Fifteen Percent

Wednesday morning I decided to get myself out of the house with Natalie because she was super F*U*S*S*Y and I thought I might be able to distract her with a few errands. We stopped at Kohls and noted all of the stay-at-home moms cruising through at 1030 in the morning looking for bargains. Seriously - there was like one man in that whole store.

Kevin and I were in dire need of new luggage and Kohls had a good sale on it this week so I was on a mission. On my way into the store a lady starts honking and waving at me and I (in all my "maybe-she'-just-friendly-cuz-that's-how-they-are-in-Missouri" fashion wave back). She pulls over and hands me a reusable coupon for the day. Hallelujah! I take back everything I said about east coasters when I first moved here!

Coupon in tow I start looking at everything with new eyes. Now I can get FIFTEEN PERCENT off of everything. That means I can buy more!! That's when I noticed all of the women in there and I snapped out of my greedy little trance. "Stay focused Lauren!" Dutifully I headed back to the luggage and pick out a 7 piece luggage set for $80. Now only $68 with my coupon. Score! I figured even if this stuff dies on us in a couple years its no big loss as there's not a lot invested and we'd definitely have gotten our money's worth out of it. Besides - it looked like it may hold up longer than that anyway.

I picked out a couple birthday presents for myself (at the request of my mother) and make my way to the checkout line. There was one line on my side of the store at the moment and one lady behind me. Then I asked the dreaded question that certainly sealed my fate: Could you reopen my Kohls credit card so that I could use this 15% off coupon? "Sure!" she said as she pulled out a credit card application. She proceeded to ask me for my drivers license, a major credit card and parental rights to my next child. Another couple joined the line.

After giving her my SSN a total of three times along with my telephone number, etc my card was officially reopened. However she realized that my sunglasses I've picked out didn't have a tag on them to scan. There were approximately 4 people in line behind me now. She had already paged someone in Accessories but there was no one in Accessories. The manager gets on the phone as another couple joins the line and says "I'm desperately in need of a checker in mens" as she paces the floor. I debate offering to check the people out behind me. Instead I offer to go grab another pair of sunglasses WITH the tag this time.

I bolt to Accessories and back within 60 seconds and now there's approximately 7 people in line behind me. She rings me up and "whoops" forgets to apply the coupon. So then she voids it all and we start anew. Meanwhile, the old lady behind me rather loudly declares that they should be "giving things away at this pace". I shove my coupon into her hands and say "here... have a coupon". Because that's what us Missourians do.