Cut it Out!

So while watching a marathon of jail shows on TLC, I saw an ad for their new show Extreme Couponing and I audibly gasped. And the people around me audibly laughed at me.


In case you’re new here, I am obsessed with coupons. I actually have a bit of love affair with coupons.

This show couldn’t have come at a better time for me, because we just got back from a trip to San Francisco.

Did I mention San Francisco is expensive? I mean, I totally expected that. Now they have some new initiative to provide healthcare for all its citizens and the food bills were taxed at 13%. Um, that’s almost two tips if you’re keeping track. I’m not going to get into this because that’s not what this is about. I’ll leave it at this: I think it’s total B.S. and while San Francisco was lovely, I have no plans to go back.

Anyway, so we spent a lot of money and we did not get what we wanted back from taxes, so the combination meant a seriously frugal future. In my life, that always involves coupons.

This show? Hilarious. Seriously, off-the-charts insane people. People who have turned “couponing” (it hurts every bone in my body to use this as a verb…also? It’s coop-oning, not cue-poning. Do not argue with me on this point) into their life’s work. Literally devoting 70 hours a week and half their house to coupons.

I love coupons. But perhaps I am not IN LOVE with coupons, if that were the prevailing definition.

So I did learn a few things that I will do, and a few things I could/would NEVER do.

Brand Loyalty.

This is a problem area for me. I like Charmin toilet paper. I like Bounty paper towels. Whether it’s because these are what I grew up with or because I’ve somehow been brainwashed by the marketing machine, these are what I like.

The Extreme Couponers in this show had barrels full of Right Guard deodorant, a bunch of different types of paper towels and shampoos and hand soaps. They buy what is on sale when it’s on sale, and when it’s a good deal. Now I’m not likely to go out and buy baking soda toothpaste or asbestos tampons, but I could be slightly more flexible than I am.

Stockpiling.

These folks have entire rooms dedicated to their coupon items. I don’t think my husband would be cool with me taking over his mancave or our basement with buckets of Mitchum deodorant and Mountain Dew. At the moment, the only space I have dedicated to stocking up on sale items is a medium size basket in our bathroom. We have several shelves in our laundry room, as well as almost an entire bathroom closet in our downstairs bathroom. I’m eyeing those as storage areas for coupon and Costco items so I can keep a little more on hand.

Sodium Ahoy!

One thing that really bothered me about the show was the amount of total CRAP these people bought. My roommate actually had to walk out of the room because she couldn’t take one couple who bought 50 Butterfingers. I mean, there’s no deal there when you factor in the cost of insurance when you get Diabetes.

I also saw another couple buy approximately 20 bottles of Mountain Dew. Not cool, people. Granted, they’re not going to provide a bunch of coupons for fresh produce, but one woman did buy a whole turkey and a whole chicken that she used in multiple healthy recipes. She also calls companies that produce healthier foods and asks them for coupons. I guess the bottom line for me is the high of saving $100 wouldn’t make me feel ok about buying that many Butterfinger bars. And I haven’t seen too many coupons for liposuction out there.

So overall, I’m learning a lot, actually. In the next month or so I plan to: start really comparing grocery stores and determining if items I have a coupon for are on sale there so I get a better discount; opening my mind to new brands; holding some meal planning for coupons to make sure our meals for the week are the best deals, while still being healthy.

What do you think? Have you seen the show? If you were a non-couponer on my last post, have you come around?

Finding Fashion: Why I'm Still Looking

I recently read this article on Shine titled “The Surprising Reason Wearing Designer Clothes Can Help You Succeed At Work” and it brought me back to an unpleasant work time when I was in my early 20s.

While I am away from this world and this industry, I’ll keep the identifiable details to a minimum. Suffice it to say, it was a small company and the president was a woman. A trainwreck of a woman. Let’s just say she was 40 and repeatedly cried in her office and used the phrase “doing the deed.”

She was well-known for flirting with the men in the office, showing up late to meetings because she was talking with her long-distance boyfriend, and getting all up in everyone’s personal lives. She’s also famous for telling a woman who had come in from maternity leave with her baby: “that THING is disrupting this environment. We WORK here, you know.”

While she was well-known for being a total cuckoo bird, she expected fanatical togetherness of her mostly female staff. My co-workers were predominantly blond, thin and clad in trendy designer clothes. I had put on some weight before I started the job, and also gotten a new apartment with significantly higher rent. I did not have time with the new job to work out, and I did not have money with the new apartment to really get new clothes.

