While everyone was watching the Womens World Cup Soccer match, I was riding motorcycle around visiting the Hillsborough State Park, dodging rain clouds and stopping at a couple stores. We managed to pick up the flyer from WD with the milk bone coupon that would stack with the MQ (5/22 RP) at Publix. I also was looking for the elusive $5 GC P&G tearpad that always was ripped clean on all the displays we saw.
I felt like the World Cup soccer women at one store when I happened to score some Gas-x ($10 off 3 MQ 7-17ss), some Always ($5 GC wyb 3 tearpad), and lots of the papermate pens, Bic pencils, Scotch tape and Scotch scissors. I knew my order would take a bit longer to checkout so when the employee was encouraging people to step to an new line, I mentioned I had a bunch of coupons and maybe they could open a line for me. The customer service manager gladly did that and smoothly handled all my stuff until he came upon all the TQ's. Then he decided to enforce the "one per transaction" wording which was okay, except it meant my whole order calculations were off. It was like getting a penalty in the World Cup! I suggested just starting over with what I could buy without TQ's, which wasn't much – certainly not all my moneymaker pens. This store has always been very coupon friendly and has always accepted any number of TQ's I've had. They also waited to scan my GC til the very end and of course the total was in the negative which doesn't really help one fly under the radar. I think when he realized I was getting a good amount of overage is when he decided to enforce the one per transaction wording.
Anyway, I didn't contest any of it and just merrily got my remaining deals knowing I can easily get the product at another friendly store. The hardest thing about extreme couponing is when you have a plan and it gets foiled. The dejection is almost enough to make you not want to go back into a store, even if you know you are right. I just really hate any conflict with staff about coupons and I think most people are like that too. It's actually why a lot of people I know just don't bother with it – it's too much trouble at the store. To me it was like the end of the World Cup soccer game for the women, they were so close to a win but then in the end, it just didn't work out.
