When you don’t pay attention, you can get burned, especially when you’re rushing around and/or in a new environment.
While visiting New York City, I ran out to the store to buy pasta ingredients. The pine nuts I threw into my cart were for a salad I never made. As I checked out, another shopper started talking to me about how to know when cut flowers are fresh. I rushed out and never gave a second thought to why my bill for everything came to more than $80.
It wasn’t until I was balancing my checkbook on the plane home, and reviewing receipts, that I found the error. The store had charged me $23.99 for a small package of pine nuts that should have been $3.99. I have no one to blame but myself – I could have caught the error had I simply glanced at the receipt at the checkout stand OR reviewed my receipts BEFORE flying home 2 days later. Next time, I will pay closer attention for sure.