Basket Total Surprise Has Entered Formal Review
A person has arrived at a grocery checkout with an amount in mind and has been presented with a number that is not that amount. This has happened again.
Classification Notice: Basket Total Surprise Formal Review Entry, April 27, 2021
Classification
Basket total surprise is classified as a recurring condition rather than an incident, because an incident implies an unusual event, and this is not unusual.
The condition is defined as follows: a person proceeds through a retail location selecting items they intend to purchase, maintains a running estimate of the total in their head, arrives at checkout, and receives a total that differs from their estimate by an amount sufficient to produce a visible reaction.
Frequency
The condition has occurred at this subject's checkout transactions in approximately six of the last ten grocery visits. The estimate versus actual gap has ranged from four dollars to twenty-two dollars. The gap is directional: the actual total is higher than the estimate in all recorded instances.
Root Cause Analysis
The estimate is constructed from memory rather than mathematics, which means it incorporates the prices of items purchased before the price changes that occurred during the pandemic, applied to a basket that now contains different items at different prices, rounded to the nearest number that feels right, and adjusted downward by an optimism factor the subject has never quantified or acknowledged.
The estimate is wrong before it is made. This is not a new finding.
Consequences
Consequence one: the visible reaction at checkout, which takes the form of a brief look at the screen, a look at the basket, and a return to the screen. This reaction communicates surprise to the cashier, who is not surprised, because this reaction is common.
Consequence two: a revised understanding of the household grocery budget that is accurate for approximately four days before reverting to a baseline estimate derived from pre-2020 prices.
Consequence three: the subject has now added a physical note to their phone's notes application titled Usual Grocery Total with a number in it. The number is from six weeks ago and has not been updated.
Absurd Rule in Effect
The subject continues to estimate rather than calculate because calculation would require adding prices while shopping, which would require looking at prices while shopping, which would require a behavioral adjustment the subject has determined is too disruptive to the shopping experience.
The experience of not looking is comfortable. The checkout is not.
Status
This is the eighth review filing. No corrective action has been taken. The condition is stable.