Cherry-picking: Woman ransacks strawberries in Malaysia supermarket, ignores staff when told to stop

Pick the unblemished ones, the heavy ones, the sweet ones — that's how our mothers taught us to choose the best fruits of the batch, as long as they aren't pre-packaged.

Though, it appears that not everyone got the memo that not all fruits are free for picking.

In a video shared on Facebook last Friday (Oct 4), a lady in Kuala Lumpur's AEON mall was filmed opening five different boxes of strawberries from a supermarket's shelf, meticulously picking the nicest fruit out of each box before repackaging her loot into a new box.

This apparently went on for more than five minutes, according to video's uploader, Erny Hayati.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrNaJ9YPYmU[/embed]

The post has since gotten over 600 shares at the time of writing, but was removed on Monday afternoon. 

Erny documents in her post how she had tried to inform a staff member to stop the lady's actions. However, the staff merely told her, "I don't know, I just take care of the grapes." It was only after Erny escalated the matter to AEON's staff did a relevant staff member confront the woman.

Despite being told to stop, the woman waved them off and continued to choose her strawberries, reasoning with the staff saying: "Oh this fruit is not nice, they're not sellable."

In an attempt to seek a compromise, the staff asked to weigh her new box of strawberries so they could charge her accordingly. Not only did she become irritable, but she also ignored the staff in favour of picking more fruits.

"She made it seem like a wet market," Erny wrote.

She proceeded to complain about how the lady allegedly took more strawberries than she was charged for, as prices on the boxes were tagged according to their weight. 

Netizens were equally, if not more upset, at the woman. Some even went on to share similarly outrageous incidents of fellow shoppers caught trying to skimp on paying, whether by peeling garlic cloves before weighing them, or by topping up a bottle of detergent with another.

rainercheung@asiaone.com