Imagine having to pay for parking at the grocery store! That sounds quite ridiculous!

Where I live, there are a lot of places that charge for parking, but the grocery store? That seems to cross the line of what’s normal.

However, in this story, that’s exactly the case. They have a good reason for charging for parking. Basically, they’re trying to discourage anyone who isn’t a customer from parking in the parking lot, but for customers, they can easily get their money back as long as they spend a certain amount inside the store.

Would you be annoyed if the items you wanted to buy didn’t reach the total amount you needed to spend in order to get your parking fee refunded? Would you be willing to spend more on something you don’t really need or want in order to get your parking fee refunded, or would you just pay for parking?

Keep reading to see how the customer in this story handles this situation.

Pedantic enough to not let me use my parking coupon? Two can play at this game.

Background:

I visit a supermarket on my lunch breaks quite often (5 min drive). Next to it is a very large hospital covering a decent portion of my borough.

UK Hospital car park prices are a joke around London so this supermarket has introduced a £2 for 2 hours parking charge a couple of years back to prevent hospital staff/patients/visitors filling up the car park all day.

This charge is refundable in store via a scannable coupon after a minimum spend.

However as I know the self-service checkouts will take the coupon as long as you spend £2.01 or more so I have always ignored this minimum £10 spend.

This has never been a problem.

The member of staff posted as the Self Service Supervisor (SSS from now on) has never had a problem with me doing this.

I have a friend that works in this store who often takes their lunch break around the time i’m there. Today she tells me that the regional manager is in so everybody’s very straight and by-the-book.

This may explain why the SSS was so bothered today when normally they couldn’t care less.

Also: I consider myself very financially basic – I buy what I need and hate buying useless junk.

Today, things went a little bit differently.

Story:

Today I park up, buy my £2 ticket as usual and carefully tear off the coupon to redeem as usual. Select the items I wish to purchase for a total of £3 and make my way to the self-service checkouts. Scan my items and tap the “Redeem Coupon” icon on the checkout. Scan the coupon and drop it in the coupon slot (otherwise it won’t accept). Pull my bank card out to pay the remaining £1 and be on my merry way when SSS comes over in haste and quickly slaps the cancel button on my screen!!

SSS: “Sorry you need to spend £10 to redeem your parking coupon, I can lock this checkout so you can go and select more items to make it up to the minimum if you like?”

She starts to explain…and panic!

Me: “I only came in here for these items and have never had to spend £10 to redeem my parking coupon.”

SSS: “Well the rules are you must spend £10 to get your £2 back.”

I begin panicking slightly as i’ve never had an issue before with being under the minimum.

Me: “I don’t need anything else today and you voided my £2 coupon, how am I meant to get back the £2 I spent? Can I get my coupon back?”

She decided to comply.

SSS: “I will call my manager over with the key to unlock the checkout so that you can use it another time.”

We wait for the manager to come over, I get my coupon back and say thank you.

Malicious Compliance:

I smugly walk over to the clothing area near the checkout, pick up a womens swimsuit and return to the self-service checkouts with my items (£3) + swimsuit (£16) and redeemed the coupon (-£2). Bought it all coming to a total of £17.

She got her money back.

I immediately turn to SSS and inform them I would like to return the swimsuit as it is no longer needed.

She points me to the customer services desk and I get the £16 refunded immediately.

I’d call today a win.

I do hope though that this incident doesn’t cause them to find a way to prevent me avoiding the minimum spend however!!

I can’t imagine having to pay for parking at the grocery store, but I understand the logic in this story. I hope they go back to the way the rules were before for the sake of OP. If the machine accepted the coupon, the employees should too.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a cashier who met a customer outside of work, and now they can never go back to their old relationship.

Let’s see how Reddit feels about this situation.

This person would’ve avoided shopping there that day.

Another person thinks it’s ridiculous to give the employee a hard time.

This person hopes they actually enforce the rules from now on.

Another person has a question.

It’s not like they’re requiring their customers to spend all that much. If the minimum is too low, the hospital patients and visitors could be tempted to buy something inexpensive as an excuse to park there for a couple hours.

I understand her frustration at being able to get around the rules every single time except for this one specific time, but it ended up working out for her. The employee had to follow the rules that day, and that shouldn’t be something to be upset at.

It sounds like the machine accepted the coupon and the refund though. If it’s programmed in that the machine will accept the coupon at a lower price point than is technically required, that’s a technical problem. I don’t see why the employee had to step in and void the transaction. She could’ve blamed it on the machine.

Maybe this customer should stop going to the grocery store every single day. If she went once a week and bought enough to last all week, she’d easily meet the minimum spend without breaking the rules.