The Couponator 50: Endgame
I’m working my first week as a cashier at the grocery store (after being promoted from the warehouse). My manager comes over to the checkout area and opens a checkout by himself.
Me: “Oh, we’re not that busy. Do you normally take a lane?”
Manager: “I do when she is coming.”
He looks over towards a customer, although I say customer, but she actually resembles a tiny human component of a giant freight train composed of at-capacity shopping carts. She had three… THREE of them. At first, I thought she was controlling all three through mind control, but as she rounded the corner I saw a few little minions helping to guide each cart, one grandchild for each.
Manager: “Hello again, Mrs. [Customer’s Name]. As usual, can you please hand over the coupons before we start scanning?”
The customer wordlessly opens her bag and through what must be the use of TARDIS technology produces a stack of coupons so dense I felt gravity shift. My manager takes the stack and starts scanning them with a practiced ease that can only come from past trauma.
I serve another customer and when I am done with them my manager has finished going through all the coupons and has sorted them into three stacks. The largest by far he points to and says:
Manager: “These we can accept.”
He points to the two smaller piles:
Manager: “These have expired, and these I am not sure about, but we will try anyway.”
And then the scanning process begins. The customer’s three little minions have positioned themselves at the bagging end of the checkout lane and start distributing the items with a choreography worthy of the Olympics.
After about forty coupons the checkout lane register makes a groaning sound, and I spy an alert heretofore unknown to me:
Alert: “Warning! Coupon limit exceeded. Manual override required.”
My manager overrides. For every ten or so coupons applied, he has to override again. I serve many more customers in the time it takes for my manager to work through the entirety of this woman’s hoard.
After all is done, and every item is scanned, he reveals the total, gently, so as not to alarm the weeping register.
Manager: “Your total is $28.05.”
Customer: “That’s a pity, I was hoping to get it under $20 this time.”
She swipes her card, the payment goes through, and the receipt starts printing… and printing… and printing. Somewhere in the nation, a CVS receipt took second place, as this four-dimensional string-theory-eating monstrosity of paper continued to invade our realm until finally it stopped.
1,037 items. She had managed to obtain 1,037 items for under thirty bucks, and she was disappointed with that result.
She manoeuvers her unholy mass of detergents, cereals, and jarred pickles towards the exit, leaving me wondering what terrifying eldritch being I have just given witness to. She took three hours of my manager’s time, but it looked like it was three years of his soul, as he closes the register and pours his remaining energy into crawling towards the back, most likely to weep. He’s made it barely three steps when the customer delivers a parting gift:
Customer: “Oh well… maybe I can do better next week.”
Related:
The Couponator 49: The Level 99 Checkout Clerk
The Couponator 48: The A**hole Tax
The Couponator 47: Double Drive-Thru Dumbfounding
The Couponator 46: The Rise Of The Mix-Ins
The Couponator 45: The Never-ending Story
