I know that our economy is in the crapper. I know that we all have to watch what we spend, conserve, and consume. I get these things, I really do but there are people who take it to the extreme. I have tried to think of a name for these annoying people that I find every time I go to Wal-Mart or the gas station or Target and I just couldn’t think of a proper and fitting name until today. Henceforth anyone who inconveniences another for savings, anyone who haggles the price of a box of Twinkies, anyone who brings the entire Sunday paper with them to the grocery store, anyone with the last name Kardashian who clips coupons, or anyone buying the $1 lottery tickets compulsively and checking the chances of winning on each scratcher before purchasing them will now be known as Time Murdering Supermarket Trolls. I know that it is simple and “troll” is already used for internet douchery but I couldn’t think of anything more fitting for these people.
Two incidents are what finally put me over the edge and made me write about it and give them a name (usually I just called them a variety of derogatory curse words). First, was yesterday at a gas station in Virginia. I know that the motto is “Virginia is for lovers” but I think it’s more along the lines of “Virginia: Home of Sad Desperation.” As I was standing in line to pay for my gas I was held up by one of my least favorite humans that inhabit gas stations; the lottery player. Usually the lottery player just annoys me because they will immediately scratch their ticket at the counter, even though it says not to, and redeem whatever they’ve won for more tickets. And yes, of course, this happened but this new breed of lottery player took it to another level. He was asking the cashier to check the “chances” on each ticket before purchasing them. “Excuse me?” the confused looking cashier said. “Yeah, I just want to have the best chances of winning, I don’t want to lose money if I don’t have to” he laughingly replied. “Then don’t buy the damn lottery ticket, you moron!!”I thought to myself. I waited for 5 minutes behind this guy and all the while I’m thinking, “He’s murdering me. He is killing me in tiny increments. He is sucking away my life by betting on cheap lottery tickets.” The cashier was visibly annoyed, other people in line were visibly annoyed, and I was getting verbally annoyed. I kept muttering small insults under my breath and finally let out a loud, “Dear Jesus!!” He looked at me quizzically and I just smiled. After about another 30 seconds he was done. But I wondered for the rest of the afternoon, who goes to those lengths for the sake of such little money? Time murdering Supermarket Trolls, that’s who!!
The 2nd incident was today at Wal-Mart (big surprise, right?). I went in the morning, which I never do because I like to go late at night and observe the nocturnal mutants, that plus there is a heck of a lot less people there. So I get my wee bit of groceries and find what seems to be a short line. It was one man and an average sized buggy full of groceries and assorted crap. He didn’t look like a troll; he was average looking, unassuming even. But as he started unloading his stuff onto the track, I saw him pull out a list…and then what appeared to be every ad from the Sunday paper. Why is he doing that I wondered? Well, if you didn’t know Wal-Mart has a normally good policy of price comparison. If you bring in an ad that has the same item for less at another store, Wal-Mart will honor that price. I think usually people use it for items like TVs, Blu-Ray players, or maybe one or two items; this I can live with. I’ve even done it before on a couple of DVDs when I was buying groceries there anyway. But this guy, much like lottery ticket guy, took it to the extreme. As each item went into the cashier’s hand, he would say, “Oh hold on, let me see if there’s a better price for that” and then proceeded to rummage through what seemed like 50 pages of ads looking for that one item. It was this part that bothered me more than anything. He hadn’t even planned it out; he did not have the foresight to do his research before coming there. I looked around hoping to find another, shorter line but it was all lined up everywhere I saw. So I had to stick it out and watch as he went page through page and item through item. After nearly 10 minutes, I saw what I thought was the light at the end of the tunnel when it was down to two boxes of Twinkies but nay that is where the real fun began. He pulled out his proverbial time murdering knife and tried to combine two ads from two separate stores to get his Twinkies at a bargain. He had something from Kroger selling Twinkies for like $2.89 per box and an ad from Target for buy 1 get 1 free, so he wanted to pay $2.89 and get one free. The cashier, probably without realizing it, let out an audible sigh and a roll of the eyes. She told him she would have to ask a manager and get their approval for something like that and that it wasn’t likely that she would be able to do it. She even offered to give it to him for the buy one get one price which was $3.19 but he wouldn’t accept and told her that he had time to wait for a manager. At this point I wanted to pull my own eyeballs out and shove sewing needles into my ears, he was haggling over .30 cents. What was he going to do with that extra .30 cents? Was he going to find a cure for cancer? Was he going to pay his daughters college tuition? Or perhaps he was going to buy that diamond ring his wife had been so desperately wanting. I don’t know what it was but he had determination. As we were standing there waiting another couple walked up behind me with their buggy and I warned them, I said, “You may as well pick the longest line you can find and get in it and when you check out you can look back over here and laugh at me standing in the same place.” The wife leaned in and asked what was going on, I gave her the run down and that he was simply a cheap troll trying to steal everyone’s time away. She laughed, told her husband and they moved on. After 5 more minutes waiting, the manager came over to the register and the troll explained what he wanted. Now if I was the manager at this point, I would put the Twinkies in his bag and tell him, “This one’s on me, buddy” and send him on his way. Unfortunately for me, this manager tried and successfully got the man what he wanted.
He got his combined coupons or whatever you want to call it, good for him but bad for the rest of us. What’s going to happen when he tells all the other Time-Murdering Supermarket Trolls that he scammed Wal-Mart for .30 cents? Dear God, they will head there in droves with Sunday papers in hand. They will slowly kill the rest of us with their cheapskate, trolly, douchery. We will spend hours in line in order for some troll to save .50 cents on some razors. It will be mass, boring, time-sucking chaos.
Maybe I’m overshooting this but a small version of this already goes on. I’m all for saving money but the coupon clipping, price comparison crap is getting out of hand. People dedicate huge swaths of time to this. They are neglecting their children so they can scour the paper or the internet for a .30 cent coupon for diapers. They are forgetting to feed their dogs and killing them while trying to save a quarter on the next bag of dog food. I’m good at finding deals because that’s the way I was raised, we just knew what to look for but we weren’t going to waste an entire morning trying to save a grand total of $2.30 on a $124.00 grocery bill.
So what do we do? How can we stop these people? Public shame; that’s how. When all was said and done with the Wal-Mart troll today, I stopped him for a moment and asked, “So after all that, how much did you save? I’ve got to know.” He proudly looked at his receipt and proclaimed, “I saved $3.15 on the whole bill!” And he was genuinely proud of himself. We waited in line and went through the process for 15 total minutes in order for him to save $3.15 on a bill of $86. “Wow, that sure is something man. That’s some pretty crafty shopping you did. Way to stick it to the man, right?” I said with every bit of irony and sarcasm that I could muster. He looked at me for a moment, didn’t answer, hung his head, and walked away. Maybe he’ll think about it next time before he sucks 15 minutes off of someone else’s life. But probably not, he probably went to whatever online couponing network he is a part of and bragged about his big take and his loyal minions of fellow trolls are gearing up to hit a grocery store near you. So be prepared and arm yourself with “Shame Bombs” to throw at them, if we all join together we can maybe stop this coupon-clipping nightmares and make them realize that they don’t need the damn Twinkies anyway.
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