Thought I’d share my experiences at Kroger the other day. I was going in just for some weekly pickups – milk, paper towels, etc. Kroger also has a deal this week where Kraft salad dressings are 10/$10, but if you buy 6, you get a $4 coupon off of your next order. So I split up my orders – first order was the 6 salad dressings, so I could get the $4 coupon, and then use that coupon on order #2.

Things went fine, until I went to use my $4 coupon and the cashier (teenage girl) wouldn’t take it. She said that I couldn’t use it because she had just given it to me. I explained that no, that was a separate order, and there was no problem using it on this order. She insisted that “it wouldn’t work” and I held my ground that yes, yes it would. Finally, when it became apparent that she wasn’t going to use it, I asked her to go get a manager. She left with the coupon, and then came back a minute or so later saying that the manager had said I couldn’t use it. I told her I wanted to speak with the manager. I was remembering a good piece of advice that one of my co-workers (and fellow couponer) had told me. His thought was that if you leave the line, you’ve already lost. As long as you’re in the line, the stores will typically do whatever they can to get you out and move on. Once you leave the line and go up to customer service, the store really has no incentive to help you out (besides just general customer service). So I held my ground and told her I wanted to talk to the manager. She said “but…. I just talked to her”. So she went to go get the manager. As I suspected, the manager didn’t really feel like dealing with this, so the cashier just came back and said that she had told the cashier that I could do it “just this one time”. Victory!

I actually wanted to go back up to Customer Service to talk to this manager and find out her reasoning. It is my suspicion that the cashier mis-represented what actually happened and told the manager that the coupon had been printed out on the same order I was trying to use it on, which was not the case. I can see their policy in that case (barely) but this was a completely separate order. What’s the minimum time limit between orders I need to use here? Would it have been okay if I had done one order, circled back in line and then used it? Do I need to physically leave the store? Get in my car and then drive back? Fairly ludicrous I think. But it does fit right in line with my oft-stated maxim that cashiers and managers essentially make up whatever rules they feel like.

But the manager lady left as I was approaching. I don’t know if she saw me and felt like avoiding the confrontation, or if she just had “stuff ta do” in some other part. But I still went up to CS because the 5# bag of potatoes I got was marked 3/$5 but rang up at $2. Since Kroger has a Scan-Right guarantee, I got the potatoes for free.