A couple weeks ago I got a hankering for some Taco Time. If I must have fast food Mexican, it can only be Taco Time. The fresh made salsa alone is worth the trip, not to mention Mexi Fries and Soft Tacos, my personal favorites.
At the window, the Taco Timian asked me if I wanted a coupon book for a buck. The coupons would save me $5 on food there. I said sure. I’m a sucker for charity. The coupon book is still sitting in my car, right where I placed it. It will undoubtedly be there long after said coupons expire, too.
On my refrigerator is a magneted stack of coupons. The Janmeister loves to clip coupons out or pour through the ones that come in the mail. She will use them, I will not.
I can probably count on two hands the number of coupons I’ve used over the years. I’m not really sure what I have against coupons. I guess it dates back to when I was really, really poor, fresh out of college, no job and lots of needs. My ex and I were couponing whores back then. We lived off of them. They often spelled the difference in being able to pay rent in a particular month.
I realize their value still today. After all, these businesses are offering me free money to frequent them. How can anyone not want to use a coupon?
And yet, I am couponless. As I said, the Janmeister not only thinks of them, but usesthem. We recently dined out at a fabulous Italian restaurant thanks to her smart purchase of a Living Social offer. It was a can’t lose proposition. Spend $15 and get $30 worth of food. What idiot wouldn’t take advantage of that?
Me. It’s in my DNA. I was born without the couponing gene. What can I say? I am an imperfect being.
It’s not to say that I haven’t tried to take advantage of these offers. I used to buy the Entertainment books which advertised that if you used every coupon in them you could save $10,000. Sure you’d have to spend $85,000 to effect those savings, but they are savings nonetheless. By the end of the year, my fantastic coupon book, about three inches thick with savings, would only have one or two torn out.
I would even have the book in the glove box. But for some reason, its pleas to be used fell on deaf ears. I must have a pretty soundproof glove box, an automobile feature, by the way, which is terribly misnamed in this day and age. But that’s for another RobZerrvation.
Back to the coupons. When the likes of Bloomspot, Living Social and Groupon came along, I eagerly signed up for them all. I get new doses of savings in my mailbox each and every day. Things like half off to Teatro ZinZanni, Po Dog, massages and manicures… all sorts of wonder indulgences for a pittance. And yet I resist.
Sure, they stay in my inbox for a time. I click on them over and over again, ready to hit the Buy button. And then I jump in the old Wayback Machine and recall the time I did push the button.
It was while I was in Florida. The offer was a two hour cruise for half off aboard a fully loaded tiki barge. There was a music system, a driving range on the top, a slide into the water, an open bar… everything a Piratehead could want in a leisurely afternoon activity.
I had intended to invite some of my favorite friends over for a little fun in the sun. I even got so far as to find out what their openings were. But I could never quite commit. It wasn’t so much the coupon this time, as my friends. Our respective schedules would never jibe with the times the tiki boat people had open.
Time passed, the tiki boat waited at the dock, and eventually, the coupon expired, still sitting on my desk, albeit under a large pile of other paperwork that had become more pressing.
I admit that my finger was once again on the Buy Button for Teatro ZinZanni. It is, by all accounts, an amazing show that is right here in Seattle. This dinner theater can be prohibitively expensive, so when one of their rare offers comes up, you want to snatch it. I get this. I love theater, especially dinner theater. I was married in one. The price was right, the days would work… push the damned button already!
I did. But as I was taken to the payment screen to lock the deal, the tiki boat trip rose with the tide of reluctance in my head. I didn’t party on a tiki pontoon boat down Florida way, even though I had a coupon. What makes me think I would actually go to the theater with another one?
Yes, my friends keep telling me it’s a must-see. And it was a really good deal. Still, I couldn’t overcome my coupon resistance. It was bad enough that I had some genetic aversion to day-to-day coupons, but I even failed to cash in on a Groupon would have taken me on a two hour tour, a tour hour tour.
Today, the coupons still stack up in the house. The Janmeister will ask me about this coupon and that, and I will tell her, “yeah, that sounds like one we will use.” I really need to be more honest and take the “we” out of that. It’s really a “you,” for “I” still have a complete set of Taco Time coupons yellowing away in my car, begging me to use just one — perhaps the Soft Taco one — and break the spell that has been cast over me since my youth.
And I, true to form, leave it in its natural state, convincing myself that one day they will be worth something on eBay. An unbroken set of Taco Time coupons anyone?
In the Emerald City, thinking that I may be half off today, and today only,
– Robb