Cleanup in Women's Shoes

I briefly joined the holiday shopping masses over the weekend by visiting a local department store despite my objections over a practice that has become all too pervasive in the department store industry – clipping coupons out of the paper in order to reap additional savings.

When did shopping at Macy’s become the equivalent to shopping at Safeway?

There used to be some refinement associated with department stores, but now it seems they all are racing toward the bottom to see who best could resemble Wal-Mart, which is ironic considering Wal-Mart rarely forces customers to use coupons. I don’t mind clipping coupons if I’m buying cereal, but it feels wrong if it’s for a suit. If you want my loyalty, just give me the damn sale price without making me jump through hoops.

Some of these coupons are ridiculously complicated and exclude so many departments, that they often apply to maybe three items in the entire store. I think the one I had stated that if you were at least 5’3” and it’s after 1pm, you could qualify for an extra 15 percent off an item if the bar code on that product began with an even number.

No wonder more people are shopping on-line. Only things you have to worry about with that are spam, worms, viruses, server crashes, security breaches, and identity theft.