IT. He finally punched in the numbers and handed me back my change.

Sheesh.

(Incidentally, all of the candy here is $7.50 per box, or you can get three in a "Sugarfina" blue box-sleeve kind of thing for $25. So I guess the message here is "no free boxes." Sheesh II. It's not Tiffany's.)