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FARMINGTON — Utah's Weights and Measures Program ensures that when price tags are scanned, they reflect the price that is displayed on the shelves and a Harmon's store in Farmington currently has a 100 percent accuracy record.
Fifteen years is a long time for anything, especially when all that time is full of scanner beeping.
"You hear the beeps in your head all day, every day," Harmon's scanning manager Kathie Young said. "Stop with the beeping!"
Young works at a Harmon's store in Farmington and always has a good story for people when she explains to them what a grocery store scanning manager does.
"I get a lot of, 'Oh, I want to get to go beep stuff all day,' " she said. "And I'm like, 'If only it were that easy.' "
The job description involves dealing with more than 100,000 items per store. State Weights and Measures Program inspectors occassionally go to a store to make sure the scanned price matches the price tag labeled on the store shelves.
"It's so important for the public to know that there is someone out there looking and checking and making sure the prices are accurate," Weights and Measures Program Manager Brett Gurney said.
Gurney said many people are surprised to know the job exists. How the job works is an inspector shows up to a store unannounced and checks random items to make sure the advertised price is the price it scans for.
"When there are problems, a lot of times they're promotional," Weights and Measures inspector Shelley Walker said. "For instance, it might be marked as a sale and perhaps the sale has expired and the signs or tags were not removed."
Usually, when notified, a store will fix any problems right away. If not, and the problem continues, the store can be fined, even closed. However, that's very rare.
There are only a couple of inspectors for the entire state of Utah.
"We have so many stores in this state and the state is growing so rapidly, that you think about every store that has a check stand, that has a cash register that scans," Gurney said.
Due to the limited number of inspectors, Gurney said it's important for customers to check their receipts and to make sure the prices are as advertised.
"If there is a problem, I need to be aware of it and want to be aware of it," Young said.
Young's Harmon's store has a 100-percent accuracy record, which for her means that all those beeps are worth it.
