Your best story

I'm sure there are far more exciting and "talk to the table" type stories, but this is one I have somehow remembered after a while:

This was back while I was still in college, and living in the dorms. The dining hall near that end of campus also has a mini-mart type of establishment where you can purchase various food-items and household goods. I sometimes go there once in a while to buy supplies to make sandwiches (because sometimes, going to lunch in a dining hall is just not an attractive option). So one day, I was getting the usual ingredients: bread, meat, cheese, and a jar of mayonnaise and went up to the checkout counter. I was watching the price total as each item is scanned in: $1.79, $4.08, $8675035.47 . . .

Wait, what was that again?

I thought it was some sort of fluke and it would correct itself, even the cashier didn't take note of it, so I foolishly took out my meal card and decided to pay for it right then and there. The card was swiped . . . and there was a problem. Now the cashier notices. It appears that I am over 8,000,000 dollars short of paying the total. Clearly that wasn't how much I was supposed to pay, but now it has essentially cleared my card of any funds leaving me with a rather steep debt. By then I was holding up the line with this issue and the other register had to open to make sure business could still operate. They had to call in one of the higher-level managers of the Department of Housing and Food Services to come over and reverse the problem, which apparently required a lot of communications with the financial database manager so they can restore the card back to what it should contain and erase the transaction.

It took nearly 20 minutes, but the problem was resolved and I was able to buy my sandwich ingredients normally. I should be grateful the problem was resolved, but man, I should have had some sort of compensation for the trouble caused by an electronic error! maybe 99 cents off or something as a token.

Jam it back in, in the dark.