Obvious Questions

Hello again, boys and girls. I'm back with what will be a regular feature here: Obvious Questions.

Allow me to explain the premise. In life, we (and by "we," I mean us sane, rational people) routinely run across things that leave us scratching our heads. Whether it be some ridiculous sports rule or an absurd business practice, we're confounded by the stupidity of others and left wondering about it for hours.

In this spot, probably once or twice a week, I will address some of those questions and I encourage you to use the comment section or my email (jmoon@gannett.com) to work through the issues bombarding you. They need not be sports related, of course.

With that in mind, I come to you with a question that has been bugging me for a couple of days now.

On Friday evening, I stopped by a local retail outlet --we'll refer to it as Mal Wart -- to pick up a few items. As I'm waiting for the cashier to scan my items and charge me at least $100, because there's simply no way you can walk out the door at Mal Wart for less than $100, I think I notice that one item has been mistakenly scanned twice. I bring this up to the cashier and point out the mistake on the receipt.

Now, here's where they lose me. In response to this, the cashier says she'll have to get the manager to conduct a "key turn," meaning that in order to open the register and refund me my cash, she'll need to have a manager insert a key into the register and open the cash drawer for her.

Think about this for a moment.

Over the course of a seven hour and 55 minute day (can't work eight hours because that would put a Mal Wart employee at fulltime, forcing the struggling company to dole out health insurance to the greedy workers), that cash drawer has to open 100 times in order for the cashier to get change for customers. Why does it suddenly require a "key turn" to open that same drawer in order to give me back the money you just mistakenly charged me? It makes no sense.

There's no way that a cashier, even if he or she happened to be the biggest crook in town, could make more than a four or five bucks a week scamming the company this way. Which is probably the same amount of cash that person could make if they just took a little extra out of the drawer while giving change. I don't get it.

But hey, just for reading along and enjoying, I give you the website, www.peopleofwalmart.com. Have fun.