Tales of Couponing gone bad (9/22/2008)

There once was a lady who fancied herself a coupon guru. She spent a good amount of time researching the deals, organizing the coupons, and planning out the trips and transactions for preciseness. Armed with the latest ads, coupon organizer and list she set out to play the coupon game and come home victorious once again. Oh woo is me if that were only true.

First store for transaction number one CVS. She felt ready and excited to enter the brightly lit store pushing her cart with anticipation. She forgot the rules. Prepare for the unexpected. They were out, the deals were not the same as they had been posted online and no matter how many turns around the store she made she still needed to get to that $10 to use the $2/$10 coupon. Frustrated she breaks her own rule on candy and buys a bag of snack size candy, she doesn't feel too bad because she had a coupon for a $1 off and the ECB's were paying for it anyway. And she earned the ECB's she needed for the next transaction at a different store.

Next is a quick trip across the street to Walgreen's to get a product that will pop out a $5 R.R. that she can use on her second transaction. After searching and searching asking for help she discovers they don't have the items because they never even got any in at all. The manager apologizes and she graciously tells him no problem even though it is one and leaves to go in search of the items at other stores. She is lucky because there are so many Walgreen's and CVS's where she lives in close distance from each other.

Next stop the CVS once again. She has revised her plan somewhat and feels ready once again. She enters and tries to remain calm when the items she needed were once again out. She readjusts once again, does a quick calculation and walks out with a few items that meet the requirements. Off to the other Walgreen's across the street.

Yeah, they have the items and she is happy. That is transaction number one. She finds the items she needs for transaction number two and heads to the check out. The girl doesn't mind doing two transactions. She understands the need to use the R.R. for the second transaction and even laughs because she does the same thing. Everything is going great here until the coupon guru forgets to give the coupons for the second transaction! She feels stupid and the cashier, girl is so nice and offers to void the transaction and do it over. How nice. The guru apologizes several times and is so flustered almost walks out of the store without the purchase! What a day. She gets into her car and tries to re coop. She will make only one more trip to CVS for it is getting late and she had much to do before the evening is over with.

CVS number three. She makes her way through out the store. Of course they are out of the desired items as well. She is able to get the high protein bars she has coupons and a great desire to use for all that swimming she is planning this week in order to push off a few pounds. But once again she needs to get to that $10 mark. She is tired, frustrated and ends up purchasing two bags of Lays chips on sale to finish the total. She heads to check out. She has given up on a few deals she decided she didn't need anyway. The others she will hit at the end of the week no big deal. The cashier is tired and cranky too, she wants to ring me up as fast as possible to the point of rushing me. I give my coupons and the cost is minimal. I am happy to be out of there and I can go to my final destination of the take and bake pizza shop down the street to finish out the night with a hot pizza at home and the bible reading I have to do for my class on Monday night. I get in the car wiped out, sighing and start the car and realize that I did not have to even pay for that purchase I forgot to use my ECB's! What is wrong with this picture? She feels fragile, a failure, an impostor in the blog world of coupon gurus.

She gets her pizzas and knows she got a good deal there. She drives home defeated and wondering where she really went wrong. She had spent so much time and effort into these trips when she realizes she has over planned, put too much into it and sometimes things are just going to happen.

She pulls into her wonderful home where nothing has been done since she left two hours before and everyone had waited for her to come home before moving once again. Her shoulders fall in defeat and she knows everything will be OK because she has pizza for dinner, she has that damn anicare muscle rub gel she has been looking for all month to sooth her tired shoulders, she has Ambi to scrub away the stress induced acne that will probably break out because of the last two hours. She has potato chips to comfort her later if she needs it and she the Crest pro health night toothpaste to brush all the evidence away before bed. She still has the EBC's to spend later because she had forgotten them. She has bible time read, questions in the workbook done for the next day and more questions on the creation of the world then ever. As her head clean with free shampoo and her sheets fresh with the smell of deeply discounted, coupon detergent drifts off to sleep she realizes she is not an impostor, not a coupon guru, she is just an average woman trying to save money and doing the best she can in whatever situation she is handed at the time. She is a masterpiece in progress, a guru who has not yet learned all there is to learn yet and most of all she is a wife, a mother and a good person who kept her cool and never let the cashiers see how frustrated and upset she really was she is a good person.