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Health & Fitness

Buying a Hallmark Greeting Card at Stop & Shop Can be an Adventure

I joined Patch more than 3-1/2 years ago as a contractor and the hundreds of articles that I have contributed have mostly been about the culinary world. But let me digress a little and tell you about my visit yesterday to the Stop & Shop in Tarrytown and a mistake made by a person standing behind me in a checkout lane.  

While shopping for groceries at this supermarket, I also selected an attractive Hallmark greeting card from a display rack.

After a young cashier rang up the cost of the greeting card, he handed it back to me and continued with the checkout process. Unusual I thought. I put the greeting card in the shopping cart's small-item bin. The clerk continued ringing up prices for my wagon's contents. 

I paid with a credit card, placed my bags of groceries in the cart and was ready to wheel away. But then, a man standing behind me in line intervened and exclaimed to the clerk, "He didn't pay you for a greeting card he has in his cart."  Determined to prove this accusation, he examined my charges still visible on the monitor. He was confronted with irrefutable evidence that he was wrong—the cost of the Hallmark card appeared on the screen.

He didn't apologize to the clerk for his interference or to me for his accusation which would have been a proper thing to do. 

I discussed this incident later with a store manager, a very nice lady named Lena. She explained it is store policy to hand a greeting card and it's mailing envelope back to the customer during the checkout procedure. "The clerk should have included a small brown Hallmark paper bag for the card as part of the transaction," she said. The man behind me might not have carried on about the greeting card had this happened. 

"We will review our procedure this evening," the store manager said, "maybe we should wait until all items have been charged before giving the greeting card back to the customer."

The Stop & Shop in Tarrytown is at 610 White Plains Road (Route 119), 914-631-8566. It opened on March 23, 2012 and replaced the supermarket chain's smaller Bridge Plaza store at 350 South Broadway in Tarrytown, which became a CVS pharmacy.

Jerry Eimbinder writes about restaurants, chefs and food. He also covers entertainment including stage plays, journalism-related events, newly published books, and authors. 

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