I had a 30-day probation period and I thought things were going well. I was learning my new role quickly, my direct boss liked me very much. I thought my co-workers were nice and helpful. And then my boss dropped a bomb on me.

It was, hands down, one of the most awkward situations I have ever been in. Possibly for her, too. She hemmed and hawed a little. She did allude to the good things I was doing and then she started mumbling. You guys, my boss was the picture of cool and class ALWAYS. For her to be this uncomfortable was unsettling. What she said was even more unsettling.

“This industry is…different, probably, than what you’re used to in journalism. You know, because we’re in front…well, you know, we have to go in front of rooms and people and such. And so, you know, the president…well, you know she’s just a little… …but she wanted me to, you know, suggest to you…well, just point out, I guess, that appearance is very important in this job.”

I made it through the discussion and managed to stumble to the bathroom two floors down and I cried like I’d never cried before.

Allow me to tell you something about me: I.DO.NOT.CRY.AT.WORK!

I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve cried in the VICINITY of work.

My dad is in HR and I am well aware of how this appears. I’m also very accustomed to working with men, so I know even more acutely how this appears when it’s a woman doing it. Especially a young woman.

I did the best I could with this information. I went shopping and started my first credit card bill ever that I didn’t pay off right away. I by no means got designer clothes. This was long before I discovered tailors and sales and followed Kat's very important rules of shopping. 

The truth is, this has stuck with me for a long time, long after I gave that job the boot (a decision I made not long after that discussion). I have always compared myself to my co-workers. Always strived to look like other people.

The result? I realized in San Francisco, I have no personal style. I can go into a mall and tell you my best friend will love this shirt because she rocks orange and brown like nobody else. I can tell you my roommate will always be drawn to jewel tones. I can not shop for myself. I’ve seen three personal shoppers in my life, all three have lent their styles to me. I have the most schizo wardrobe you will ever see.

Now some of that is just me. I’m the girl who hangs a Patriots jersey next to my purple jersey dress.

But it’s just hard to face that in my 30s, I don’t know who I am in terms of fashion. I talk a good game. I shop a good game, sometimes. But I think that moment at work really shaped me in the sense that I never again truly trusted how I presented myself to the world.

Thank goodness I work at home now!

Have you ever had someone comment on your appearance negatively? Do you cry at work? Do you have a personal style, and if so was it one you consciously developed or are you just drawn to a certain style?

Judge Not Lest You Shall Be Called to Jury Duty

All my life, my mother has complained about her inability to obtain two things: a Discover card and jury duty. The former had rejected one application when it came out the very first year and she still harbors resentment. The latter? I don’t know, the woman watches a lot of Matlock and Murder She Wrote.

I can personally vouch for the fact that the jury selection process is not nearly as exciting or quick as it appears on television and in movies. Nobody was throwing stones at my house or doing any back-door deals to get me excluded. Not that I know of, anyway.

The week started in a very cramped courtroom where we were forced to watch a video (yup, video, as in VHS) on how jury selection works. We were not picked based on any factors like sex or race. It’s random. You should feel honored. Blahbity blah blah.

Instead of going up and saying our piece about why we didn’t want to be there or couldn’t be there, we were asked to fill out a questionnaire.

Unlike my mother, I have no desire WHATSOEVER to be in a jury. My desire was even less because I was 5 months pregnant and just in general a fairly moody mess to be around. So I answered the questionnaire honestly, but with perhaps a little more prejudice than I actually felt. Cops? I love them, my entire family is full of law enforcement personnel. Only partly true. Church? So what if I mostly attend church to appease my husband and see if I can meet new friends? God bless America and all the little children and…um, all the flowers and the soil that grows them?

I was then told to call again the next morning and see if they needed me. I had to call 5 days in a row, if on the 5th day I wasn’t called in, my tour of duty was concluded.

Day 5 I get called in.

About 50 of us are there in the courtroom again. We are told this is a sexual abuse case and it has to do with an underage teen and a man in his late 20s working in some capacity on or around church grounds.

So we see the defendant, who looks like…I don’t know, a dude in his late 20s. Except he’s wearing a new shirt. I know this because the plastic part? It’s still in his collar. In my hormonal state, this brings a motherly “awww, sad” part of me with a side of “you’re grody, go away.”

