Welcoming September Via Shopping

Today being the first day of September I couldn’t help but bust out my fall decorations in anticipation. I am crazy in love with the smells and colors of autumn. After my decorating frenzy my fella and I went for an impromptu shopping trip across the border into Washington since our dollar is doing good and lots of stores are significantly cheap on a whole than in Canada. Michaels is a good example of such a store. I was rather pleased with the haul we brought back so I thought I’d kick Friday off with the deets. Our haul involved crafty finds, delicious finds and entertaining finds as well as facing somewhat of a moral quandary which I’ll touch more on later.

First off we stopped at Michaels with 40% off coupons in hand. One for my purchase and one for my fella to do a separate purchase and score me another 40% off. My indulgent purchases were from Martha Stewart’s craft tools line. I’ve never bought any of her stuff at full price because I frankly don’t have Martha money. With one coupon I bought this nifty paper cutting tool above. It works like a charm and is going to make crafts sooooo much easier than me fumbling with my scissors trying to cut straight lines. This was regularly price $24.99 (with coupon came to about $15). For the record, this handy gizmo is more like $35 at Canadian Michaels.

   The other Martha tool I bought was this funky border cutter in lattice. It was priced at $17.99 but with the coupon we paid about $10. In Canada these run you about $25. This one also works really well and makes super cute borders. I don’t dig Martha’s prices but I have to give her props on the quality of the merchandise. It all feels very sturdy and well made with tons of conveniences thought of for your benefit.

After Michaels we decided to pop into Target since we don’t have those in Canada yet. I was hoping to find some nice Fall decor to add to my home but they were still in back-to-school mode. We still did however manage to spend a pile of money. We bought some delicious salsa’s and treats. As you may have guessed by the picture, we also finally jumped on Wii bandwagon. We’ve wanted one for awhile but we kept waiting for the price to go down because money was tight after buying our home and this is hardly a necessity purchase. We’ve come pretty close a few times to taking the plunge but could never commit.

The purchasing of this Wii is where the aforementioned “moral quandary” came into play too. Along with the console we were also purchasing extra controllers but when the lady rang everything up the actual Wii didn’t scan properly and I only got charged for the controllers. When cashiers get me to sign the credit card slip I’m usually on another planet paying no attention. I just scribble down my name and move on so I didn’t notice the mistake. That is, until I was just about to load the bag into the car. Something felt weird but I wasn’t sure what so I checked the bill. Sure enough the Wii was nowhere to be found on the bill. Of course there’s a little devil on your shoulder saying, “Whoo-hoo! Free Wii!” but since I really try to pride myself on being a genuinely good person and living honestly I couldn’t live with myself knowing I let the mistake go. Even though I didn’t actually do anything wrong I felt like I was stealing and that’s something I would NEVER do; it instantly churned my stomach to think of so I turned around and marched back into Target to set the record straight and pay for my unnecessary and overly indulgent expense. I thought I would feel better but when I explained to the person what happened they wanted me to tell them who made the mistake so they could be reprimanded. Our cashier was a very sweet older lady who made an honest mistake and I hated to think that by trying to do the right thing I was getting this poor lady in trouble. The conversation with him went something along these lines:

Cashier: “Do you remember who served you?”

Me: “Yes…”

Cashier: “Who was it?”

Me: “Will they get into trouble for it?”

Cashier: “Yes, this is unacceptable and they’ll need to be reprimanded for it.”

Me: “In that case…. I forgot, sorry.”

Suffice to say he was somewhat annoyed with my lack of details but I didn’t have the heart to rat this poor woman out who was harmless. If he had just said they were only planning on letting her know that it happened and tell her to use better caution in the future I wouldn’t have minded but it sounded like she was really going to get an ear full. He also mentioned that the same situation had happened that morning. A woman had $250 worth of groceries scanned and was somehow not charged a dime for them, then the person in-line behind her wound up paying that bill as well as her own by mistake. It sounded like a giant mess and he was pre-steamed about the problems. The lady who got the freebie groceries never came back to correct the error so I suppose she sided with the little devil on her shoulder. (For the record, it wasn’t the same cashier I had because that was in the morning and I was there around closing so it was someone else’s mistake.) Anyhow that was my trip to the states. My karma slate is nothing but good (for now) and I can play my Wii without the guilt of knowing it was ill-gotten. At the risk of sounding preachy I just want to pass on the message to do the right thing in your life. Humanity has no hope of keeping it’s civility if we don’t ignore the little devil in our ear.

 

Have a wonderful weekend my pretties!

*Photo credit Google Images*