Lessons in Extreme Couponing Failure

Hey. Wanna know what this is?

This is a nice note left on my computer.

My work computer.

The one that's not my personal computer.

The one that I shouldn't be messing around on.

Want to know who it's from?

The guy in the IT Department.

Want to know what he's all done with?

Getting rid of the child porn viruses that I got from trying to find a freaking Skippy Peanut Butter coupon.

Let me explain:

No, I didn't google child porn. That's sick. Besides, if I'm going to look up porn it's going to be fat people porn because that way I can watch and feel good about my body. But like I said, I didn't google child porn.

I googled 'skippy peanut butter coupon'. Pretty dang clear if you ask me.

See, normally I don't bother with coupons but lately there's been all these extreme couponing shows on TV. You know, the ones where some lady gets $2,000 worth of groceries of $6.78. Not that I personally need 87 bottles of hot sauce and 32 years worth of Maalox, but I have to admit, I wouldn't mind saving a few dollars on my grocery bill. Besides, they make it look so easy.

So, I took some initiative and grabbed the store flyer from the grocery store I normally shop at. Then I circled only those items I normally buy. Which was about two. And then I said to myself, self. Look here. Skippy Peanut Butter is on sale for 99 cents. Not that you normally buy Skippy Peanut Butter because you're more of a Jif gal, but peanut butter is peanut butter and why not give it a shot. Hey! If you could find a manufacturer's coupon to use in conjunction with the in-store price you'd be just like those women on Extreme Couponing!

So the next morning I googled Skippy Peanut Butter.

At work.

And got the Skippy website.

But there were no coupons on there.

And I thought what up, Skippy? Why are you skimping on the goods?

And then I googled skippy peanut butter coupon.

And it brought up a bunch of websites so I clicked on the one that said CouponMom.com because I was a mom and I wanted a coupon so I figured that was a pretty good match.

But then you need a flipping PhD and a super-secret decoder ring to figure out where the gosh durn Skippy Peanut Butter coupon was - which I had neither of - and I started clicking and searching and clicking some more and before you knew it my computer was seizing and alarms started going off and the lights in the office were flashing and a robot busted through the door yelling WARNING! WARNING!

And then I rebooted my computer and prayed.

And then I rebooted my computer again and prayed harder.

And then I had to suck it up and go tell my boss that I was messing around on the work computer and caught a virus trying to find a peanut butter coupon and she did not look very cheerful or happy.

And then it got really bad because when she stopped by to look at my computer it was doing this funky fake file scan thing and all these file names with the words child porn in it were flickering by in bright red letters and I yelled I swear I didn't google that! I just wanted a peanut butter coupon!

And then she said your peanut butter just cost us sixty dollars in consulting fees (meaning that now we had to pay the IT guy to come in and fix it) and I honestly felt like the crappiest person on the planet and also that I never wanted peanut butter again for the rest of my life.

And then I left with my tail between my legs and went to go pick up my kids from my mother who said (swear to God), "I was just listening to the radio and, you know all those couponing shows? Well, now all these people are interested in finding coupons on-line, but they said you shouldn't do that because there are all these viruses that can destroy your computer..." 

Ain't timing grand?