Really, guys, would you want me on your jury?

So bottom line is we get another questionnaire, wherein I state (honestly) that I can’t be objective about this case. Given this is my first pregnancy and I attend church and it’s sort of hard to separate this child with the one I’m carrying, well it’s just a bad idea.

Then? Well, then I get to sit on a hard wooden bench for 6.5 hours while they questioned each person individually.

Did I mention I was pregnant? I only got the bench because some nice young man offered it to me. About 20 people were sitting on the floor.

Every hour or so, about 10 men in shackles would get paraded by us. There was no separate entrance into the courthouse for defendants.

Incidentally, there were also no metal detectors.

In addition to the perp walk, I also got treated to multiple out-of-court tete-a-tetes between divorce attorneys and men trying to get custody of their kids. I don’t know if they try them all at once or what was going on, but there were, oh, 10 sad dads on one side of the hall and about the same amount of very pissed-off looking women holding their kids tight, alternately crying, shouting, or pouting.

Did I mention I was pregnant?

You see it was a new courthouse in our area. And they hadn’t exactly built in benches. Or chairs. Or a way to bring in perps without parading them past potential jurors. Or conference rooms where people could speak about their cases without making potential jurors alternately want to cry and hit people.

On day 2 they brought in extra chairs.

Yeah, day 2. Because they didn’t get to all of us on day one. They didn’t even tell the people from Day one who had been interviewed if they were in or not.

So we all show up. We all sit quietly.

I should also note this is before I had cell phone with Internet and free texting.

Finally it’s my turn to go in. I immediately want to throw up, and not for the usual “wow, I just crammed 4 McDonald’s hamburgers in my mouth with a fry and shake chaser, happy eating, Baby” way.

For any long-time readers, my fear of authority may now be legend. But to recap: me no likey. I’m just quite positive my life will turn into the next edition of Brokedown Palace and nobody as cute as Kate Beckinsale will play me.

So it’s the judge, the defendant, the lawyers. The judge is a nice middle-aged lady who actually seems rather sympathetic. She asks if I am far enough along where sitting for a long time bothers me. I blushed and said it required fairly frequent trips to the restroom (yup, just entered my pee-pee into the record). She said I had noted a bias in the case. I explained my reasoning. I even, for good measure, put my hand on my belly and said “I have kind of a mama bear protecting her cub mentality.”

I won’t even pretend I’m not proud of that one, guys.

I think I saw the defense lawyer snicker. Then he kind of turns on me and goes: “so you’re not just, you know, trying to get out of jury duty here.”

Why, the VERY idea!

The thing is, I was totally trying to get out of jury duty. But also? I was totally honest. I don’t know what became of the case, but I know at the end of Day 2 I was dismissed, and that was the best thing to happen to that defendant all year.

And then informed since I did not serve on the jury, I could be called AGAIN!

So I’m saving a spot for Wee ‘Burb’s sibling should I need another excuse to dodge.

Have you ever had jury duty or managed to get out of it? Would you want to?

I See San Fran, I see France!

I’m baaack! Pretend you all missed me for a moment. Done? Thanks. And special thanks to Kat, Amanda and Lola for filling in for me while I was gone.


So, there were a lot of interesting things that went down while I was in San Fran. There was a gay bar where heteros like Scott and I were extremely unwelcome. Seriously, I think the bartender used sanitizer after we left, not wanting to be affiliated with our straight-people money. There was the homeless man outside said bar who tried to convince me that they tried to use pigeons for military tactical missions, because of their “visual acuity.” It failed because “they weren’t very focused.”

But, by far, the most interesting thing that happened to us in San Francisco was the naked lady on the tour bus.

Allow me to set the scene. When we arrived on Saturday we walked eeeeverywhere. And seriously, guys? San Francisco is the only place in the world where you actually CAN walk uphill both ways. So by Sunday morning I insisted we take the tour bus that allowed us to get on and off as we saw fit. Sunday we spent the whole day going from town to town.

Monday we slept in, in homage to the fact that we could. We both woke up at our normal work time and kind of contentedly sighed and went back to sleep. Because we COULD, people! No baby, no dog, no work.

We got some coffee and some breakfast and we’re feeling pretty giddy. As we are turning the corner to the bus area, we see a cop car. Then we see three cops on top of the double-decker tour bus. It wasn’t our tour bus, it was a different company. We stretched our necks to see our bus, but no luck. So we sat back and watched the show.

