I’m not sure why, but reading other people’s mishaps and disaster stories that revolve around our nutty frugal behavior make me laugh harder than even some of the funniest jokes. Of course not all situations are bust a gut funny, some are merely “Oh my gosh I can relate” funny.
Thus is the case with this story brought to you by my friend Cara who in her family is known as the frugal fanatic though I still think that title probably could best fit me.
Cara shares here funny story:
“Ok, well mine has little do with frugality and more to do with stupidity, but if it wasn’t for my tenacious appetite for frugality I’d have never wound up where I was anyway. I’m a frugal gal down to the fact that I coupon regularly. I scour the sales ads and all the grocery ads. I save my Catalina’s, I grab coupons straight from the store, and all of that. Well, I had just finished scouring our local stores ads and grabbed a woman’s magazine out of my magazine basket to read for a bit. I remembered there had been a money saving tips article I wanted to check out and sure enough there advertised in big letters on the cover of the magazine was the title of this article. So I’m flipping through the pages of this magazine when a small mini insert of tons of coupons catches my eye. I am flipping through them and come across a coupon for .75 off a package of this certain brand of flour tortillas. We buy tons so I was excited and immediately pulled the coupon out. In addition I had just finished scouring the grocery ads so I also knew that this product was on sale this week as long as you bought the huge package of fifty. Well awesome I think! So a few days later, three days before the expiration date of the coupon, I arrive at the store to pick these flour tortillas up on a double coupon day so I’m getting $1.50 off a $4.49 package that was on sale for $2.29. Yay I’m thinking. I’m only paying like $.80 for this huge package of 50 flour tortillas, which by the way I am planning on freezing anyway. So I grab my tortillas and several other misc. items and go up to check out. The cashier finishes the order, scans the coupon and the machine goes nuts. It won’t accept the coupon and it sends an error message. She tries again. She even tried entering it manually. We both look at the date, nope not expired yet. Still have three days. So she keeps trying. One supervisor lady comes over and she tries. Meanwhile I have a line that seems to be a half mile long behind me. I didn’t care. I wanted my $.80 tortillas! Again she’s trying to type it in, she’s trying to scan it, and finally the whole system just crashes at that register. So you can hear lots of sighs and sounds coming from everyone behind as they begin to look for new registers. Well now they have to move me, and my order to another register. So the manager of the store comes over. He begins looking the coupon over, with a not to happy look on his face. He holds the coupon out in front of the cashiers face and points to the top to the expiration date. Uhm. Well, imagine my horror when we come to realize that the coupon actually HAD expired – it wasn’t due to expire in three days, it was expired for one thousand ninety two days. That’s almost three years folks, in case you didn’t want to have to do the math. The coupon did not in fact say April 14, 2005 it said April 14, 2002! I was so humiliated and I just paid for the entire purchase and left the store. Guess what I did when I got home? Cleaned out my magazine baskets getting rid of everything prior to that year!”
Oh my gosh Cara that is so funny! I’d like to thank you for sharing your coupon nightmare. It really is funny though because we’ve all done it I’m sure.
Next week, another great frugal disaster story! Watch the frugal living blog for more hilarious mishaps and budget minded disasters! Oh, and check your coupons!
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