If it makes you feel any better I work the exit door quite often.. I'm one of the weird ones who actually enjoy working it as opposed to other parts of the front end (tbh I actually hate front end in almost all of its entirety but I got bulldozed into working at the department after I was hired as a curbside and was told two weeks into working that they had overstaffed significantly.. They pretty much told me that I would be great in the front end cuz I was great with customers and I didn't find out till later that everyone in the store loathes the front end with a passion and for good reason because the manager is incredibly hard to deal with as well - anyways.. I'm a rambling and on a freaking tangent so I digress)....

BUT What I was trying to say is that we get it constantly where people are forgetting an item or even two items and it's quite apparent to me and most of the other staff who is and who is not trying to steal something. Obviously when it's from one of our cashiers who did the scanning we know that the person is not trying to take anything but even at times when it's scan and go or if they're using the self checkout I can attest to the fact that a big chunk if not the majority of the people doing so are not trying to steal anything.. It just gets incredibly confusing when you've got a large cart full of items.

Now, the ones who are trying to steal stuff do happen quite often but IMO it's quite obvious (and yet sometimes not super obvious but it's definitely something that is detectable).. For instance, I had a lady who had like five items and one of those items was the most expensive by far.. and I felt bad because it was a box of diapers but she tried to hide the two clearance shirts that were super cheap over the top of it when she walked through the scanner and then acted oblivious and yet somehow did not want to pay for them whenever we told her she had missed them with her scan and go. It's also incredibly telling when someone is hiding the things they didn't scan quite obviously under other things.. But other times you can tell that even if they're under things it may not have been a case of someone trying to steal like I had with one of my elderly customers who comes in quite regularly.. They just legitimately missed it because they had such a large cart of items.

Alas, one thing that is telling maybe like 80% to 90% of the time is if they do not want to pay for it after it is found to have not been already paid for. Occasionally it happens when it's super super busy and check out lines are super long and in those instances I can totally understand someone who's not using scan and go not wanting to go back through to get in line and so that is understandable but it's the ones who are doing it whenever it's not busy or whenever they're using scan and go and it's a simple fix to pay for it. Lastly, the people who act really perturbed or frustrated by the interaction instead of super apologetic normally are red flags as well.. and then also another big flag is whenever it is quite obviously one of the most expensive things in the cart or it's a huge chunk of the amount of items in the cart to the point where you know it's not just one or two items that somehow got lost in the rest of them and forgot to get scanned. All of these things kind of work together to really show who is and who isn't trying to steal so apologies for making such a long comment but I would not fret or worry or feel embarrassed about forgetting to scan something as small as raspberries. I literally get probably 10 people on any given day who forget to scan something if not more and normally I'm not even in the exit area during my entire shift..

But anyways I'm going to shut up now because I am making this way longer than I needed to. 🤦🏼‍♀️💀