I think it's clear OP didn't take the yogurt. They wrote "I left the $5 behind" not "I accidentally stole some yogurt." Sounds like OP ended up with neither money nor yogurt. I doubt the cashier would've let them take the yogurt to the car with them when they haven't fully paid for it. Sucks for you, though, OP. Had you gone back, they might've just let you have the yogurt even though you were short since they probably have to throw it away anyway.

OP was trying to buy yogurt, not ice cream.

Frozen yogurt. As in, a thing that can melt.

good story, tell it again! both things melt and can be eaten, life s to short to worry xD

Except they don't really have five extra dollars; they're short the remaining $1.92 for the value of OP's filled cup that certainly can't be resold.

Tell your cousin to be careful because McDonald's corporate doesn't give a shit if an employee is caught giving away free food no matter how little it costs them.

#10 That's not how retail works. If you order a pizza for pick up and then never show up and pay for it, then that business lost $15 bucks, not the $3 it cost to actually make it. A business operates on profits.

Not true #17, I worked retail and now work in the support center. All the company cares about is cost. When a company reports losses, the are talking about costs. For instace, if the company sold everything at cost, factoring all operating expenses, then the company would break even. Not considered a loss, but they also had no profits.

Yeah, because that's how taxes and accounting works, not cos they don't care! You can't report a loss unless you actually lost money, to do otherwise is fraud. But since the owners are paid by a share of the profits, no profit no pay. No profit, no point. No profit, angry shareholders. Just because the only thing you need to report on is actual losses so those can't be entered into accounts to offset paying tax on profits, that doesn't mean nobody cares.

You can get in trouble as a cashier for having extra money too. If the till is over then they assume you intended to steal the money later.

#26 The edit time ran out before I could put "just" in there. "Not 'just' the loss..." Anyway, when that company runs its financial statements, that missing inventory is going to show up as a loss of revenue because, as I said, a company runs on profits. You're talking about cash flow, which is not the same thing. And costs are not all a company cares about. A company cares only about making profit and avoiding losses. Costs get passed on to the consumer.

If they have a half decent system, they can scan an item again as "returned" and thus the register "takes out" the missing amount.

#55 - It's frozen yogurt in a self-filled cup. It's highly unlikely either that such a product has a scan code or that the business considers it returnable. They probably have policies in place to deal with "customers" who dispense food to themselves and then can't pay for some or all of it, but I'd be surprised if it involved processing a refund. And in this case, how would that work -- process a return for a fraction of a yogurt?

Yeah, that isn't going to fly at most places. Once food has been handled by customers it has to be trashed for safety regulation reasons. Taking out yogurt won't change the fact that you owe them the cost for that yogurt.

What good would a debit card exactly? If they didn't have more than $5 to their name, swiping a debit card would only cause them to overdraft and in turn owe more than just the $1.92.

If you have only $5 to your name then you have bigger problems than not affording frozen yogurt. Not my fault OP isn't prepared for life and clearly everyone who voted YDI agrees. Don't spend money you don't have...

I think we can all agree on that. But you suggested a debit card like it would make a difference and that's what people didn't agree on.

Well a debit card is their money, this sounds like they only had $5 ON THEM, not necessarily $5 to their name. So a debit card is a reasonable suggestion, given the assumptions made from the FML that I stated above.

My point exactly on the debit card comment #39 too bad there's a lot of judgmental morons like #13 on this site that automatically assume my opinion is wrong instead of thinking logically >.>

Do you seriously feel like that's dignifying? Running away from your froyo shop?!?

All the cashier has to do is cancel/void the transaction. And then Write the yoghurt off it need be. Then the have an extra 5 laying around rather than being short. They need to have the ability to cancel a transaction for the instances when a customer doesn't have enough money to pay.

Quite a few places have policy against that though, because customers realized this and would either a) complain it wasn't right, keep the "bad" drink/meal/whatever, and get a new one for free, or b) purposely not have enough money because they knew they would get the product for less since it was just being trashed anyway. For the honest mistakes it sucks, but I heard a few managers that had lists of people that would come try to pull shit like that and eventually had to change policy because too many people regularly abused the system. :/