Minor League Couponer

Every Sunday, I flip through the local newspaper and clip coupons, and this last Sunday was rich in coupons for items that are my essentials.  I try not to use coupons for non-essentials, but it happens from time to time.  My approach to coupons is to try to be utilitarian about them, and not buy an item siimply because I have a coupon.

I had a buy one get one free for an Herbal Essences hair product, so I bought the shampoo and got the conditioner for free, and I was able do the same with a Pantene coupon.  The other coupon was $3.00 off a package of Gillette disposable razors.

I don't know how it happened, but all of this was only $4.84.  I'm starting to think the cashier had to have made a mistake, because I feel like I made out like a bandit.

When I have a good coupon day, it makes me consider becoming an extreme couponer, but I think it takes a lot of smarts to be one.  There's so much strategizing, scheduling, organizing, and mathematics that goes into being able to do it, and I don't have that in me.  You also have to not give a shit about the people who get behind you in the check-out line.  If I made people wait that long, I'd start to sweat and profusely apologize to everyone behind me being inconvenienced.  Then I'd have to pop an anxiety pill midway through the ringing up, and I'd get home and ask Brad over and over, "Do you think that was rude of me, you know, to make those people wait, so I could get 100 packs of orange tic tacs for 50 cents?"

Those of us who get behind extreme couponers get punished. You'd think they'd say something like, "I see you only have a few items.  Would you like to go ahead of me?" or even "Here have a free roll of toilet paper for having to wait."  They don't though.  Oh, and never make the mistake of going to Harris Teeter on double coupon night.  Not only are there women pushing two carts and flipping through binders of coupons, there's also their dickering with cashiers making certain that they don't get screwed on their coupons, and the constant beep, beep, beep, of the thousands of items getting scanned.  I can hear it in my head.  It starts to make me feel the same way the Grinch does about all the noisy toys in Whoville on Christmas Day.