Good times in Suburbia

I had an epic grocery shopping experience last night! (how many people on the planet can ever say that?)

First I had a TON of coupons to use and I was excited about some of the deals I had seen online. So I left Jonathan and Jonas to make dinner (which was fantastic bacon wrapped chicken with Omni hut Teriyaki sauce) and headed off to Publix.

When I go grocery shopping I Love to listen to Michael Buble et al. on my headphones. It’s just fun to be-bop through the grocery store to something other than their musak

I found everything on my list and was nervous because I wasn’t sure if I was under my $60 budget. I went up to the checkout lanes and saw 2 lanes open and they were both express lanes. I was definitely not going to be “express”. It was while I was trying to decide which lane to go to when a helpful Publix assistant store manager named David stopped me and said “is there something I can help you with?” I said well, the only 2 lanes open are express and I definitely have more than 10 items. he said “well that’s not good, Let me take care of you here on this lane.” (I was thinking you’ll regret doing this yourself and not finding another associate to do it!) so I start putting my groceries up on the counter and he’s scanning and a bag boy helps put the remainder of my groceries up on the counter. That’s when I pull out the coupons. He starts scanning them. He had to enter a few of them manually because they were store coupons without barcodes and some were competitor coupons. Halfway through he looked at me and said “is there anything you bought that you didn’t have a coupon for?“ I said “frozen Broccoli, but it was the publix brand.” He laughed and said “I was joking. I bet you even know how much it was don’t you?” I said “$1.57” he laughed and said “I was kidding” and still scanning my coupons, he now had a line and called a cashier to come take his place for when he finished my transaction. He told me my total and I could have fallen over! $59.96. $0.04 under budget!!!! So I handed him my cash and he saw the smile on my face, I said I’m 4 cents under budget! He just laughed. When cashiers hand you your receipt they always tell you how much you’ve saved. He had to do a double take. He said You’ve saved $91. I always love having the bag person carry my groceries out. It’s my time to calculate how much I’ve saved. 60%!!! (Total Saved divided by what the total would have been.)

the very best part is when i get home and Jonathan is amused and tells me how proud of me he is!