Coupon use costs everyone else, and dearly. We pay in frustration and lost minutes of our lives that we can never get back. Minutes lost staring at packs of gum while someone with an IQ of 47 tries to save six cents on an eight-dollar package of processed carbohydrate poison.
These users of the devil's toilet paper are mostly killing themselves (and likely their families or other cohabitants) with shitty, processed food-like items. The result will be increased medical costs that will be passed on to the rest of us at some point in the future. Everyone loses. But you saved four cents!
Unless grocery shopping is your only vocation you're not saving enough money on food that isn't killing you to make a measurable difference in your quality of life.
When I'm in line at the supermarket being a consumerist sheep like everyone else, I try to choose registers carefully. I don't pick the shortest line. It's not the shortest line, it's the line with smartest people that you want to be in.
Coupons are really a mark; a sign, or a designator that I use to stay the fuck away from the wrong line at the supermarket. Sometimes you still get caught, as the process must be based on profiling and guess work. You can't always visually ascertain who is the oxygen thief with 50 coupons, who forgot an item–which they will not hesitate to put everyone's life on hold for 20 minutes for–while the stock boy runs to get the wrong one five times. Then, they'll fuck-up their debit card transaction by pushing the wrong button, forcing the cashier has to restart the process at least twice. They may even want to write a fucking check. Finally, they'll complain something didn't scan the way they expected it to, because they failed to read the micro-fine print on the coupon. This will often required the summoning of a manager.
Less transactions should be quicker. But, when one of those transactions takes 25 minutes that theory goes down the toilet faster than a shrink wrapped enchilada from 7-11.All of this makes a compelling argument for natural selection, and ironically, just how good of a job we've done of eliminating it. Extrapolating this level of ineptitude to the 30-60 years most perpetrators have survived up to now, makes me wonder. If you can't pay 15 bucks for something and be on your way without a 27-step process that takes 30 minutes, how the shit have you survived this long?
If you need to save 3.55678 cents on a ten-dollar three-pack of boneless yak penis, you need to sit down and reassess the choices you've made up to this point. What is the net result of buying 16 packages of fruit roll-ups to save two cents on each one?
You've spent approximately 16 times as much money as you should have, saved 32 cents, given yourself fucking diabetes, colon cancer, and Alzheimer's disease. Not to mention stealing 15 minutes of the lives of the six people behind you in line.
Fuck coupons.
