This was a first and it felt most unpleasant. The young woman holding the clipboard, with a sweet smile on her face obviously felt it was part of her job. When I said to her, afterward, that this was the first time I had ever encountered such a query, she laughed offhandedly, and said "it happens all the time". I was tired, and wanted to get out of the store, and didn't bother asking her to clarify precisely what it is that happens all the time.

That she confronts patrons intimating that she suspects they have or are in the process of attempting to spirit away grocery shopping items for which they have not paid? That it is extremely common for people to somehow overlook placing their food purchase items on the cash conveyor belt to enable the cashier to ring them through, adding them to the food bill? Deliberately preferring to leave them out of sight and perhaps to be overlooked by the sharp eyes of the cashier?

This was a store that I usually did all my food shopping at. I've seen a succession of long-term more mature women working in the store at the cash registers. I knew them all, and they knew me. We would exchange cordially brief greetings. Lately, they appear to have been replaced -- whether through retirement or a deliberate shift in hiring policy practised by this supermarket outlet, part of a large chain specializing in the 'basics' of food lines, so basic that shoppers must pack their own groceries, bring or purchase their own bags or receptacles, and do all the heavy lifting involved -- by a far younger contingent, all of whom are capable, bright and friendly.

It's been over two decades since this particular store, close to where we live, has been my destination of choice for weekly grocery shopping. I use three large black plastic receptacles that I had originally purchased from the store in its earlier incarnation as a much smaller one than it presents at the present time, to pack groceries into and place them in the shopping cart to wheel out to the parking lot where my husband waits for me, along with our little dog.

Once they had gone through the cash register, I had placed a 20-pound bag of flour on the undercarriage shelf of the shopping cart, and next to it a ten-pound bag of potatoes. Having filled all of the black plastic receptacles and placed them in the shopping cart, paid the freight and accepted the cash register receipt from the cashier, I was just about to depart, when a very attractive young woman exuding confidence stopped me to ask whether the potatoes situated under the main carrying body of the shopping cart had passed through the cash register.

The question seemed so absurd I had to ask her to repeat it. My disbelief must surely have been evident on my face, but nothing seemed to faze her, she repeated the question, one which clearly enough to me intimated that I was engaged in an act of stealthily appropriating goods unpaid for by me. I blinked, handed her the cash receipt, said she might like to peruse it, as I'd already put my eyeglasses into my handbag. She handed it back, having ascertained it was there on the receipt, and with not another word, but a parting smile, made to go.

Which was when I commented this episode represented a first for me. A decidedly most unpleasant one. I have since written to the store management. And if there is the remotest possibility that this kind of accusatory enquiry is to be repeated, it will be the last time I venture to shop at the store.