Self Checkout at the Supermarket: What Do You Do?

I had a random conversation with a colleague today. The subject of self checkout machines at the supermarket came up. You know, the kind where you place your unbought items on one side of the machine, scan the barcodes on your items, weigh your fresh produce and place all of it on the other side in bags you've bought yourself or the BAD plastic bags we're all supposed to be avoiding.

But what happens when you have to look up a fresh item? Well, if its a 'Golden Delicious Apple', you find that item under 'Fruit', press the button and the weighing machine weighs it and charges you the 'Golden Delicious Apple' per kilo price, right?

I find that I am wrong.

Apparently, if you have a bag of 'Pine Nuts' from the fresh section (a relatively more expensive nut), you just look up 'Salted Peanuts', press the button and the weighing machine weighs it and charges you the 'Salted Peanuts' per kilo price and you walk away with super cheap pine nuts.

Is this what people do? Does everybody do this? I have to admit I was pretty surprised and I tried not to be judge, judge, judgey about it but...you guessed it, I felt a bit judgey. After all, the person who told me she did this at the self checkout doesn't earn a whole lot of money. I should be more considerate. And yes, I do understand that sometimes, a little treat makes one feel SO much better about life.

I wish I weren't so judgey so I tried to think about those poor convicts, shipped out from England for stealing a loaf of bread and how unfair it was to penalise someone for being poor.

But are pine nuts the same as bread? I think they actually are. I don't go with that whole 'people can only be forgiven for purloining survival items, not luxury items'. But, I still have a bit of judgement around the issue of basic honesty. When someone tells you they've done something like that, are you likely to trust them on other matters where you have to rely on them telling you the truth? When is a piece of dishonesty small enough to dismiss and can you rely on that as predictive of behaviour around bigger issues?

I don't know.

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts.