HPR Black Friday Special: the right way to shop

By Jim Fuglie

jimfuglie920@gmail.com

There are two words to describe my Christmas shopping. Quick. Cheap. I like to kind of know what I want to buy, get into a store, find it quick, try to get the best price I can possibly find, and get out. The fact that I’m a bit of a bargain shopper occasionally means Cheap overcomes Quick.

I am lucky in that I only have to shop for my wife, Lillian. She buys all the rest of the presents for our families. And I don’t do Black Friday, generally opting for a weekday morning in early December (retirement is wonderful) when there are still sales. I am also lucky in that Lillian sometimes tells me what she wants, so I can go to the right store instead of driving all over town.

A couple of years ago on a Tuesday morning in early December, I went shopping, thinking there might be some post-Black Friday sales going on. I had a list of four things I wanted to buy for Lillian. It started out as three, but she made a request for something that was not on the list so I added it.

I had a hundred bucks in cash that I had salted away, a five dollar bill here, ten there, and a wad of ones, stuffed into a folder I keep beside my desk. Let me point out that we are modest gift shoppers for holidays, birthdays and anniversaries at our house, so generally, if we choose well, we can make each other happy for that amount.

I had determined that between JC Penney and Herberger’s, both in Kirkwood Mall, I could probably find all of these things. Finding them for a hundred bucks was another matter, but I was determined to give it my best shot. I’d have to find some sales.

First stop: Penney’s. We are Penney’s shoppers, generally, because we grew up with Penney’s, and it has always treated us right, and besides, Lillian’s sister is a long-time Penney’s employee and can sometimes get us discounts. There was a JC Penney store within two blocks of my house in Hettinger when I was growing up, and I had a crush on the manager’s daughter, a pretty little curly-headed blonde, from about the third grade until they moved away when we were just entering high school, and I used to sometimes just kind of hang out there in hopes of seeing her. So I know Penney’s.

I was pretty sure, when the list only had three things on it, that a hundred bucks would do it. That fourth item had me a little worried that it was going to be a budget-buster, forcing me to salt a little more money away in the next few weeks, or leave something off the list.

Sure enough, I found what I am going to call Present 1 at Penney’s. It was, as I expected, one of the more expensive items on my list--$50—but indeed, there was a sale on, and I could get it for $29.99 plus tax, so I took it. I paid the nice lady at the counter $31.94. Then I headed for Herberger’s, where they were advertising a 25 percent off sale.

And sure enough, I found presents 2, 3 and 4 in short order, all at 25 per cent off. I had $68.06 left in my pocket, and Presents 2, 3 and 4 came to $82 at the regular price, but my pocket calculator said they would be only $61.50 at the 25 per cent off price. That would leave me with $6.56 left over.

I decided on the spot my next stop would be Polar Package Place, where I would buy Lillian a real nice six-dollar bottle of Pinot Noir. Okay, I’d throw in another ten bucks and get something, well, drinkable. But hey, maybe they’d have a 25 percent off sale going on there too.

So I headed for the checkout counter. I was third in line. As the lady in first place paid for her stack of items, I saw the clerk, a wonderfully friendly-looking middle-aged woman, say “And here’s a coupon good for $10 off your next purchase.”

“Anything in the store?” she asked.

“Oh, there’s a few things you can’t use it on, listed right here,” she said as she pointed at the bottom of the coupon. It’s good for most things.”

They parted company, and the lady in front of me put her things down on the counter. I looked down at Presents 2, 3 and 4 in my arms and thought maybe, just maybe, I could get away with something. If I only bought Present 2, and I indeed got a ten dollars off coupon, maybe I could come back and apply that to items 3 and 4, and save ten bucks. Worth a try, I thought, so I casually walked away and put items 3 and 4 back on the rack, and came back.

When my turn came, I put Present B on the counter, the wonderfully friendly clerk scanned the price, $26, with a 25 per cent ($6.50) discount, making it just $19.50, and then she reached under the counter and pulled out a yellow coupon and said “It’s Friends and Family Week here at Herberger’s, and I just happen to have a Friends and Family coupon, so you get another $10 off! So that’ll be $10.12, with tax.”

No kidding. Present 2, $26 on the rack, cost me $9.50 plus 62 cents tax—a total of $10.12. And she wasn’t done. I handed her eleven dollars, and she handed me back 88 cents, and--drum roll--a coupon for ten dollars off on my next purchase.

Well, I feigned surprise, and said “Well, my wife really likes (Presents 3 and 4). Could I use this for them?”

With a smile that lit up the aisle all the way down to the Home Department, she said “Sure.”

And away I went. Right back to the racks where Presents 3 and 4 were waiting, picked them back up, and headed back to the checkout. I was second in line. She looked up while she was helping the lady in front of me, saw me and flashed me a smile. And then I was back in front of her. I laid down my presents and the ten dollars off coupon, and I swear, this is what happened next:

She picked up Present 3, scanned it, and set Present 4 off to the side a little bit. And she looked up at me and said “We’ll use your ten dollars off coupon on this one,” and she scanned the coupon. Then she reached over and grabbed Present 4, scanned the price, and then reached under the counter and pulled out another one of those yellow Friends and Family coupons, and said “We’ll use this, on this one,” as she scanned the yellow coupon, which gave me another 25 percent off. No kidding.

I paid. She gave me some change, and, yep, another coupon for $10 off my next purchase, and said, with a twinkle in her eye, “See you back here in ten minutes!” I smiled back and said “Maybe tomorrow.”

So here’s what happened. I bought Presents 2, 3 and 4. The price for the three of them was $82. But they were 25 per cent off, so that came to $61.50. But with the help of the most wonderful store clerk in America, the lady who singlehandedly is someday going to bankrupt Herberger’s, I paid just $38.61 for Presents 2, 3 and 4, including tax.

Am I a good shopper, or what! Together with the $31.94 I paid for Present A, I spent a total of just $70.55 for four presents whose price was $132! I was so excited I jumped in the car and drove home, forgetting to stop at Polar Package Place. But I had plenty of time to do that.

I dashed into the house and told Lillian I had finished my Christmas shopping. And I told her that we’re going to drink a pretty good bottle of wine on Christmas Eve. And I said “I hope you like your presents. If not, you can take them back and trade them in. But you aren’t going to get much for them.”

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[Jim Fuglie is a native of Hettinger, N.D., a U.S. Navy veteran (1968-1972) and majored in communications at Dickinson State University. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and editor, as a speechwriter, and as Executive Director of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party. In 1985, Jim was appointed North Dakota Tourism Director by Governor George Sinner and served in that post until 1992. He later worked as Development Director for the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation. He retired in 2009, and he and his wife Lillian, the retired Director of Library Services at Dickinson State University, now live in Bismarck and spend much of their time exploring the back roads and trails of the North Dakota Bad Lands.]