General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A friend of mine saw someone using food stamps to pay for ice cream bars. [View all]left on green only
(1,484 posts)that the amount of time it takes for me to use my food stamp card depends on the capabilities of the processing equipment that the grocery store is able to afford to utilize. At Nob Hill/Raley's stores, using my food stamp card takes the exact same amount of time that it takes to pay for groceries using a credit card, and with the exact same signature requirements (for purchases less than $20 a signature is not required). However, what does add to the amount of time that it takes is when items like deodorant and toothpaste are purchased, because they do not qualify under the food stamp program.
For those non qualifying items, the processing equipment at Raley's automatically recalculates the bill as soon as my card is swiped, in order to give me a separate total for the items that I have to pay for using cash, and then also a separate total for the amount of the other qualifying items that is subtracted from the food stamp card.
So what takes more time during those compound transactions is the time that it takes me to reach into my pocket and take out the cash, after I should have already been finished with my transaction after having just swiped my card. But that doesn't usually happen for me because qualifying food items are almost always the only thing that I buy.
As an aside, an embarrassing experience happened to me one day when my mind was operating at a lower state of consciousness (a senior moment). I forgot to keep track of the estimated total cost of the items that I was placing in my cart *before* getting in the check out line. By the time it was my turn to check out, there were 4 or 5 people in line behind me.
After my items were totaled up and I swiped my card, it turned out that I did not have enough money left on my card to pay for all of the food that I had put in my cart. And by that time, all of the items had already been bagged (they are very efficient at Raley's). So I had to make all of the people in line behind me wait while they un-bagged my food and let me decide which items I would leave behind. I think that nobody behind me said anything because they could already tell that I felt like an exposed rat.
Then, when I got back to my car and I was loading the trunk up with the items that I was able to purchase, a young man who I remember had been standing in line behind me, came running up to me with a bag of groceries in his hand, and he said, "Here, I think you forgot these". I embraced him without even caring who might be watching. And the reason why I say that is because I live in a very red neck area, where the act of two men embracing in public is a very dangerous thing to do.