So of course we watched the cops. We couldn’t see who was in the bus, but that person was clearly not leaving. And the cops didn’t seem overly anxious to get that person off, which seemed odd because this particular tour bus wasn’t touring. It was actually where people bought tickets, and the company reps were sort of wandering around looking oddly frantic.

Based on what we saw, and what we overheard, here’s what happened.

A homeless woman who, let’s say, had been more sober in her life than she was that day, climbed on to the top deck of the bus. The tour guides asked her to leave. She refused.

I am not sure in which order this happened, but two things occurred: the police were called and the homeless lady took her clothes off and threw them over the side of the bus.

So when we had arrived, the lady was bare-ass naked sitting in the seat with three cops pulling on gloves, but each refusing to touch her.

Why the wait? Well, you see, they couldn’t very well take her down all naked, right? Only they didn’t have on them a tarp big enough for this lady.

So they called the fire department.

You guys, TWO fire trucks and an ambulance turned up.

So now there is a cop car, an ambulance, two fire trucks, and one very naked lady with three very uncomfortable cops.

One fire truck? Had a cherry-picker attachment.

All we saw was the woman stand up with a huge blue tarp around her. How she got off was a bit of a mystery because our bus pulled up and there were so many people getting on and off and telling the story that all we saw was the cop closing the door to the ambulance.

I won't lie, I want to believe so very much that she had to be forklifted off. If only because then someone else lived my own nightmare, and what are the odds these things repeat?

So there you go. What was the most interesting thing that happened to you on vacation? If you’re a parent, did you do a baby-free vacay? I have to say, by day 5 I was missing her like crazy. But the first few days? Total recharge.

Guest Post: Lola Says Don't Undress Me With Your Sandwich

I convinced my friend Lola to guest post for me while I'm hanging out in Napa. And between us, friends, I am trying to convince her to do a monthly guest post. Join me in my pleas, won't you, Internet? Anyway, I encouraged her to write this post after she was actually FORCED to switch coffee shops due to overzealous barista syndrome. It's a thing!

Hello, kids! While Stephanie cavorts through sunny California, Lola’s here to hold down the fort – the snow fort, that is. Yes, I know it’s April. That doesn’t change the fact that still I see a snow-covered Arctic tundra when I look out my window. The white stuff (I guess crusty gray stuff at this point) is just refusing to go! I’m thinking that maybe in May, I’ll finally be able to put that parka away. That’s the dream, anyway.

So happy travels to Stephanie (no, I’m not jealous…really) and let’s get down to business. What I’d like to discuss today is customer service. Too much customer service. Particularly, the add-on. I think we’ve all been there, yawning and politely smiling our way through endless “would you like fries with that?” “the medium is only five cents more,” and “sign up for an updated version and get two months (practically) free!” I guess paying our hard-earned dollar just for the product/service/commodity we want is not doing it these days. The salesgirl who’ll be accosting you has been instructed to push the add-on.

Now, I know that most of these people mean no harm – they’re probably cringing just as hard as I am and possibly crying on the inside for having to force a product on an unsuspecting customer. Which is why I try to be polite. But some places just go too far.

Like the Caribou Coffee I usually frequent on the way to work. It’s barely 8 a.m., it’s cold out and I’m about to face a grueling day at the office – all I want is a cup of java. That’s ALL I want.

Alas, the Caribou I have the misfortune of frequenting is run by the Add-On Nazi. First of all, he’s not a high school student trying to earn enough to splurge on a new pair of jeans, a college student earning his tuition or even a grad student who’s probably regretting that philosophy degree. He’s the manager. Maybe even the franchise owner. You can tell by the way he orders his underlings around. So really, no one’s holding a gun to his head, yelling “Sell! Sell! Sell!!”

And yet, each time he waits on me, we go through the same tiring routine – he interrupts me while I’m in the middle of my order to see if he got my name right (“Lulu? Did I get that right?”). He then gets my order wrong, and he always PUSHES THE BREAKFAST SANDWICH! Oh, the breakfast sandwich! The “Start Your Mornin’ Right With Some Deepfried Mystery Meat” sandwich. Would I LIKE a breakfast sandwich? Am I SURE I wouldn’t like a breakfast sandwich? Do I know that the breakfast sandwich comes with three slices of CHEESE?

