A Little Scantillating

     My daughter delights in going to the grocery store, or any store, for that matter (except Home Depot and Lowe's).  One of the jokes her friends bring up is how whenever they call her and ask her what she is doing, she most often responds that she is at the grocery store.  I, on the other hand, find shopping to be a perfunctory errand.    
     Something that has livened up this task more has been Stop and Shop's self-scanner option.  I utilize the one in the Grafton store quite often.  Not only does it allow the relaxing ease of checking prices and self-bagging the items as I please, it also provides additional savings, or "Personal Thanks" discounts.
     For example, last night I scanned in a box of Nabisco Ritz crackers, a fair deal at $2.50.  Since I was self-scanning, I had an additional discount of 60 cents, bringing down this name brand snack to $1.90, which is a little cheaper than Price Rite's $1.99.  By buying this snack at Stop and Shop, I am not only saving 9 cents, I am also gaining gas points -- 10 cents off each gallon for every $100 purchased.
     Sometimes the deals are excitingly fantastic.  For example, when the Nasoya egg roll wrappers were on sale at 2/$4.  There was a Personal Thanks discount of $1, plus I had a dollar coupon off if I purchased two. It would have been more scintillating if the store issued out their double dollar coupons, but that did not happen that week.
     So if you ever have the option to self-scan, give it a try.  Once you get a hang of it, you just might find it to be even more systematic and money-saving than standing in the long check-out lanes.