I have been buying groceries for nearly 50 years. As a preschooler, my mom would send me down the block to Johnny’s market to pickup a loaf of bread, milk & cigarettes. If I had enough change, I’d get some penny candy. After we moved to Pittsburgh. my sister and I had full grocery shopping duties. We’d drag our “old lady cart” several blocks to the neighborhood Krogers to buy cigarettes for mom and whatever groceries we had enough cash to cover that were on the “list”. I learned early on how to add prices in my head to avoid embarrassing situations at the checkout-out counter when we had more groceries than money.
I remember when grocery stores started accepting credit cards – which wasn’t until I was in my 20s. It was such a relief to be able to go “over budget” without worrying about not having enough cash. A few years later, grocery stores started using loyalty discount cards and printing coupons on receipts.
You’d think, given my frugal nature, that I’d love these coupons.
That has not been the case.
The grocery stores clearly know everything I purchase. It’s tracked by their loyalty cards, which I always use to get the best prices. So why do I get coupons for things I never buy?
I get coupons for junk food, for feminine hygiene products and for brands of products I never purchase.
It’s even sillier now, in 2023, when every morsel of data is tracked, analyzed and used to sell to us.
You know what I buy at the grocery store? Meat, liver, eggs, toilet paper, Tabasco sauce and aluminum foil.
And yet, with every shopping trip, I’m given a string of coupons for crap I wouldn’t eat, brands I never buy and products I wouldn’t take if they were free.
When my diet was broader and when I shopped for my family, I’d scan the coupons to see if there were any good one. Occasionally, I’d find one for something I would buy again like yogurt, cereal, or chips.
But the last time that happened was 5 years ago, at a different grocery store chain in Florida more than 800 miles away.
I scanned the coupons a few times when I first moved here. Finding nothing, I now don’t even remove them from the checkout printer. Maybe the next shopper will see something he wants there.
Judging from the spool of untaken coupons, I doubt it.
I guess the cost of doing this is so low that nobody thinks of it at all. I wonder when it will eventually disappear.