The marked reciept scandal!

It always came across as a strange supermarket practice to get my receipt marked with a pen mark, upon leaving the store. Was it another Chinese tracking mechanism (radioactive ink perhaps?) or just a simple way to give another one of the millions, no hundreds of millions of people in china a meaningful existence. If I for one had a work visa, ticking receipts of customers would be the very first thing that I would make sure to stay away from as a job. I do not have the qualifications. But unfortunately, as always, the secret reason for the check was revealed to me by another foreigner, continuing to prove the myth that I have yet to be able to think for myself (in logical and rational ways). He postulated that the real reason for marking the bill was to protect against would be thieves.

Here is how it works: The reason why they mark the bill is to prevent people from coming into the store with the bill(so they purchased the things on the bill already once before), picking up the items they bought that are on the bill and walk out of the store (without paying for their things) if they are stopped by one of the employee's they can claim that they have a bill that 'proves' they had just paid for it. In the confusion of a large supermarket such a scam might in fact work, and I encourage you readers from north america to try it out, and see if it does work as a proof of concept. If you are stopped just claim that you were participating in a 'proof of concept' explain the way you were going to try to rip them off, and then finish it off with a, "if you didn't catch me... then I would have told you that you have a security hole in your receipting system". Then offer your services to them by marking all the receipts with a pen after they are purchased.

Hey, Of course you can also check the date and time of the receipt... but that would be to much of a hassle.

Peace