A while back something happened to me at the grocery store. I had gone to the butcher to pick up some fish. I like Orange Roughy; it doesn't taste realy fishy and sells for about $5.00 a pound if you look for great deals.
Checking Out
After the butcher wrapped my fish I proceeded to the check out line and while standing in line, I looked through my basket to guesstimate what my total would be. (This is what nerds like me do when we're bored at the grocery store.) So I'm looking through my stuff and when I got to the fish, the label said "Swordfish" and the price was over $12.00 a pound, a far cry from the Orange Roughy at $5.00.
Round Trip
I went back to the butcher and he unwrapped the package. Sure enough, he sold me Orange Roughy, but had failed to change the item number on the scale from the previous sale; obviously that person had just bought Swordfish (at over $12.00 a pound.) I hope they like Swordfish.
True Perspective
This is an honest mistake on the part of the butcher, at least, I don't think he had anything to gain by the wrong price. The thing that struck me was that I wasn't buying that much, only about $20.00 worth of groceries, so by guesstimating what my total would be before I checked out, I would have realized something was wrong when I paid the total. So, I thought about the housewife buying over $100.00 worth of groceries, with two or three screaming kids in tow. A pound of Swordfish at $12.00 (which really wasn't Swordfish) versus a pound of Orange Roughy at $5.00 wouldn't have registered (pardon the pun) when she saw the total, as it wouldn't have made that much difference in the $100 she was buying.
Just something to think about next time you go to the grocery store. When was the last time you checked the butcher's tape?