‘I RAN to self-checkout’: Costco employee made one pricing mistake that saved this shopper a fortune

A Costco shopper recently scored an amazing deal when an employee accidentally labeled expensive lobster tails as much cheaper shrimp. The shopper, known online as Karen, found four large packages of premium lobster tails in her cart, but the labels said “Farmed White EZ Peel Shrimp” instead. The prices were unbelievably low, ranging from $16.92 to $21.32 per package.

Regular lobster tails usually cost between $40 and $55 per pound, while the shrimp they were mislabeled as only cost $10.99. This was a huge discount. According to Bro Bible, Karen was thrilled and wrote in her post that the employee who made the mistake should “live a prosperous life.” She added, “IN THIS ECONOMYYYY” and made it clear she wouldn’t tell management about the error.

Other shoppers got excited for her and shared their own stories of finding pricing mistakes. When one user said they would have “RAN to self check out lmao,” Karen confirmed on TikTok she did exactly that. However, she admitted she stopped in the seasoning aisle first “to process.” She took four of the mispriced packages, while correctly priced lobster tails nearby were selling for about $50 each.

This mistake couldn’t have come at a better time for stretched budgets

This kind of huge savings feels even more important right now because of rising grocery costs. Data shows grocery prices have been climbing steeply, which hurts families trying to make ends meet. Since 2019, the average monthly cost of groceries has jumped 32%, which is actually three percent more than income growth.

Right now, a family of four spends around $1,030 per month on groceries in the U.S. This equals roughly one week’s worth of earnings for many families. Finding four packages of lobster for under $20 each instead of $200 or more is a truly big break when budgets are already tight.

How does such a big error happen? Fresh items like meat and seafood don’t come to the store already packaged by the manufacturer. Employees in those departments weigh the items and print the labels themselves, including the weight, price, and best-by date. The person making the labels likely selected the wrong item code in the system, accidentally giving the lobster the low price of shrimp. While mistakes like this are rare, employees can face serious consequences when errors impact the company.

While finding an accidental deal is exciting, retailers aren’t actually required to honor pricing mistakes. There are no federal laws forcing them to sell items at the lowest advertised price if it was clearly an error, so grocery stores can set their own policies.

You should never try to cheat the system. Store employees are trained to spot deliberate label swapping. One person who claims to be an employee shared that checkout workers pay close attention to labels because some shoppers try to “pull labels off $10 pork chops and put them on $80 steaks.” If you’re caught intentionally switching labels, you could lose your membership. Like workers who expose company problems, those caught cheating face serious consequences. Stick to celebrating honest, accidental errors instead.