An attempt to save pennies cost me $3.25

This is one of those penny pinching moments when I wish I wasn’t such a cheapskate. I went to the grocery store near my house to load up on frozen chicken breasts. I like the thinly sliced ones. I know they cost more, but it saves me from having to pound out the chicken before cooking it. The thinner it is, the faster it cooks, so I figure between not having to pound the chicken and having a quicker overall cooking time it’s worth the extra few cents.

So I purchased the chicken and a couple of other items that were on sale. When I get out to the car I take a look at the receipt and noticed the cashier rang up all five of the frozen chicken packages under only one price. So even though one package cost $3.99, one cost $4.50, and one cost $4.25, the clerk rang them all up as $5.45, which just so happened to be the most expensive package I bought.

Since I caught this error I went back into the store with my receipt and the bag of frozen chicken in hand. Of course, I had to wait in line at the customer service counter for quite awhile. When I got up to the counter I explained to the clerk what had occurred. He decided to walk over to the cashier to discuss her error, thus making me wait another five or so minutes.

He began rectifying the situation by crediting my credit card for the chicken I just purchased. Then he proceeded to ring up the chicken the way it should have been rung up in the first place, as $3.99, $4.25, $4.50, etc. But in doing so he realized that the clerk only rang up four packages of chicken, when in actuality I purchased five. In essence, I had received one package of chicken for free.

So when he rang up all five of the frozen chicken packages with the correct prices it actually ended up costing me $3.25 more than if I had never gone back in the store in the first place. Not to mention it would have saved me at least twenty minutes worth of time.

The lesson I learned: sometimes time is more valuable than an extra few cents.

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