This subject has been discussed before here at Chez Crone and Bear It. Since it has deep psychological implications, it needs to be revisited.
I have 327,455 coupons for 20% off at Bed, Bath and Beyond. I have about 32,250 coupons for half off at Omaha Steaks with more appearing on an almost daily basis in my email. There are at least 8,272 coupons for various types of Progresso Soups, Campbell Soups, Healthy Choice Soups, and boxes of Lipton Soups. I have clipped millions of Pizza Coupons — Papa Murphy’s, Papa John’s, Papa Ooomowmow, LaRosa’s Pizza, Marion’s Pizza, Pizza Hut, Pizza House, Pizza Hole-in-the-Wall. You need some discount veggies? I have cents-off coupons for every type of vegetable known to man; be they canned, frozen, or wrapped in Saran Wrap in the back of Vinnie’s Vegetable Emporium and Crab Shack. I hoard flyers from Trader Joe’s and Jungle Jim’s and all my local grocery stores in case there may be an errant coupon lurking in the pages somewhere.
Coupons have become a new craft for me; an artistic endeavor – they are my refrigerator art. I eagerly await the Sunday paper so I can clip out hundreds of coupons for food I don’t even like and will never buy but I cut them out anyway because there is an expiration date 6 months in the future in case I change my mind (or tastes). Then I take all these colorful pieces of recyclable paper and hold them together with cutesy plastic clips.
Use them? No. Most never leave the house. Every once in awhile I will re-visit a coupon, find I actually wish to buy the product and happily discover the expiration date is still in the future. Then the difficult part is to actually place that coupon in my purse or wallet or checkbook and remember to take it out again and present it to the cashier at the store. It’s exhausting work for 25 cents off a can of something that the store has jacked up 50 cents in anticipation of you using a coupon. Whew!
What is this compulsion to cut out coupons I rarely use? I have no clue — it’s obviously some deep-seated need left over from childhood although I don’t recall my stepmother ever using a coupon at a store. Then again we had a limited diet with few processed foods – the stepmother made most foods from scratch and I mean that literally. Many was the night I had to gag something down she had made from scratch. But that’s another story for another day.
I abhor the ladies that show up on the morning talk shows and brag about how they routinely go to the grocery store with their 18 million coupons in their chubby little hands and by the time they get through the check-out the grocery store owes them $172.50 for 3 bags of groceries. It makes me irrationally upset. Smug little women – you want to really know why I detest them? Because they are ALWAYS right ahead of me in line and it takes twenty minutes to go through all those &^#$ coupons! It’s true.
It seems more logical to me to stop all this coupon nonsense. The grocery companies and the food companies should simply mark down the prices across the board. We would all have so much more time to do other things besides buy magazines and newspapers so we can spend hours clipping coupons or printing them online.
As for me, I will continue my clipping compulsion and I will continue to add them to the stacks already stuck to the refrigerator. Occasionally I may use one, but I’m thinking a very good idea would be to make a large colorful coupon collage. Bet I could even sell it on Etsy.
