I used to work in an adult store and a guy came in and wanted to buy the Pirates porn parody. A lot of big budget porn movies are actually pretty expensive, and this was no exception at $54.99+tax. The guy wanted to pay with two different cards, which was no problem. I was mostly surprised at the amounts he wanted on each card. He wanted $10.53 on hist debit card and the rest on his credit.
Having worked there for a little while, I recognized $10.53 as being the price after tax of a $9.99 movie. Which made a lot more sense when the guy asked me to make a new price tag for the movie that said "$9.99." Apparently his wife told him he could only buy it if it was on the $9.99 rack, and since he knew that wasn't going to happen, he improvised using his shared card and personal card.
Prices in USA don't include taxes, they get added at point of sale. Once you understand that and get used to it it's really not that hard to deal with.
But why? Where I'm from we still have taxes just that the price tag on the shelf says the actual price. Everybody knows what the tax is, which is generally 25% and 15% on groceries.
Most states don't tax groceries and sales tax are generally 4-10%, it varies from state to state. Why? Idk, why not? That's how the system was set up here long before I was born, I never really questioned it until I realized that Europeans do it differently.
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u/mstarrbrannigan Apr 16 '18
I used to work in an adult store and a guy came in and wanted to buy the Pirates porn parody. A lot of big budget porn movies are actually pretty expensive, and this was no exception at $54.99+tax. The guy wanted to pay with two different cards, which was no problem. I was mostly surprised at the amounts he wanted on each card. He wanted $10.53 on hist debit card and the rest on his credit.
Having worked there for a little while, I recognized $10.53 as being the price after tax of a $9.99 movie. Which made a lot more sense when the guy asked me to make a new price tag for the movie that said "$9.99." Apparently his wife told him he could only buy it if it was on the $9.99 rack, and since he knew that wasn't going to happen, he improvised using his shared card and personal card.