COUPON SHOPPING 101

                                               

 Now that my wife is no longer here to do the grocery shopping I have inherited her bag of coupons and I had to swear on bended knee, with my hand on the family Bible, that I would use them religiously-- and get this-- add new ones as time goes along. The only thing that has gone in my mouth in the last fifty years, that didn’t have a coupon associated to it, was a pack of tic-taks I stole and food that was given to me. So yesterday I started out on my first shopping adventure. Keep in mind here I’m not a patient man. My father was not a patient man and my son is not a patient man. It’s in our genes to be impatient and we wear that moniker with pride. We do not like patient men. Women can be patient if they want to be; we have no opinion on that. To not be patient, and clip and use coupons, is akin to listening to someone running their fingernails down a black board. It just give’s you the willies, but a promise is a promise and unless I can find a loophole in what I promised. I gota do it.

Now I was taught, the night before you go shopping you sit down with flyers from all of the area grocery stores and look for bargains we can use. There are about five stores I am allowed to go to and one that I can never go to, because they once sold her an outdated can of black olives, which they would not take back and no one in this house eats them anyway, but it’s the principal of the thing I am told. Coupon 101 says you must match the appropriate store coupon with the manufactures coupon while carefully noting the expiration dates, size and amount requirements. Also make sure because you are going to multiple stores you have the right coupon for the right store. Avoid older lady checkout women because they’re mad at the world anyway and their feet hurt, so they will try to trip you up. Younger boys are the best checkouts because they don’t know what their doing most of the time, and they’re looking over your shoulder at the young ladies butt in the next check out lane and care less about what you gave them for coupons. I once bought six chocolate muffins with a coupon for charcoal briquettes.

When choosing products you must do the quality check. This involves looking at every pack of bacon in a bin, with four hundred packs of bacon in it, because truth be told, they always put the best ones on the bottom. Somewhere in the back room there is a butcher putting all of the good ones aside and reserving them for the bottom of the pile. It also means knocking with your knuckles on fifty-five watermelons because the ripe ones have the best acoustics. Always take your chosen product from the back of the shelf because what’s in the front row front has been there since they opened the store for the first time. Remember those black olives I talked about. Yep front row and my fault. Mea culpa.

Now last, but not least. DO NOT Leave the store until you have checked every item on that receipt for accuracy. They make mistakes and you have a short window of time to run to the courtesy counter and verbally assault the young girl stationed there while pointing out that you were born at night and it wasn’t last night and your five year old granddaughter has a better grip on math then they do. Happy shopping.