More about my shopping trip

Some of the other things I do on my big Walmart shopping trips...

• I organize my shopping list in the order the store is laid out. That way I won't forget anything on my list and have to run to the back of the store to grab it.

• If hate it when I'm in a hurry and all the lines are long so I just pick one... then I find out after I've been standing in line for 20 minutes that the person in front of me is price matching or doing food stamps.  I always wish they had warned me before I got in line behind them.  Because of this I like to tell the people getting in line behind me that most of my (overflowing) cart is price matching and so it will take longer than a normal transaction.  Most people are very grateful that I told them and then they pick a different line. Occasionally the person doesn't seem to mind and they stay in line behind me.  At least they were warned :) 

• I always try to find a clerk that looks nice (there is one guy at the Orem, UT Walmart that is always such a grumpy check out guy that I avoid him at all costs. His line was shorter the other day when I went but it wasn't worth it to me). 

• The clerks have never made me show them the ad except this time they wanted to see it for the roast that I was buying. They want to make sure you get the right grade of meat because there is usually a huge price difference. I didn't have the ad so I didn't end up getting the meat, I was not about to pay full price for it. 
• I do take the ad if I'm price matching something other than food. I took the ad for the movies I was price matching but they didn't even ask to see it. From now on I'll take it for meat too.

• I separate my cart as I'm shopping to have all the items that aren't price matched in one section so I can put those on the counter first. That gives me a little bit of time to arrange the rest of my stuff on the belt in order of how my shopping list goes. That way it is easier for me to tell them the price matched price for the items.  This time I was buying quite a few little items like makeup and nail clippers at regular price (some plus coupons) so I actually put a shopping basket in my cart to hold all those items. That way the wouldn't slide out of the cart and then I just piled all my other regular priced items in the basket. This made it really easy when it was time to check out. All my stuff was separated. The only problem was the basket had been buried by other things so I ended up having to do the regular priced items last.

• Then after everything was rung up I handed the lady my coupons one by one. In the past I'd give them the whole stack but I think they didn't scan all the coupons when I did that. And I read on some lady's blog that she handed them one by one to make sure they all went through so that's what I do now too. Overall the shopping trip went really well and I was able to get my price matching on everything except the roast I mentioned earlier. All the coupons went through and I didn't have any of the dreaded beeping when a coupon doesn't work.