Usually, I try to grin and bear it. But the last time, he crossed a line. After my polite “no, thanks,” he actually went “and what’s stopping you from getting the breakfast sandwich today?” Um, excuse me? Is this some clever new way of conducting the Census? Am I on TV? Did you really just demand to know WHY I don’t want the sandwich? Maybe it was the lack of caffeine talking (he was still holding my medium dark roast hostage!), but I felt violated. Actually violated. And weirded out. It’s one thing to offer and another thing to demand why that offer wasn’t accepted. Is he the godfather of breakfast sandwiches now? Was this an offer that I couldn’t refuse? If they pull me out of the Mississippi River wearing cement shoes in two weeks, I guess we’ll know.

This is where I wanted to point out that the right to privacy is still protected by the Supreme Court. At least I think it is – I haven’t read the paper in a while. Maybe Caribou Coffee bought out the rights to privacy. I also wanted to say that it was none of his business why I didn’t want to get the sandwich. And that customer service shouldn’t sound like a police interview.

Instead, I got my coffee and walked out without saying a word. And I don’t think I’ll go back – really, enough is enough! What’s he going to ask me next time? What color socks I have on and whether my great-aunt was a Libra, that being crucial information for my breakfast sandwich profile? TSA scanners are less invasive.

So the next time you’re offered the newest flavor of the month – a triple-berry tuna-flavored frappuccino – just say no to the add-on! We can do it, people! We can reclaim customer service in the name of good, not evil! And as for me, I can go to that other Caribou Coffee six blocks away. God knows there’s no shortage of places that will pour you a cup.

Guest Post: It's Blogworthy Explains Why I Got a B.S. in Communications

I discovered Amanda at It's Blogworthy and fell in love with her pie charts and goofy work stories. Since then she's had little Baby Blogworthy and, if possible, gotten even funnier. She's also the one who convinced me to join Twitter...so thank her or punish her as you see fit. If you learn nothing else from this post besides why Stephanie got a B.S. in Communications (true story), please remember text books don't speak. And forgiveness is a tree. Thank you. And thank YOU, Amanda, for helping me out while I visit Alcatraz.

Not long ago, I wrote a post about grad school and found out Stephanie was also a communication studies graduate, which is akin to getting a degree in making stuff up. Sure, I learned stuff, but what other major allows you to take classes about things like non-verbal communication?

One of the more ridiculous classes I took in graduate school was conflict communications. That’s right, folks, a class about how to fight with your significant other, friends and family in an effective way. The professor was the least qualified person to teach a conflict communications class, as he had recently been involved in a scandal in which his wife was cheating on him and instead of communicating with her about it, he took out all his pain on his female students.

The class met on Wednesdays from 6:30 to 9 in a small auditorium in a building on campus. No one could understand why we met in this particular place the first day of class, but as we gathered it became clear that we’d be participating in some role playing. Listen, people, I’m more of a backstage, behind the scenes, standing-up-in-front-of-people-gives-me-anxiety kind of girl, so role playing in a class of 35 people wasn’t what I signed up to do. But knowing that I was already starting out with a less than stellar grade from Professor Misogynist, I took my chances.

The first day of class, each person wrote on note cards about three different arguments they’d had in the past. The notes were thrown into a hat and each meeting, students volunteered to “act out” the scenarios the way they were written, and then act them out again the way we should act them out if we weren’t all hot headed college students. Most of them were the typical boyfriend/girlfriend arguments. I'm pretty sure none of us actually succeeded in this little educational experiment.

In addition to the role playing, there were lectures and a textbook. I am a note taker, so I wrote down every word, I highlighted, I circled words and bookmarked. I was determined to learn how to be a better person, to learn how to argue in an educated way. I thought I'd wow friends and future boyfriends with my intelligence and honesty. I thought this class would do it for me.

Until the last class of the semester.

That night we learned that forgiveness, she is a tree. The trunk is the transgression or conflict, and one branch leads to forgiveness through "internal processing", while the other branch leads to forgiveness through dialogue. And these two branches can connect to form a reconciled relationship.

And if I may say so, THAT WAS THE BIGGEST BUNCH OF BULL SHIT I HAD HEARD IN A LONG WHILE.

The class was also a split level, so we had graduate and undergraduates in the same place. My professor had to lecture the class, which is comprised of undergrads and graduate students, how to properly cite articles in APA format (even though there is site on the MU Library site that DOES IT FOR YOU). He needed to mention that it is not acceptable to write a sentence beginning with "Our text says..." BECAUSE TEXTS ARE INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT CANNOT SPEAK.

