It happens only in India

On 16th March 2010, I read about the grand opening of a mall in Mantri Square Malleshwaram. I had heard about this for a while and wanted to see the place. I was more interested in visiting Spar hypermarket, which claimed to have opened the biggest hypermarket in South India. The biggest hypermarket I have visited till date in India is Shop rite at Nirmal Lifestyle Mulund and Hypermarket at Hyper city Malad. These are the best markets I have visited in Mumbai. I expected something similar or better, but was disappointed as soon as I entered the market. The entrance was rather small and congested with people who were unable to decide whether to go in or not and finally we managed to find our way inside the shop and shop for a few things. The eating counter was located right at the centre of the shop and this was a little inconvenient for people moving with filled trolleys, as they had to squeeze in the middle of hungry people.

I didn’t expect so many people to be present at that place and it was over crowded by Bangalore standards. I had not seen so many people in any other super market – be it Spar at koramangala, Big Bazaar or even Reliance mart. By the time I finished my small shopping – it was closing time and just as I removed my stuff before the counter, the person told me there was a problem with the system and he wasn’t able to bill in my stuff. I had to put back all my paraphernalia and carry to another counter. The person seemed to be a little irritated after a hectic day’s schedule and seemed to be in a great hurry to punch in the details and carelessly packed the things I had purchased.

The whole experience was draining and I swore to think twice before going there again. We reached home and then my dad was casually going through the bill, he found that the cashier had forgot to punch in the bill for 2-3 items I had purchased and had blindly packed them for us without charging us the amount. Probably the guy at the counter was exhausted and in a hurry to pack-up. I considered it as an inaugural gift and kept it for myself.

As I was chatting over this experience with a colleague, he mentioned to me that such things are very common in super markets even on normal days. Some items don’t have a bar code on them and hence doesn’t beep when an unbilled item is taken out. Lot of people take advantage of this and someone managed to sneak away with a LCD TV worth 1.5 lacs, when the systems crashed during peak shopping hours and while manual billing was being done, the guy coolly walked away without paying even in a penny…. Guess what? The company realized this after 6 months during stock checking and then traced out the person.

Waow! It happens only in India!!