Working at a grocery store as a self scan attendant. This couple with a cart piled high with stuff came through. They went to a machine that was in card-only mode, rung everything up, then ran their card. They waved me over to explain that they were paying with EBT (food stamps) and wanted to pay for whatever the EBT wouldn't cover (stuff like alcohol, paper towels, toiletries, diapers, and prepared foods can't be purchased with EBT) with cash. Only, because they'd gone to a card-only machine they couldn't insert cash.

I was like oh, no problem, I can transfer you over to my register and take your cash there. Now, transferring over a transaction that's only been partially paid for automatically reverses whatever payment has been applied. So the several hundred dollars that they'd run on their EBT card was refunded (or the card just wasn't charged yet, not entirely sure how it works).

While I was explaining all of this to the woman, that we'd have to run the EBT card again and then do the cash, and walking her over to my station, the man said something about heading out to the car and loading it up. This should have sent up red flags but I was dumb and new and the woman was staying to pay, so it didn't even occur to me that it'd be an issue for him to leave before they'd actually paid.

So I pulled up the transaction on my register and pointed her to the pinpad to swipe her card and she was like, "Oh, silly me. I must have handed it to him. I'll just go run out and get it."

She didn't come back.