JERI: Murray! (A heavyset bald man enters stage right.)
MURRAY: What?
JERI: You oughta hear my day.
MURRAY: Where's my oranges?
JERI: (throws him the bag) Lousy oranges.
MURRAY: I need my Vitamin C.
JERI: Yeah, you're really fending off the scurvy. So this guy comes up to the register, didn't like the look of him. Really needed a haircut. Not long hair per se, it just seemed to grow out. Every direction but down.
MURRAY: My hair was like that once.
JERI: It still is. It's just on your shoulders now. So this guy, he's got plenty of food, at least a hundred bucks' worth. I sort of like when there's a full cartload; you can sorta lose yourself doing nothing but scanning the bar codes. But on top of a box of cereal were coupons. Lord Almighty, thirty or forty coupons.
MURRAY: This is another double coupon story, isn't it?
JERI: Every coupon story is a double coupon story. It drives the cheap bastards to our store like migrating birds. It's supposed to bring people in the stores, then once they're there they buy a ton of stuff without coupons, enough to offset the cost of doubling all the coupons.
MURRAY: What's so bad?
JERI: We're losing money on it! People take their money and most don't come back, because our store's a hole! It's tiny: no deli, no bakery, no pharmacy, barely any parking. We don't even have a Goya section.
MURRAY: It's Jersey City; by law, every store has to be crummy or it'll violate zoning. Besides, you're not on commission.
JERI: Yeah, but store profits are relative. If the store does well, maybe we'll all get raises.
MURRAY: If that new minimum wage bill gets passed, then you'll all get raises. You still get to take all the expired food. Oh, good French toast this morning.
JERI: Thanks, but that was just regular bread. But if the store loses money, someone's got to make it up, and it ain't coming out of the bonuses for the Aholds.
MURRAY: I think it's pronounced a little differently.
JERI: Ahold's the name of the parent company. It's Dutch. They're from ... Deutschland or some place.
MURRAY: They could mix the expired hamburger back in with some new stuff and put it on the shelf again to make money.
JERI: Food Lion got caught with their pants down for that. We're left having to leave plums on the shelf until they shrivel, then sell them as prunes.
MURRAY: What do you do with the oranges?
JERI: Let's just say you're the only one stupid enough to eat them. So the coupon thing is just a way for the cheapos of the world to put five more bucks in the jam jars they're burying in the backyard. As soon as I saw this big haired guy I'm dreading it. Coupons slow the line like an out of state check.
MURRAY: You gotta do the math on the doubling?
JERI: No, the doubling is automatic. All I have to do in scan them in. But I need to know that the coupon's for something on the conveyor belt. Some of the cashiers go on the trust system and just ring them all in. Some of them ring the items through and then use their memory to scan the coupons. But I don't trust customers. They're always eating grapes, and trying to switch the soup can prices with the steak ones. I'm checking every one of those coupons. No one's pulling a fast one on me. Put it back.
MURRAY: (putting the checkbook back in the purse) Just testing the fast one theory.
JERI: I think these people hunt me out. Coupons thick as a Michener book. So I start doing my coupon method. I spread them all out in front of me, and when I find one that matches to an item on the belt, I scan it. But there's so many coupons, I run out of counter space. And every time I scan something, there's a bit of breeze that might just blow them all onto the linoleum.
MURRAY: Hey, 'Free' coupons, like a free pack of gum. Do they get two free packs of gum?
JERI: No, those have Do Not Double printed on them. Should be on all of them. I wrote a letter to the big head Ahold guy, saying they should drop the price to $.99 for doubling. That way all the $1.00 coupons don't count, and it still sounds the same. Some stores do that. Ahold guy hasn't written back yet.
MURRAY: Did you put Deutschland in the address?
JERI: This guy gets stuff for free anyway. There was a 50 cent coupon on tabasco sauce. It only cost $1.00, so doubled, he gets it free.
MURRAY: That stuff's hot.
JERI: You're too smart to be in maintenance, Murray. So ringing this guy up takes 40 minutes! The registers are always understaffed, so I love it when someone's just got a loaf of bread. Boom, you're done, next person in line. But this guy eats up my whole day! There's this woman with her kids in line behind him, and you don't have to ask if she was steamed.
MURRAY: It's OK, I'll ask. Was she?
JERI: Eat your orange. Toward the end of it, the conveyor belt starts malfunctioning. I guess it was just overworked. It won't stop, and it's throwing that woman's food over the scanner and reading all of the bar codes. A candy bar and a box of donuts slide over, and it goes right on his receipt. So I gotta go through the motions of canceling the charge, and that's not making it any quicker.
MURRAY: That's ain't his fault.
JERI: Well he could have made my life better and just buy the damn things, but noooo, the woman behind him still wants to buy them. Oh, here's the kicker. The guy goes digging into this envelope of coupons, must have been an inch thick, and pulls out a coupon for the donuts!
MURRAY: He bought the donuts?
JERI: No, he gave it to the woman with the kids! The nerve of him! It ended up running $85 total, with $45 saved in coupons! I don't even know if this guy wanted food or if he was just buying whatever was cheap. And that woman behind him saved 50 cents.
MURRAY: Nice of him.
JERI: He's just rubbing the whole coupon thing in! He was putting double coupons on top of existing sales and getting frozen dinners for fifty cents a piece. (Sighs.) You know, if I didn't work there, I'd want to do the same thing. Use all the coupons you can, double them all, get a boatload of food. It's free money, just so long as you go through the motions of clipping them all and using them. Hell, two good coupons and you'd paid the price of the Sunday paper that gets you the coupons.
MURRAY: Why don't you? You know, except for the whole getting food free thing.
JERI: Only problem is the embarrassment of going through the checkout with a wad the size of a corned beef sandwich. And believe me, they have every right to be embarrassed. Do you know the stuff we say about them the second their carts leave earshot?
MURRAY: You called me at lunch yesterday about that woman buying the cat food and birthday candles.
JERI: I don't know if I could put myself through that. This guy must be one hell of a cheap big haired weirdo.
MURRAY: Hey, you want an orange?
JERI: Nah, we spit on them to make them shiny.
Author's note: the cash register incident happened as noted, and the cashier's name was Jeri, but everything else is a bald faced lie. Please don't come over from the Deutschland and sue me, Ahold.
News: Edward stores have recently been renamed Stop and Shop, a New England chain also owned by Ahold. Four Edwards in South Jersey have switched to Super G, yet another Ahold chain name. Under Stop and Shop policy, the double coupon limit is now 99 cents. I hate it when I'm clairvoyant.