The Shopper BFF

If you’re a bargain shopper, allow me to introduce you to one of my BFFs: Text Coupon. Brilliant time and money saver! So much more shopper friendly than email. TC gives you store-event basics without the hype: sale name, date, coupon. Have charged battery and you’re good to shop. Present your phone at checkout to receive the coupon discount on your purchase. Bye-bye clipping! Bye-bye begging a sales associate to cut you a break “just this once” because you left the coupon on the coffee table.

A 2011 study by Prosper Mobile Insights found that 42.2 percent of smartphone owners use their mobiles as coupons and 51.1 percent get coupons via email. My guess is that, when the new Verizon phone plans go live, more smartphoners will get to know TC in order to conserve data usage from email apps.

Since I met TC, I no longer appreciate getting emails from my favorite retail haunts – especially the more-than-one-a-day variety. Don’t read ’em, but have to delete ’em, then empty the trash. TC shows me more respect and consideration. What more could you ask of a BFF?

Actions, Not Words

Female shoppers, it seems, transform into unidentifiable slobs when they enter a department store. What leads a woman to pick up a folded knit shirt from a display, look at it, then drop it on the table without refolding it? What are women trying to convey when they leave piles of clothes on a fitting room floor? Are these the same women who have a phobia of using the trash bins in public restrooms (preferring the floor) and leaving the toilet seat clean for the next user?

WHATaMESS-age of the day: Years of picking up after family members at home is not a license to turn store employees into your alter ego.