A Hunger for Rewards at the Grocery Store (December 8, 2022, the severed branch)
When the little old lady asked me if I wanted a ShopRite card, I knew I needed one, if only to have another taste from the Golden Age of the Chase Ultimate Rewards Trifecta
Just think of where your rewards could take you! (Photo my own)
Incident took place the same day I wrote this:
The little old lady at the cash register awakened within me the forgotten but primal instincts. The private religion which I had cultivated for nearly a decade as a devotee of credit cards had fallen out of my practice, but this rickety sage was conjuring me back home. “Do you have a ShopRite card?” she asked me giddily. She spoke with an ebullient and high-pitched voice. I told her I didn’t. Just as I was about to insert my credit card, she leaned in urgently. “You could save money with a ShopRite card. Do you want one?” She seemed genuinely proud of ShopRite cards. It made me remember how I used to evangelize to people about the merits of the Chase Trifecta.
I hesitated. Shouldn’t I be striving after thriftiness? Was it not the same principle as with the credit cards? It had been a few years since I’d obsessed over credit card points. Normally, for the sake of maximizing points, I would have carefully chosen which credit card to use at the grocery store. And yet here I was using my Chase Sapphire Preferred card when the Chase Freedom Unlimited would have obviously been the better option. How far I had fallen from the old virtues! Today, I would re-emerge from the dark shadows of degeneracy. “Sure,” I said, “I’ll take a ShopRite card.”
“That’s wonderful,” the little old lady said, a genuine smile crossing her face.
I glanced at the middle-aged man behind me in line. He had an enormous amount of products on the belt. He even still a few larger items in his shopping cart. He fidgeted as though in a rush. Avoiding eye contact with me (to my relief), he let out a heavy sigh and glanced theatrically at his watch the moment he noticed me looking at him. I thought about saying never mind, but by then I was fixated on the rewards to be won.
“Let me just call my colleague,” the little old lady said. She picked up the phone and waited a moment. “The gentleman here would like a ShopRite card.”
I glanced fearfully at the man behind me. The numerous boxes of cereal and snacks, bags of vegetables and fruits, packages of bacon and eggs, cartons of milk, and gallons of ice cream testified to a man determined to feed his family. I was in his way. Tapping his hands on the bar of his shopping cart, he let out another aggravated sigh and shook his head in disbelief. I noticed him scanning other lines to see if he might escape from his nightmare, but he soon concluded he was trapped with me. The other lines were quite long, and almost all his stuff was already on the belt. I wondered if he had a ShopRite card too. Was is that he only cared to keep those rewards for himself? Or, like me with the Chase Trifecta, had he become jaded over time? No doubt he was jaded, I concluded. Seeing myself through his eyes, I shuddered. I nearly told the little old lady to just never mind about the ShopRite card. I didn’t even leave around here anyway, and there weren’t any ShopRites near my permanent residence.
“Great,” said the cheerful little old lady, and she hung up the phone. She smiled joyfully at me. “Someone is coming over now to get you your ShopRite card sir.”
She was so happy. I would press forward. We waited in silence for a moment. I heard the man behind me almost groaning. But whenever I glanced back at him, he continued avoiding any eye contact with me. Which was great, because the longer we stood there silently, the more I questioned the sanity of my actions. I would have quickly looked away had he stared into my face. I should stop this insanity, I thought, but I couldn’t. I needed the ShopRite card, and I’d come too far to turn back now.
After a minute or so, no one had come. The little old lady picked up the phone again. No one answered. Then she began calling out to other employees, announcing my intention of getting a ShopRite card, and they walked around uncertainly as if searching for someone who could help me. Granted, this wasn’t a credit card, but it made me remember the glory days of submitting all those credit card applications. The rush of being accepted and knowing I would get all those bonus points! The euphoria of being able to book a whole plane ticket or a whole hotel room with the rewards I had accrued! Here I stood on the precipice of more minor but still real rewards, and I suppressed the idea that I should put an end to all this at once.
Finally, a younger woman came over. Her flat expression betrayed a comparative lack of passion for ShopRite cards.
The little old lady beamed and nodded in my direction. She spoke with her happy, high-pitched voice. “This is the gentleman who is going to get a ShopRite card,” she said proudly.
The bored younger woman raised an eyebrow at me. “You can’t get one here sir,” she said. “You have to get one at the customer service desk. They need your driver’s license.” She nodded in the direction of the customer service desk, and I saw that it was over a dozen cash registers away from me.
“Would you like to go to the desk and get a ShopRite card sir?” the old lady asked me.
I was a little annoyed. At some grocery stores in this situation, they would have just scanned someone else’s rewards card. Or they would have simply handed me one quickly from behind the counter. Here I was, all my groceries rung up and bagged, ready to simply pay. All I had to do was insert my chip and I could leave.
