The customer is willfully wrong

This isn't quite a story about semantics, because the misinterpretation is intentional, and to SC's mind, malicious. But it's certainly an interesting case of language use.

SC was at the local grocery store this afternoon, to buy a few light bulbs. Being comfortably within the 10-item limit indicated at the express lane, he got into line as is normally done. Behind him, another woman lined up with 4 items. So far, so good.

But then, just as SC was paying, another woman got into the line, with a cart stuffed nearly to the top. There was no way that she had less than 17-18 items in there, and the real count is more probably in the mid-20s.

One of SC's frustrations at the grocery store lately is that since the strikes began in Southern California, customers have responded to the reduced number of open cash registers by refusing to honor the signs at express lanes. This time, the cashier said to the customer, "Excuse me, there's a 10-item limit for this lane", something which they have not usually done since the strikes started. The lady with the full cart replied, "I only have 10 items". Since this was plainly false, the cashier repeated his request that she leave the line, and got the same response. He then gave up, and turned his attention back to ringing up SC, who was intently watching the woman at this point.

After placing 10 items on the conveyor belt, she put down one of the bars used to separate orders, and continued unloading her cart.

Clearly, the statement "I only have 10 items" is false. However, one could argue, given her strategy, that she meant "I only have 10 items in each order", which makes her statement bad in a pragmatic way, but true in a truth-theoretic sense. Leaving aside the fact that her behavior was an act of total disrespect to other customers, it's difficult for SC to decide if her statements in fact qualified as lies.

UPDATE: It looks like this story has become common enough:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=509&u=/ap/20040227/ap_on_bi_ge/grocery_strike_1&printer=1

(Edited @ 6:12 pm on 2/26/04 to include updated material)

Comments

[blinger]

Whatever she did is just wrong. That woman is like a person who cuts in line and just pretends that nothing happened. She should easily be shot on site.

[Qov]

Eggcorn!

[Susan]

Wow -- here in NYC we don't need a stinkin' strike in order to get people shoehorning cartfulls of groceries into the "express" line; that just happens as a matter of course. Although it often seems like there's a strike going on, insofar as one never sees all available checkout lanes staffed...