So there has been a breakthrough in my retail price adventure.
This windy winter morning, with small flakes of snow tumbling sideways, I went for more on-sale apples at the local grocer chain. Bagged, presented, and accompanied with several yes pleases, I gently offered on-sale apples to the checkout, positioned myself at the display, facing away from the human operator. Wrong price I said aloud, and knew I only had less than a minute. Off she stormed, to the produce area to check the displayed price. I ran to keep up, asking her how I could help her solve this problem. Anger had flooded her face, I only had a few more seconds, 'maybe I could talk to a manager and get this fixed for all of us?' Then she was gone. I was sure that I had failed.
I returned to the customer chute.

She returned, lips pursed, said a few words to her colleague in groceryspeak. Without looking anywhere her fingers slammed the sequence of commands to cancel and correct. Then it happened, the other checkout turned to me and said softly, the senior manager watches Yelp closely, if you post a poor review there then we have a chance. Ok, maybe she didnt say we. Hooboy, I couldn't believe it. Yes, yes, I had a Yelp account, passed down to me by my naive-webself from twenty years ago. This could work, we could have displayed prices that match register prices.

My checkout was now smiling at me. And the store manager was approaching, I did my best ten second elevator speech about proper charges using the glowing blank register screen as a prop, unfolded my arms to virtually embrace all the people around me harmed by this careless process of putting food on sale and charging full price. A customer was staring at me. The store manager had a sort of monotone response, mumbling yes, and, I see. And away he went, the store manager, disappearing around the aisle of
beers, each with colorful, pleasant missives upon them. Later I posted my message in a Yelp bottle and threw it into the Internet sea. This might work.