Last weekend a friend of mine called and asked if I wanted to go with her to the grocery store. Now, this might not sound to you like an exciting invitation, but I can assure you it definitely was for me because she was going by car.

I live fairly close to the city center in Milan and I don’t have a car. Haven’t ever had one here. When I calculate the cost – car itself, insurance (quite expensive for relatively low coverage when you consider the net amount you would be reimbursed in case of a claim), gas (which costs around 3 or 4 times what it does in the US, taking into account the exchange rate), and parking (I would have to rent a space or a “box” – a space in a parking garage to park it near my house, and “near” is a relative term – it would be at least a few minutes walk since my building has none, available or not), it adds up very quickly.

Public transportation is very convenient for me – I live within a block or two of 4 bus lines and 3 trolley lines and with the metro (subway) a short walk or a couple of tram stops away. And with all the money I’m not spending on a car, I have no problem forking out for a taxi a couple of times a month when I’m running late or the weather is too awful. So no car for me.
But the opportunity to go to the supermarket in a car? Sign me up! Our destination was a very large (by Milan standards) store a bit more on the outskirts that I wouldn’t go to otherwise. And of course I could buy whatever I wanted without regards to weight – a consideration when shopping on foot.

This store had a new-fangled option where you could check out a scanner that you carried with you as you shopped. When you placed each item in your cart, you would scan it. At check-out (in a special line only for the scanner-carrying shoppers, so shorter than all the rest), the cashier would just accept your payment and send you on your way. Except she re-scanned all of our purchases. It seems we had been randomly chosen for an audit to verify that we had scanned all of the goods in our cart. We passed the audit and so my friend was given a voucher to claim extra points at the customer service desk.

It took me a minute to get my head around the fact that we were being rewarded for not stealing.