Mischief

As kids we use to get dragged along on Saturday mornings for the weekly shop - not especially enjoyable for an 8 year old. We used to liven it up (pre barcode days) by swapping the plain, simple price tags round on items - a particular pleasure on the high value items like a joint of beef. Since the shelves then were not generally marked with the item price, there was no easy reference for prospective buyers (or staff) as to what the price actually was. To sow further confusion, you'd make sure you did half the jars of jam on one shelf, say. We didn't pass these savings on to our parents, as that would have entailed some impact therapy.

In later life, while temporarily incarcerated in an especially nasty corner of the US, a nice trick to make a bit of cash used to be to buy something in one shop, then go to another that sold the identical item at a higher rate to get a refund. Back then you didn't generally need a receipt for low value items to return them and get a refund, and there were no constantly updated stock records. Kmart and Target were favourites as they'd both carry a lot of identical items, often with wildly varying prices - you could comfortably double 20 USD for the sake of half an hour's effort and a 10 minute drive on one item alone. While doubtless illegal, it had the advantage of being virtually unprovable in the days before CCTV, and since shafting others seems integral to the American Dream, it was largely guilt free.