Ahh...the joys and sorrows of communications classes.

Guest Post: Tenaciously Yours Demystifies Shopping a Sale

I discovered Kat at Tenaciously Yours when looking for fellow bloggers in Minnesota. I love her frank writing on fashion, cooking, reading, and wedding planning. I got the awesome chance to meet this fellow frugal chica at a brunch recently, and she is just as adorable and fun as she is in writing. Rare. So please join me in thanking Kat for filling in for me while I tour the streets of San Francisco.

Stephanie is a deal-loving diva like myself and given this common bond of Never Paying Full Price For Anything, I feel like it's time to take our show on the road and preach it.


You can find the cutest, nicest clobber for your closet (NOTHING is off limits!), but unless you want sale-shopping to rival one of Dante's rings of hell, it's usually best to have a few guidelines to keep you in-check and on-track.
We move.

Keep a Wishlist
At any given time, there are HUNDREDS of things (srsly) that I would be more than happy to bring home from the store. But obviously that's just not happening. A la The Secret, you have to put it out into The Universe in order to get it back. So, when I'm dying for a certain item, I utilize the law of large numbers and keep hunting until I find The One.

Know the Sale Cycle
Some stores like Ann Taylor and Ann Taylor LOFT have supply chains that mandate that if an item is a poor seller, it gets pulled from the floor and forced onto the sale rack. If you can wait for a week or two, you should have a good idea of whether or not your item is one of them. Unless the garment you're looking at is going to complete a part of your soul or the time/space-continuum, it's really best to sit on your hands.
With J.Crew, there's sale, final sale, discounted final sale, factory online, discounted factory online and factory online final sale. If you have the willpower/patience, all of the above are great options, depending on what you're looking for. Sometimes I use these channels to try and source a very specific item, but more often than not, I have far more luck when I'm looking for something more general.

Price Adjustments
If you're someone who tends to focus your shopping on a few "favorite" stores, it's always good to know whether or not they offer price adjustments. If they do, know what information they're going to require of you (a receipt? original tags? the same card you charged it on?), what the time frame for adjustments is, and whether or not they'll be willing to make more than one adjustment.
The reality is that sometimes it's just not going to be worth it. The store either isn't in-your-way, the timeframe for turnaround is going to be too tight, or you're going to toss a tag that you have no desire to dumpster dive for. And that's okay.

Have a Spending Threshold
I hate paying more than $30 for a sweater. I will basically buy any top that I have any sort of positive gut-reaction towards if it's under $10. Dresses under $50 always warrant a second look. $20 shoes could be wolves in sheep's clothing, but I find that's usually not the case.
Lesson: If you know how much you're comfortable spending, it will keep you focused on actually finding a bargain.

Quality over Quantity
I used to be That Girl who would bring absolutely anything home. Which was fine. Until I had a closet filled with sub-par crap that would either lose its shape in the wash or shrink in a bizarre and completely unpredictable way. If it makes you raise an eyebrow (unless it falls into the less than $10 top category), PUT IT BACK. And start walking.

Final Sale

If you're extremely comfortable with a store/brand, rock the final sale. I've bought more skirts/tanks/sweaters this way than even I'd care to admit. The fact of the matter is, by the time they get to this point, they're el cheapo.
If you know your size, you trust the brand's reputation for quality and there isn't any damage to the item, it's definitely time to dive-in.
If there is damage to the item, consider: Is the damage visible? Is the damage repairable? I've definitely brought home jackets, skirts, etc. that have either been missing buttons or have been plagued with crappy zippers. Both are easy fixes for those who are comfortable with a needle and thread.

Patience
Yes, it's a virtue.
In all seriousness, some days you'll walk into a store and it will seem as if the clothing Gods love you and want you to be happy. And on others, you'll enter at your own peril and be completely repulsed.
Repeat after me: There is no method to this madness.
But in the sale-game, the law of large numbers always wins. If what you're looking for is very brand-specific, don't hesitate to check out another location nearby (I learned this tactic from my girl Linds when we were shopping the Victoria's Secret Semi-Annual Sale in college). Their inventory might be completely different or might just be balanced differently (more tops than sweaters, more dresses than skirts and so on and so forth).

What are your sale shopping tips? Spill it.