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Working in retail is really fun, and the times when major fuck-ups happen, they can be either anxiety-attack inducing, or make it possible to get through the rest of your god-awful shift with a smile depending on the customer. My all-time favorite absolute fuck-up is as follows:

This kind woman is just doing her thing. She scans her membership card from her keychain. The register beeps to acknowledge the scan. We continue as usual. Neither of us notice right away, but after I’ve scanned a few more items, I hear a very quiet, “Um,” from the lady, very polite. I look at her. She is looking at the screen of my register, blinking. I, too, look.

And lo and behold. There is a charge of over four-thousand dollars ($4,000) worth of garlic bread staring us in the face. There are no words for a minute. We’re just… in awe. How did this happen? How the hell did this happen?

She didn’t even have garlic bread in her cart.

I sputter a partial apology - I was incapable of forming actual sentences in the moment - and try to void the garlic bread. Since there was no garlic bread to scan, I try to manually remove $4,000-some from this transaction.

Well, the registers don’t like it when you try to void off more than five dollars ($5) from a transaction, so naturally it pings my manager for confirmation, but she’s not by her pager.

At this point, both myself and the lady are just… dumbfounded. She’s not even mad. I’m not even all that embarrassed. Both of us are just looking at the screen. There’s a bit of laughter, but it’s mostly just… confusion.

I have to call through the whole store for my manager on the intercom because she’s not answering. She shows up, ready to override and void it, when she too, sees what exactly is being voided.

“What… did you do?”

“I genuinely. Have literally. No. Idea.”

She voids it, and I go to finish the transaction and tell the woman her total (minus the garlic bread). My register pings. It tells me that she hasn’t scanned her membership card. Odd. I distinctly remember her doing that. The woman goes to scan her card again, and I notice that her library card is stuck to her membership card. I tell her gently, and she separates the two and scans her card.

My manager, hovering nearby still, sees this and says, “I think it mistook the barcode of her other card for garlic bread, and the remaining digits were read as the price.”

And that’s when the laughter really came over us. There were no hard feelings at all. In fact, the woman was incredibly glad that the receipt still showed the garlic bread and the voiding of. I will remember it until the end of time, my only regret in the entire situation being that I didn’t take a damn picture, because she has proof and I don’t. But I swear to God it happened.

TLDR;

This new rule would require companies to collect Your name, physical address, government-issued ID number, and an alternate phone number before turning on your phone

They will verify and keep that data four years after your service ends

“Re-verification triggered by "red flags" like unusual call volumes or cryptocurrency payments”

The goal is to take down robocalls

People like the EFF and ACLU point out that citizens shouldn’t have to give away their privacy just to fight a few robot calls.

People of domestic violence, whistleblowers, victims of trafficking and journalist would be victims of this

And of course “roughly 15 million U.S. adults without a driver's license, disproportionately Black and Hispanic Americans, people with disabilities, and lower-income households.”

Plus, around 144 million records were leaked by both AT&AT and comcast combined

The comments on this rule are open right now

write them a comment and let them know that you will not give away your privacy

fcc comment

how to comment on the FCC

full thing

The FCC's new proposal, FCC 26-27, would make you have to provide an ID and a home address and an alternative phone number before getting service

“What the FCC Actually Wants From You

Every company that puts a call on the public phone network would face the same sweeping identity requirements under this proposal.

Mobile carriers, landline providers, VoIP services, and prepaid phone sellers are all covered.

The Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, adopted unanimously on April 30, 2026, converts broad KYC principles into hard obligations.

Here's what providers would need from you before activation:”

“Your name, physical address, government-issued ID number, and an alternate phone number — collected before service turns on

Verification of that data, not just collection

Records retained for four years after your service ends

Re-verification triggered by "red flags" like unusual call volumes or cryptocurrency payments”

why?

“The FCC frames this as a robocall killer. Banking groups point to nearly $200 billion in annual fraud losses, according to the American Bankers Association — and phone scams are genuinely devastating.

But privacy advocates note that most illegal robocalls originate internationally, and fewer than half of U.S. telecoms have fully implemented STIR/SHAKEN, the existing caller authentication standard built specifically for this problem.

The FCC hasn't finished deploying the targeted fix it already has.

"Americans should not have to sacrifice their privacy because the Commission hasn't exhausted more targeted alternatives to stop robocalls." — EFF and ACLU joint filing.”

People need private phones

Domestic abuse victims, “trafficking victims, whistleblowers, journalists protecting sources

and roughly 15 million U.S. adults without a driver's license, disproportionately Black and Hispanic Americans, people with disabilities, and lower-income households.

An ID requirement for basic phone service doesn't inconvenience criminal networks nearly as much as it blocks the people the system should protect.”

protecting information with a unworthy protector

“The FCC wants telecoms to hold your most sensitive data — the same companies with a proven record of losing it.”

AT&T lost over 109 million records in 2024

Comcast's Xfinity division exposed 36 million accounts the year before

Giving ID’s to these companies would risk everything for the people forced to give away their ID’s

“It's like giving your spare house keys to someone who locks themselves out on a weekly basis and calling it a security upgrade.”

The FCC hasn't finalized anything yet, and those gaps are exactly where public input can still matter.

Your window to shape this rule is short, and the stakes for everyday anonymity are very real.”

leave a comment here!

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Also consider Mikinakoos' as they're extending support beyond their traditional service areas due to the scale of this emergency!

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Our Share of Night / Nuestra arte de noche (Mariana Enriquez), Hogarth 2023. Cover by Donna Cheng.