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Several months ago we were in line behind a well-dressed (white) woman at the local Wal-Mart who was using an EBT card, but who wasn’t familiar with how to use it. The checker patiently guided her through the process, and after the customer had gone we commented on how we didn’t expect to see well-dressed person using an EBT card. The clerk told us that he had a customer earlier using an EBT card who only wanted a bag of ice, a couple of candy bars for her kids and $100 back in cash. We asked the clerk if she could do that, and she said that she had to do it, it was store policy. She said that all the time she was ringing the customer up, the customer was bragging to her friend about her new Mercedes.

The EBT card has one or both of food and cash sides (like having two different accounts on it). The food side is called SNAP and the cash side is called TANF. I will assure you that Wal-Mart did NOT return cash from the food side. The store manager really doesn't want to lose his job and the chain really doesn't want to lose the ability to accept benefits from the government. The terminal management software wouldn't let this happen and auditing systems would quickly pick it up if it somehow did. The sum of the food products must equal the charge.

On the other hand, why wouldn't the person be able to get cash from the cash side?