Coupon Shopping

A few weeks ago, when my sister, Auntie Em, was here to visit, we went to Hobby Lobby.  Emily had seen Sleeping Beauty's mad skills with the stretchy cord bracelets, and decided she would pick up some beads, capitalize on her niece's talent, and get her own fancy bracelet. 

We spent an hour (okay, that's an exaggeration, it was more like 57 minutes) picking just the right beads out.  During our brief time in the bead isle, we happened upon four discarded (by some other shopper) coupons for 40% off one item.  We checked dates (still good, sweet!) and limitations (none, wahoo!) and then Emily made her selections, SB positive that she could make something great with them.  Being the clever people that we are, Em and I each took one coupon, and passed off the others to the girls.  We each clutched our tiny strand of beads, our cash for the purchase, and made our way to the cashier. 

Emily went first.  She handed the cashier her strand of cute red and black beads.  Now, thanks to the coupon, her CHEAP, cute red and black beads.  And the cashier rang up the beads, told her the total, handed Em the coupon back, and said,

"Um, we don't take competitor's coupons."

But, I'm sure if we had been at Michaels, our well-laid plans would have worked out nicely.  :)

I still laugh every time I go to Hobby Lobby. (Like today.)  Especially since the next day, we returned all of the beads, since there was no way Emily was paying that much, even for a cute bracelet hand made by Sleeping Beauty.