You have the power to stop this madness right now, a voice inside told me. Just say the word! And what if I had taken that attitude about credit cards? How much less money would I have now, without all those rewards? I had gone through so many of them, and they’d all been worth it. Maybe now, as an unemployed person with an eye for savings, I was in no position to be applying for credit cards, but I still had one more rodeo in me! ShopRite would have to do! And besides, was going over to the customer service desk for a couple seconds really not worth saving some money? I was buying over 90 dollars worth of groceries, and even just a 5% discount could get me a free iced coffee.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll go get a card.” Thinking I would need to come back through the whole line and re-scan my groceries, I told the little old lady she could just cancel this entire order and I’d come back with my ShopRite card.
The man behind me threw his hands in the air. He pulled out his phone and started texting.
“So you’re really going to get a ShopRite card?” asked the little old lady with a smile. “That is so wonderful!” She explained there was no need for me to wait in line again. She simply had me place all my groceries into the shopping cart, which she then kept right beside her.
I was about to walk swiftly toward the customer service desk, but she stopped me.
“Hang on just a moment,” the little old lady said, squinting intently at the register screen. “Now how do I do this again?” I would have expected her to seem perhaps annoyed in that moment. But she asked the question as if she were playing a beloved bored game, the rules of which she’d forgotten but eagerly wanted to relearn.
The bored younger woman came over and taught the little old lady how to save my order so I could come back and pay for it later. This took around a minute, during which the huffing and puffing intensified in line behind me.
“Okay sir,” said the bored young woman. “Come with me.”
I followed the young woman to the customer service desk, leaving a very angry man and a very happy cashier behind me. I glanced back at him as he stepped forward while his groceries were finally scanned. “Jesus,” I heard him say.
We reached the customer service desk. “This gentleman would like to get a ShopRite card,” the bored young woman said to the other bored young woman at the counter.
The other bored young woman gave me a fairly long form to fill out with my address, my phone number, my birthday, my email, and a few other miscellaneous pieces of information. While I was writing, she took my driver’s license and began scanning it on a big machine. I changed a few digits in my phone number and wrote down a fake email, but there was no hope now of concealing either my birthday or my mailing address, both of which were on my license. Nervously, I looked back at the distant cash register, where I saw the little old lady was still checking out the man.
The woman handed me my license back. Then she settled her fingers onto the computer’s keyboard, preparing to finalize my application. “Please confirm your phone number,” she said, looking at the form which I had just handed her.
Oh shit, I thought. I tried to remember what exactly I had changed. I proceeded slowly, hesitating before every number, and then I finally reached the end, only 50% sure that I had remembered the correct fake phone number.
“Great,” the woman said, and I concealed a sigh of relief. Then she handed me my ShopRite card. I looked at my phone. The whole process had taken around five minutes. And at that point, I really did think I had lost my mind. I only hoped the savings would be worth it. I promised myself that I would enjoy a nice iced coffee to make up for the time lost and inconveniences created by my actions. I’d be able to buy it, I reminded myself, with the effective rewards wrought by my ShopRite card.
It could never be like the old days, of course. I remembered how I had naively thought the American Express Gold card was the best for me. And then Chase had released the Sapphire Reserve, changing credit cards forever! For years, I had relished the glory days of the Chase Trifecta, an elaborate way of combining the benefits of the Chase Sapphire Reserve, the Chase Freedom Unlimited, and the Chase Freedom. The Reserve got me 3x points on all travel and dining purchased, the Chase Freedom earned me 5x points on categories which rotated every quarter, and the Chase Freedom Unlimited got me 1.5x points on everything else. Then, using the Chase Ultimate Rewards Portal, I could combine all these points, stacking them up on the Chase Sapphire Reserve, which immediately gave them all a 50% increase in value when used to book travel directly through the portal. I strove always to teach my ways to strangers so that they too might reap the benefits. I had often pulled out all three credit cards to help the learner visualize the possibilities. And every time I had purchased anything, I always ensured I was using the correct Chase card so that I would maximize the coveted rewards. Thanks to those Chase cards, I’d taken free flights not just around the United States but even to Europe and South America, and I’d savored lounge access on a handful of continents. Could the ShopRite card compete with those wonderful times? Certainly not, but at least I could again have a taste of the consumerism which had animated me. I stayed focused on the iced coffee.
I walked back to the cash register, eager to see how much I had saved. This would tell me what size iced coffee I’d be able to buy, which seemed like the only remaining question. The angry family man had just finished paying. We crossed paths right before he exited the grocery store. And as he began to pass me with his shopping cart full of bags, he finally did look right at me. He shook his head with disgust, letting out another one of his displeased grunts, and strolled past me. I thought to myself that he probably didn’t even have a ShopRite card. What a sucker.
I looked at my ShopRite card, hoping to feel some sort of satisfaction with what I had achieved. That’s how it always felt to get a new credit card in the mail, especially when it came with bonus points. But when I looked at the ShopRite card, I felt nothing. “I am a mad man,” I thought to myself.
The old lady paused what she was doing with the next woman in line. She took my brand new ShopRite card, scanned it, and told me my new balance. I had saved something like 85 cents. I looked at the receipt with despair at the futility of my actions. Then I glanced up at the little old lady and sighed. She was so happy.
“I’m so glad you got a ShopRite card,” she said to me with her beaming smile.