okay show of hands, who uses coupons??
In 2011 I think presenting a coupon or two at the counter is pretty commonplace, I get that cashier’s probably don’t love them because it means extra work for them, but I don’t expect them to get all upset over a few coupons. Has Extreme Couponing given every coupon wielding mama a bad name??? I live in Canada, that crap isn’t even possible here!
So I was pretty surprised last week when I was out grocery shopping and the cashier actually buried her head in her hands when I gave her my first coupon. Ha! that was nothing, I had a handful she didn’t know about! lol I literally thought she was going to walk off the job the way she acted. She started mumbling on about having to find the dates and ‘not to exceed’ amounts etc etc. I soothed her poor soul and let her know that I had organized my cart so that all the coupons purchases were at the end and literally walked her through each and every one. sigh.
I don’t normally use a lot of coupons on one purchase, I used to have time for coupons but when my blog became more demanding time wise, I gave it up. There is only so much time in the day. But recently I acquired a number of free product coupons from conferences or the Kraft sampler and most were expiring at the end of the month so I needed to get them used up.
I came home with this:
2 bags of popchips, 3 healthy choice selections, VH steamers, Kraft dressing, Amooza cheese twists, Olivieri pasta sauce, Philadelphia dill cream cheese dip, oasis drinking boxes and those two jugs of juice at the back weren’t free, they were $1.88 and well that’s close enough for me since it’s normally pretty pricey. As an added bonus, the store was having a tax free day so I had a total savings of $52.68. Not bad. I still had 5 coupons for Dempsters bread and a Maple Leaf prime chicken coupon I couldn’t use because they didn’t sell those items.
But really the reaction of the cashier did set me off a little, I’ve seen less than thrilled cashiers before or one’s that were new and nervous but this lady was a veteran, she just didn’t want to be bothered. And then I came home to hear from a fellow blogger about her experience with being degraded for using coupons. Yeah, a company actually refused to work with her because in her bio she mentions she uses coupons. Holy prejudice! So is that really how we are still being seen? As cheap? Haven’t people figured out yet that carrying coupons isn’t crazy, it’s smart? That when I save over $50 on my bill I can use that $50 for other things now. Actually that cashier really did raise and eyebrow and her voice when at the end she circled my savings and she said ‘wow you saved over $50, because it was no tax day’ hahahahahahaa….the taxes were only $3.75, she knew the reason why. I couldn’t imagine anyone having $50 in coupons in their hands and refusing to use them, oh no thanks, I prefer to throw cash away! It doesn’t make sense. During the same transaction I made a donation to the food bank and we also gave a big bag of food to the food bank when we organized our cellar (I’ll show you that tomorrow). Saving money with coupons allows me the comfort to give back, and I don’t think the food bank calls me cheap.
I am proud to be a stay at home mom. I love that I am here for every first, for every milestone and it’s hard because I have three really young ones, but one day I will look back on this time and know it was all worth it. I know it now. But I also know that it doesn’t come without sacrifice and no one should be looked down upon for helping their family succeed and for saving money by being SMART!
Comments