Oh, So *This* Is Why Costco Always Checks Your Receipt At The Exit

I always have a fear that I’m doing something wrong. Because, anxiety. So, that makes shopping at stores like Costco a little painful for me. Having never intentionally shoplifted my whole life, I still feel oddly guilty when they check my receipt at the door. Y’know, in the slim chance I accidentally pocketed a family-sized bag of chicken nuggets. So, it’s good to know that they’re not actually looking to cause me any paranoia or grief. In fact, the person who checks receipts is doing it to make the store better.

According to The Takeout, receipts get checked to make sure the cashiers didn’t overcharge you for anything. Because Costco is a lot like Target — you go in for one thing, and you suddenly come out with a $150 bill, at a minimum. You might not notice if something got rung up twice.

“In my 12 years working at Costco, the receipt checkers prevented theft at the door by checking a receipt a grand total of zero times,” one receipt-checker wrote on Quora. “They did, however, discover a discrepancy on a receipt about two times an hour.”

Supposedly, overcharges happen a lot more often than you think, which means you probably shouldn’t tune out while your cashier is ringing you up. That cashier has likely been standing and scanning for a majority of the day, so errors do happen. They’re only human.

CheatSheet made a point in saying that the practice in checking receipts is actually in the terms and services you agree to when you sign up for a Costco membership. So, it’s a crucial step in how their business is run. But now that you know why, that doesn’t mean you should try to shoplift from Costco. Or any store. People are still watching store inventory, and really — is something like that worth the risk?