It wouldn't happen in UK

This morning I was in Falesti, doing a big shop (£100's worth) for the team in the supermarket, when there was a power cut. We pushed our almost full trolley to the dark area where the checkouts were and, instead of "sorry we can't process your bill, the system is down" this poor shop assistant spent over half an hour writing down the long barcode number for every item we'd selected, with the price, then added each item on her calculator- working in poor lighting from a single emergency overhead light.
It wasn't convincingly accurate, but after she'd totalled the bill several times, arriving at different answers,she got the same total for a second time and we happily settled for that.
Lunch was a little late today!