TL;DR
A bug magnet story about a fish barcode and Lidl Store Process Workaround.
The Context
I buy my groceries in Lidl. The reasons are straightforward, it is close to my apartment, and I can buy 95% of my groceries’ needs. I go there every Thursday morning to do the weekly shopping. I always buy fish for Friday lunch. Every now or then, there is some new fish that I have never tried before. Today, that was Pagar.
The Issue
At the cash register, the Pagar barcode was not in the system. The cashier went to the fridge to check something but did not find out what she was looking for. She asked for advice from other cashiers.
The Advice
The advice was to search for Pagar and use found code. But she needed to weigh the Pagar at the cash register. Pagar weighted more than what was stated on the box. Price difference was 10 HRK (1.4 EUR).
The Workaround
The cashier decided to cancel the Pagar and refused to sell it. I insisted, and I agreed to pay the price difference because I want to try The Pagar. I asked for the supervisor. He suggested giving me cash in 10 HRK and process the Pagar through the cash register system with proposed advice.
The Risk
The cashier was afraid that these 10 kunas will be deducted from her pay.
The Damage
The whole process lasted for 10 minutes, and there were 10 customers in the queue. So total lost was 120 minutes (including the Lidl employees). The average hourly wage in Croatia is 5 EUR, so one bad estimate could be that the total loss was 10 EUR.
Conclusion
This teaches us that bugs could cluster around new things in the system. Not only new features but also the new data in existing features!
