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I got a coupon for a free cookie from the cafeteria at my job today. The cookies are really good, but since they are 75 cents a pop I don't usually buy them at lunch time. I know, 75 cents may not seem like much, but when you are already spending around five bucks on lunch, that cookie just isn't worth it.

But now I have a coupon for a free one, and I probably won't even use it. I don't know what it is about coupons that bug me exactly, but they do. I guess that they make me appear cheaper than I already am, or just don't seem worth all the trouble.

I also don't like to look through circulars searching for coupons, and have a tendency to always buy the same stuff whether it is on sale or not anyway. For example, even if Minute Made orange juice is on sale, I am still going to buy Tropicana.

I do have a bonus club card at the local A & P though, and I use it every time that I go shopping. It is right on my key ring, and I can hand it to the cashier without feeling like I am using a coupon (actually half the time I don't even know if anything is even on sale).

I think that ACME has the best idea though. They have great weekly specials that require no coupons and no bonus club cards. It's like they understand that people are gonna shop there regardless of how many coupons they can redeem, so they just avoid all that and mark the stuff down in advance.

I'd shop at ACME on a regular basis, but the A & P is just closer and more convenient. And that might be the key to things. I guess that I'd rather go somewhere nearby and pay a little extra, than travel to get a small discount with a coupon somewhere else (excepting DVDs of course, and then I will travel miles out of my way to get a disc for 2 bucks cheaper than the store on my corner).

Wow, that's a bit of a revelation. I think that I learned a bit about myself in this post, and as great as that is, it hasn't solved my cookie problem...