A regular Costco run didn’t end the way one Honolulu woman expected. What happened at the receipt line left her stunned, embarrassed, and reaching out to corporate.
Costco Self-Checkout Goes Awry
TikTok creator Dri (@driauvaa) shared a storytime about the incident, saying she went to her local Costco to pick up some snacks for her kids and used the self-checkout lane like usual.
After grabbing a hot dog and soda, she made her way to the exit with her one-year-old son in the cart.
Everything seemed normal until the receipt checker started taking an unusually long time with her cart.
“I asked him, I was like, ‘Oh, is everything OK’?” Dri says. “And he said, ‘Oh, um, yeah, we have a problem.’”
She asked if she might have forgotten to scan something. Instead of clarifying, the employee allegedly got aggressive.
“He proceeds to, like, grab the cart and yank it over to the side,” she shares. “Kind of grabbed the cart because, you know, my kid is in it.”
As she waited, she noticed the employee continued checking other customers’ receipts. But he didn’t seem to give their carts the same scrutiny.
“These people’s carts were a lot fuller than mine,” she says. “He is just looking at the receipts, checks the cart, and just sends them on their way.”
Eventually, he returned to recount her cart without answering her questions. So she decided to count along. Her receipt showed 14 items.
“I pick up the box of tacos and I’m like, 1, 2, 3… 14,” she recounts. “I just look at him and I was like, there’s 14.”
The employee shoved the receipt back at her and dismissed her. Dri said she walked out, told him he didn’t need to be so rude, and left feeling humiliated.
“It was his mistake, not mine,” she states. “The whole experience was really weird and it just really ruined my day.”
Later, she realized something else: the employee had only counted 13 items. “That would have meant that I paid for something twice instead of stealing something,” she added. “But he was treating me like I stole something.”
She Follows Up: ‘He Never Apologized’
In a follow-up video, Dri said she had since escalated the issue but hadn’t yet received a response from Costco.
“They have reached out and nothing yet,” she said.
She clarified that the incident occurred at the Kapolei location in Oahu, and that the employee was Asian, not white, as some assumed. Still, she said, “No, I did not catch his name. And no, he did not apologize.”
Dri said she was overwhelmed in the moment and didn’t process it until later. “I just moved here not even three months ago,” she explained. “I’m literally on an island in the middle of the ocean.”
She added that while she understands it’s Costco’s job to check receipts, the problem was the way the employee treated her and her son.
“I’m not stupid. I’ve been to multiple Costcos, know how it works,” she said.
Dri ended the update with a message about kindness. “The world would just be a hell of a lot better place if people were just kinder to each other,” she said.
Is Theft at Self-Checkout Common?
Self-checkout has made grocery runs faster. But it’s also made loss prevention harder.
While most people scan and pay like they’re supposed to, some don’t. And stores have noticed. In recent years, major retailers have ramped up surveillance, rolled out AI scanners, or removed self-checkout altogether to fight what they call “shrink”—a term that usually refers to stolen or missing inventory.
The problem is, not every mistake is theft. Sometimes people genuinely forget to scan an item, or accidentally double-scan. And that gray area is exactly what makes stories like Dri’s so frustrating for shoppers who are just trying to get through their day.
Viewers Are Appalled
TikTok users flooded the comments with support and similar stories.
“Embarrass me like that? I’ll embarrass both of us, you better than me sis,” one person wrote.
Another said, “Yeah no, I would’ve asked to talk to the manager IMMEDIATELY.”
Others shared their own experiences with overly aggressive receipt checkers. “I had this happen to me. She also wanted to see in my purse too and I refused. I said if you’re accusing me of stealing call the police. I reported it to the manager. She was fired.”
@driauvaa Sir, I came for bulk snacks, not criminal charges. Apparently I look like the type to steal a 40-pack of organic fruit snacks. Y’all ever been accused of shoplifting over a math error??
♬ original sound – Dri ?
Someone else added, “The cashier at Costco forgot to scan my strawberries one time and they detained me for 30 minutes and treated me horribly. I had spent $700 and they accused me of stealing the $5 strawberries.”
The Mary Sue has reached out to both Dri and Costco for comment.
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