Shopping

T's* Views
Boy, they don't know how easy they had it when they went shopping in the old days. When they needed supplies, they just went to the General Store once a month or so and picked up 5 lbs. of flour, 5 lbs. of sugar, lot quantities of whatever else they needed and that was it.
Nowadays, with all the new packaging and the variety of supermarkets available, a shopper has much more choice but also has so many more decisions to make...Should I shop at the market near home for convenience or should I go a little farther down the road for the sale on paper towels and toilet paper? Which store has the most items on sale this week? Should I buy half of the groceries in this store and half in that one to take advantage of their respective coupon offers? Should I buy the name brand the family is used to or try a generic brand to save money? If the family doesn't like it, was it worth the savings? How much more gas do I use shopping in the store that's a little farther away? (add up the gas used, subtract the cents saved, and try to figure if it's a savings or not.)
And then there's the manufacturers' coupons! Oh, those coupons! They're in the magazines, on the packages, in the mail—and because I feel like I'm throwing away a dime or a quarter if I don't hold on to every coupon I see, I have a collection that's about to take over my kitchen. (Did I mention that my aunts and my mother-in-law also save their coupons for me?) Now I have the added burden and the guilt of always meaning to sort out all those little pieces of paper and file them in some kind of system so that when I'm about to go shopping I'll know just where to put my finger on the ones I'll need that day. But how many times I stop at the supermarket on my way home from work and don't have the coupons with me! It kills me to buy a product I know I have a coupon for at home. When the cashier asks "any coupons?" I want to tell her to "hold on, I'll run home and get them."
When I do plan my shopping carefully and make sure I have all the coupons I might need with me, then the fun begins. Each time I come to another department I have to check my coupons to see which product I'm going to buy. And say I have a 25¢ coupon for Tootsy Wootsy cereal and it so happens that a cereal the kids like equally well is on sale that day but I don't have a coupon for it. That's when my brain goes into calculator arrest. "Let me see...if I get 50¢ off the $1.89 cereal, that's $1.39 for 12 oz. If the cereal on sale is $1.49 for 13 oz., which one is a better buy?" And so on and so on. By the time I'm on my way out of the store, I'm completely drained! Never mind serving me free coffee to make me feel at home. By the end of my shopping trip I could use something much stronger than coffee!
*Terri the Typesetter
 T–Views Week of March 11, 1984.