The Coupon Lady
The other day I had quite the experience in my new cashier career. I’m working a pretty busy lane, not an express lane but a normal belt lane that doesn’t limit the customer to 20 items or less. It’s going pretty steady, one customer after another. Beep, beep, beep goes the register as I scan item after item, making small talk with each customer.
Then I sort of blink as I look down the belt at the items an older, bleached blonde lady is placing in two seperate piles. Mounds and mounds of the identical trial size items. 3 different types of deoderant, mounds of ziplock bags, diaper wipes, mouth wash and shampoo. All in mass quantities, all in trial sizes. Her items make their way down the belt to me and as they do she presents the coupons. 25 coupons for $1 - $1.50 off on mouthwash, shampoo, deoderant, diaper wipes. So I start scanning, beep beep beep go 25 ladies style deoderant of one scent, beep beep beep goes the men’s version. To speed things along I do quantity, scan one item, hit 25, hit quantity and enter. Bam, that scans the 25 diaper wipes. She also has two of these scent machines and 2 $10 off coupons to go with them. This lady is practically telling me what I need to do to make this work. She lets me know that not only has she done this tons of times before but that our own district manager calls her to talk about it.
It turns out she’s some big “coupon lady” and does this at stores all over town. She even has swap clubs she trades coupons with over the internet. She takes the mass quantities of items and gives them to her church missionaries. The coupons actually pay for the items and leave an “overage”. This overage actually pays for her additional purchases or ones not fully covered by the coupons. The coupons match the items and the computer is taking the coupons so I don’t assume there is a problem. According to her there isn’t one, it’s all perfectly legit and sanctioned by “THE STORE” policies.
I scan all of the items from the first bunch, reach the max coupon limit scanning in 100+ coupons. Then we run into a problem with one set of coupons. It won’t take it for some reason. Since I can’t override the computer I have to call a sub manager, my immediate supervisor. The coupons match but the supervisor doesn’t think the overage issue is suppose to be happening. The blonde lady tries to explain to the supervisor that not only is it OK but “THE STORE” is going to get reimbursed for the full amount of the coupon regardless of what the lady spends on the items. The dubious supervisor goes off to call a manager, leaving me to chat with the lady while we await the decision.
One of the “co-managers” comes to my cash register with the supervisor. No one can seem to understand the conundrum so I explain to co manager and supervisor that the items match the coupons, the computer is accepting it and all but the one coupons are just fine. The blonde lady also informs the manager that the district manager in fact knows about this and it is fine. She insists that he call the district manager or anyone higher up. Both he and the supervisor walk off, leaving me yet again with the lady and her mass quantities of trial size items.
I can completely understand what’s going on even if those above me can’t. She’s basically using coupons on trial size items that cost less than the normal sized item the coupons were intended to be used on. The problem is that the coupon/item manufacturer hasn’t stipulated that it not be used on trial sized items. The lady lets me know that there’s even websites that you can swap coupons for, find out which stores carry the items you get cheaper and forums to read to learn how to do this!
In short, she’s buying 25 items at .97 each and using a $1 off coupon. The overage may only be 3 to 50 cents, but on mass quantities it’s adding up. Her $40 bill slowly has shrunk to $4 and she has over 200 items! She also lets me know that since there is no face value to the coupon she can’t have a negative balance, so she carefully divides items up and makes sure she only uses enough coupons to have to pay a few dollars for the big ticket items. That’s why she has two carefully divided piles.
Finally the supervisor comes back minus the co manager but with approval to accept and hand key the other coupons. While the supervisor clearly doesn’t morally approve, she hand keys enough in to let me learn and goes on her way. Since there are over 100 coupons, at the end the supervisor has to come back to accept the transaction.
By the end of the 2nd group of items I have spent 45 minutes on this one customer. She’s nice enough and it’s kind of neat learning about something like this. But in my mind it’s also taking advantage of the system. While it’s not legally wrong, it’s a bit morally wrong to me. I pretty much stayed calm through the whole deal, never got upset, impatient or bitchy. I stayed cheerful and talked to the customer trying to make her feel more at ease while the co manager and supervisor figured it out. The only time I felt paniced at all was when it was all over…. I thought about how horrible my daily report was going to look. 45 minutes on one customer with voids, coupons and supervisor over rides was going to reflect horribly on my noobie report average. Near tears I asked the supervisor about this and she let me know it would be ok since management was aware of it.
I got some urls for websites from the lady which I’ll post here later. I left it in my smock at work. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using the system to their advantage, but I doubt I ever could do something like this. I’d feel like a cheater somehow. To use a single coupon every now and then that has an overage wouldn’t bug me, but to blatently take advantage of a loop hole like that just seems unsettling.