The highs... and lows of Couponning...

I've been thinking about this for a while... there's a rush that comes with saving tons of money on your grocery bill...watching the coupons scan and the total drop before your eyes... but for every high in life there is a low... and that low tends to come when all of your careful couponning meets with a roadblock or wall... 

I've gotten several emails and phone calls and talked to many people in person since starting to share my successes with couponning on FB and then blogging... we're not just in it for the savings (which is why we start of course), but we're in it to feel the rush - pride, satisfaction and joy when we do the deal... and when it goes wrong - the crushing disappointment ...

The other day I was talking to a friend who still gets angry and almost teary talking about a time several weeks past when a carefully planned trip to the grocery store was de-railed at the check out by a cashier who was militantly following a 2 hour old policy change... and to make it worse, I was going through a different check out line with one of my regular cashiers who hadn't gone on break and read the memo...

Another friend phoned me, disappointed because she'd misplaced a coupon to make a 'great deal' work... and had torn the house up looking for it without success... then she phoned me back 10 minutes later riding high because she had found it..

And finally today, a third friend emailed me with her frustration - and has allowed me to copy and paste her email:

I shop almost exclusively at Publix.  I rarely have any problems with them about couponing.  There is one cashier I try to avoid, but today I was in a time crunch.  She had told me in the past that I could not use both a Rite Aid and CVS coupon in the same transaction.  A week later I was casually talking to one of the managers and asked about it.  He told me of course I could use both and made sure I used his name if someone questioned me.

So today I went to use both coupons (and btw way I am a very honest couponer) and she told me I could not use both.  There was a very young female manager helping bag and I explained what the other manager had told me.  The young manager said that they were not allowing both coupons in the same transaction.  So I asked, “from now on I will need to ring up two different transactions to use both coupons?” and she said “correct.”  I accepted the new policy, but asked if I could use both today and they agreed.

Here is my gripe, I really feel like some grocery store employees do not understand what goes into couponing (the time, research, and menu planning.)  I get the feeling that some (there are so many wonderful ones out there) get a little flip about my effort that goes into making sure I have coupons.  And now, I am really afraid that I got bad information about the two cvs and rite aid coupons.  I really think they meant that I could use only one per day.

I am starting to feel that all my time (without my kids) is spent at the grocery store:(

Just wanted to vent.  Thank you in advance for reading.

I know I've felt the disappointment of being told I can't do something that I'd planned to do.. and been caught in the vicious cross-hairs of the militant cashier but I am resigned to the fact that with the Highs... I need to accept the Lows...