Extreme Couponing Ontario Style

I know, I know, I missed two days of my 30 day challenge for blogging.  Yes, it happened only 3 days in but I have a very good excuse. I was so sick, I could barely make it out of bed.  I didn't do any of my challenges, instead, I laid as still as possible to avoid emptying my stomach.  It was a horrible way to spend two days and today is the first day that I haven't spent with my stomach in my throat.

So to make it short, I am restarting the 30 day challenge with today being day 1 again.  As you know, if you fail, you can just pick yourself up and start over.  There is no reason to give up and throw in the towel.  While I didn't fail exactly, I still want to start at day 1 instead of carrying on.  Partly due to the fact that I am still not a 100% recovered from the flu and partly because I want to succeed from start to finish without any delays along the way.

But now that you know exactly what happened to me over the last two days, I just want to share an experience that I had on Saturday.

First, where I live, we don't coupon.  There is no extreme couponing and you are lucky to find one or two coupons on a trip to the store.  I am not sure if this is a Canada wide phenomenon but every place in Canada that I have lived have been devoid of coupons.  I don't think much of it, except for days when I read articles about buying $500 worth of groceries for less than $80.

However, what we do have in Canada is that some stores will offer you 20% less (Rates vary depending on the store) if you can find the exact same product in a different store for a lower price.  Most people don't really do this but as I stumbled into the grocery store on Saturday, trying to deny the fact that I was, in fact, sick; I came across a woman and her husband that did exactly this.

Somehow, I made it through the shopping. I pulled into a line that looked like it was going fast.  I stood there as the woman took out huge stacks of grocery store flyer's and started flipping through it.  Odd, I thought to myself.  Then I watched in disbelief as she continued to flip through each flyer trying to locate all of the items she was buying. The cashier was being very patient but as I stood there, bile began to rise up my throat and the bathroom sign across the way was looking like my only salvation in the store.

Twenty minutes later...when I was ready to scream, the woman finally admitted defeat over one item that she had been arguing over for 5 minutes and said she would go to customer service.  I understand the why of extreme couponing but as I stood there, clutching my stomach, singing the words to the Lego Lord of the Rings game in a futile attempt to calm my stomach, I realized that there should be a special place for it.

I am all for letting people have special "couponing" lines so the poor, miserable person who doesn't want to save...namely me when my temperature is spiking up to a 103, doesn't have to wait in line behind them.  So what do you think?  Should couponers have their own line?