on the EBT thing, I had regular Food Stamp style EBT card in Florida on-and-off through bad work circumstances a few times
the way it worked was it paid for not-hot food, that's all it checked for, was the item not-taxed per food, and was it not hot
so a COLD pile of tendies from Publix deli (same price as hot) was kosher, as was fresh sushi
stuff that wasn't food like paper towels or booze would automatically not get paid for, so if I had a stack of regular stuff and a pack of paper towels in the mix there would be two bucks left for me to pay automatically figured out by the machine
this is set up at the inventory level and not really a thing random clerk can influence the outcome of to any great degree
iirc Target machines were absolute mongoloids about figuring this out. they would try and have a seizure each time, otherwise most places didn't have any issues or would just say "no you have to do them seperate"
there was some asian groceries though that had EVERYTHING in the story inventoried as "grocery"
I was getting some odds and ends like fish sauce, and threw in, I forget, a keychain or some chopsticks or some crap, and I figured it would just auto-do it but they just rang up the whole thing
so yeah you're not going to pull that off at Wal-Mart so much but there are certainly shithole enough places that do it either actively or out of ignorance
