80 coupons and the goldfish

I cut coupons. I download them, too. Sometimes I even upload them onto one of the (several) dreaded loyalty cards I begrudgingly possess. I won’t lie; I also seek out the youngest cashier in the store with the fleeting hope she/he will override the three or four coupons I try to sneak in when I know I have not bought the allotted amount of items (see things I hate; I do not attempt this at self check out lanes). But I am what I would like to think of as a courteous couponer. I offer customers with significantly less items than I a chance to go before me. I hurry the hell up with my coupons and have them somewhat organized. I would never allow an innocent customer standing in line behind me unload their entire cart without forewarning them if I planned on using 80 coupons.

I have never handed a cashier 80 coupons. But I sure as hell stood in line behind somebody who did. Let me set up this scenario. The husband just had surgery on his elbow because of tendonitis. This, I am sure, will elicit a multitude of future posts seeing as though he is off work for the next THREE months. At home. All the time. So day one, after surgery, I drove him and his bedroom eyes to fill a prescription for even more bedroom eye pills. I am quite proud of my supermarket sweeping abilities and took advantage of the 20 minutes I was allotted for fill time to take a quick trip through the store. I filled the cart, then scoured the three open checkout lanes closest to the pharmacy. The self check out lanes at this particular store are only located by the entrance not close to the pharmacy, which is just as well because Meijer self check out lanes fucking suck. I prefer the turnstile type bagging over the error filled conveyer belt lanes. I will self bag at Kroger; not at Meijer.

My twenty minutes expired; my drugged up husband waiting in car. I spotted a lane with an Amish family loading up the last of their two carts. A lone man with a single goldfish (no shit!) in a plastic baggie stood behind them. I should have known better as I made a beeline to the lane and unloaded the contents of my cart. Not surprisingly, I had done well in my 20 minutes. And then that Amish woman turned to the cashier and handed her 80 coupons. Really. There was probably more than 80. I stopped counting. The cashier was actually a customer service manager. Apparently there is some sort of shift change/cashier shortage thing going on around 2:30 in the afternoon at Meijer. She was not what I would call an efficient scanner. Twice I considered loading my cart back up, but a quick glance at the other two available lanes nixed that option. I have zero patience anyway. 80 coupons??? What the fuck? And the guy with the goldfish just stood there. I bet he was scared to try to check that fucker out at the self check out lane. Not once did the Amish woman glance back and offer an apology. She was too busy searching through her own two carts to try to find the items that the rejected coupons were meant for. That is by far the closest I have ever come to leaving my groceries on the belt. (I mean, who hasn’t left their cart in the middle of the store before?) Instead, I left my items there, rolled my eyes at the lady now standing behind me, and told her I would be right back. I ran to the pharmacy, picked up the prescription, listened to the pharmacists quick drug lecture, and went back to the lane. Yup. Still scanning.

When I finally made it out to the parking lot, I drove by that Amish family still loading their car. I stopped to show the husband. “Look, baby- she had a coupon for every one of those fucking items!”