Both Chatham Park and Haverford Middle School PTOs sent emails asking for us to sign up our Giant cards to the A+ Rewards program. The emails pleas have been a bit on the desperate side, containing reports of low sign-up numbers so far.
We here at Havertownies are typical Haverford Township residents, which means, we aren’t about to do a bunch of investigative journalism and market research to figure out the reasons why the sign up numbers have been so low. We’d rather conjecture.
Here are 3 reasons we imagine (read: made up) that the numbers are apparently a big FAIL:
- Everyone is afraid that the Giant shopping center will sink into the ground the exact moment they shop there.
- We all think that signing up our cards will mean we don’t get our discounted gas or our free Turkeys!
- We’re lazy as sh*t.
Numero UNO
We can’t begin to Snopes out the urban legend underlying #1. We can tell you that more than 3 people have reported hearing the rumor from someone like their cousin’s sister-in-law’s boyfriend’s niece. The story goes somewhat like this: The developer was in a big hurry to develop the quarry, and filled it in too quickly and shoddily. In fact, Lowes opened late because the foundation cracked! The whole shopping center will soon go up in a whole mess of Carrie-like into-the-depths-of-hell suckage (eeww, remember that scene at the end? *shudder* Wonder if the remake has that in it?). We haven’t investigated the validity of the crack in the Lowe’s foundation other than a Google search, which turned up bupkis. Havertownies are townies, after all, so we throw as much caution to the wind as is possible without pissing off the neighbors. So we go. We are particular to Chipotle and Panera…
Numero DOS
This concern is a bit more legit. None of the emails from the schools explained whether or not we Giant shoppers would be donating our accumulated shopping points to the school. Don’t know about you, but we here at Havertownies like our shopping points and don’t feel like giving them away. What? That seems selfish, since we don’t pay attention to them anyway? WELL HELL if we don’t use ’em! They’re OURS.
So this seemed like a legit question and perhaps one of the major reasons people aren’t signing up. So we called George Sutton, Assistant Store Manager at Giant in Haverford Township. Mr. Sutton insisted that the A+ Rewards for schools and your Giant Plus Card are two different programs that have no interaction with each other. Shoppers will still accumulate their own Turkey/Gas/Discount points no matter what. So that’s settled.
Uno, Dos, Tres, Lazy Face
The biggest reason of all that we don’t sign up our cards for this free-freakin’ money for our PTOs? It’s too much of a hassle. It’d be easy if Giant had a little scanner there to let us use next time we’re in the store. But no, that’d be too high-tech. Instead, we have to go do something out of the ordinary, like gather up key fobs (tee hee, we said “fobs”) or store cards and take them back over to the computer, where they will be left and then lost for good, because once out those things never find their way back to our purses or wallets.
We think this sounds incredibly dull and extremely insufferable for even just 2 minutes.
Here! Have some Christmas Seals!
This is the part where charities would turn up the shame volume (Hey man, is that GUILT ROCK? TURN IT UP!). “Come on, we do such nice things and we need your help, just take 2 minutes, every little bit counts, blah blah blah. The money goes towards playground equipment, assemblies, cases of eco-certified-gluten-and-peanut-free buckwheat glue,” etc.etc. They can list all the cool stuff they want; we still can’t be bothered to get up right now. There’s all this cool stuff on Buzzfeed and Pinterest we have to stay up until 1:23 a.m. reading.
If you do happen to have that stupid little key fob (snicker) with you, please go get it now. It’s OK. We’ll wait.
OK Got it?
Go GIANT A+ REWARDS and fill it in. You can participate for 2 schools, which helps us as we wouldn’t want the HMS and Chatham PTOs coming to blows over my marshmallow and Bon-Bon dollars.
Once you’re all filled in, run the card BACK TO YOUR PURSE or where it lives. Use it at Giant between October and March. It’s free money for the kids, y’all. And even though Haverford Township children are freakin’ lucky and spoiled and the school system is VERY DECENT, they could probably use some more buckwheat glue. The good kind.