It’s only November but the voucher hockey tournament has well and truly kicked off. I think we speak for most people in office based jobs anywhere when we say that there seem to be more vouchers knocking about this year than ever. Must be the thing beginning with ‘R’.

We’ve both been getting them from friends for months, and we’ve only been at BBH for three days, but already our inboxes have more coupons in than we could possibly use in a lifetime.

Now, call me curmudgeonly but, I (lol) just wondered whether I’m alone in my distrust of money-off vouchers? When they work out they are great, sure, but they can also be largely ridiculous for the following reasons:

– You print them off and then leave them on the printer.

– You remember to take them out with you, but when you get to the counter, laden with goodies, they tell you ‘this branch is not participating’ and you end up paying full price to avoid the humiliation of putting everything back on the shelves.

– You remember to take them out with you, but when you get to the counter, laden with goodies, they tell you ‘this voucher is fake’ and you end up paying full price to avoid the humiliation of putting everything back on the shelves.

– You hoard vouchers on your desk and forget to use them until exactly the day after they expire. You have to be a master of organisation to be able to deal with them all correctly. Take for example Zizzis, the prime example of a previous voucher-induced debacle. I had one of their 2 for 1 vouchers printed out on my desk at Euros for weeks, weeks… and we were too busy to take lunch until one day me Nat and I decided It Was Time. We went to use it and it was only valid mon-thursday so we paid full price. Then the next time, when weeks later we allowed ourselves lunch, we went to use it and it had of course expired.

– You lose half your lunch hour discussing the merits and downfalls between 40% off at Pizza Express versus 1/3^rd off at ASK. A friend told me she recently had to resort to using a calculator to make sure she made the right choice. Is this time well spent, when you could just be eating where you’d rather eat, and enjoying your full hour?

– Someone recently reminded us that London is actually 10% more expensive than everywhere else – so really we’re not saving all that much anyway – if anything we’re just paying what we ought to be.

Now, admittedly many of the above reasons have something to do with one’s own degrees of personal organisation (or lack thereof), which is usually related to whether one is a suit or a creative, but nevertheless I would hope I’m not entirely alone in my occasional bouts of voucher-induced misery.

Looking back over previous voucher seasons, I remember when I was at AIS…, one poor, bored account man (he shall remain anonymous) took it upon himself to collate them all into one excel grid with all the links and codes, so this became ‘the master document’ with them all in, so you could then delete all the others. He then dutifully circulated it for everyone. Has anyone done that this year?

Having said all this, Nat and I are now going to attempt, all being well, to go and use the Pure California voucher we’ve got on our desk. And tonight is the Carnaby Christmas 20% shopping event which we’ve all got vouchers for here. Fingers crossed we don’t forget them or try to use them outside the hours of validity.