Kohl’s Cash, Taco Bell, and the Perils of Pretending to Know Things

I redeemed Kohl’s Cash for the first time this week.

Until now, Kohl’s Cash has been one of those things I knew existed but did not entirely understand, like cryptocurrency, pickleball scoring, and whatever is happening inside a printer when it says it is “performing maintenance.”

But after buying my college student an entirely new “workwear” wardrobe, I unexpectedly found myself in possession of $70 of it.

Seventy dollars!

Except not dollars.

Kohl’s dollars.

A privately issued currency apparently backed by throw pillows, cardigans, and the collective determination of suburban women to never pay full price.

I had seen the Instagram reels. I knew there were women out there who could turn $14 in Kohl’s Cash, a Friends & Family coupon, and the phase of the moon into a KitchenAid mixer.

I was not one of those people.

And Kohl’s was not making things easier.

There were FRIENDS & FAMILY discounts. Clearance signs. Red numbers. Yellow numbers. Announcements over the loudspeaker in English and Spanish informing me of ADDITIONAL savings.

Percentages were being taken off other percentages. 

Discounts were mating with other discounts. 

Kohl’s was practically begging me not to pay whatever price was currently displayed. 

I had $70 in fake money in my purse and the general urgency of a woman trying to flee a collapsing currency.

At some point I became convinced there was a very real possibility I would walk up to the register with $86 worth of merchandise and somehow owe them $143.

So when I got to the cashier, I did something I highly recommend.

I smiled and said:

“I’ve never redeemed Kohl’s Cash before, and I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.”

Her entire face changed.

“No worries,” she said. “I got you.”

And she did.

She explained the discounts. She tried ringing things up a couple of different ways. She figured out which combination worked most in my favor. Within thirty seconds, this woman had gone from Kohl’s employee to my personal financial advisor, tax strategist, and court-appointed advocate.

She wanted me to win.

Which reminded me of a very different transaction I had at Taco Bell a couple of months ago.

We had a group of guys coming to our house to help unload our moving truck, and I decided to pick up two dozen bean and cheese burritos.

Simple.

Or so I thought.

I have not ordered food from Taco Bell since high school, which apparently means my Taco Bell certification has lapsed.

But rather than admit this, I approached the counter with the completely unearned confidence of a regional Taco Bell franchise manager.

“I need 24 bean and cheese burritos, please.”

The cashier informed me that they did not have bean and cheese burritos.

This was surprising, mostly because I could see beans. 

I could see cheese. 

And I was reasonably certain the building contained approximately 11,000 tortillas stacked next to what can only be described as a sour cream caulking gun.

We had the raw materials.

But apparently I had fundamentally misunderstood their possible configurations.

He explained another option.

It involved beans.

And cheese.

Possibly a tortilla.

There was also a taco.

Then he suggested something else which, to my untrained ear, contained the exact same ingredients but was apparently an entirely different product.

Beans.

Cheese.

Tortilla.

We had all the major players.

At one point I became fairly certain the entire Taco Bell menu was just the same five ingredients being shuffled like a deck of cards and assigned increasingly aggressive names.

Meanwhile, my daughter had begun looking around for another family.

The cashier suggested something.

“So that’s beans and cheese?”

“Yes.”

“In a tortilla?”

“Yes.”

“So…a bean and cheese burrito?”

“No.”

And this is where the wheels really came off.

Because until that moment, I had entered Taco Bell with several beliefs I considered fairly settled.

One of them was what constitutes a burrito.

Now I wasn’t sure.

Maybe I was the problem.

Maybe the word “burrito” had changed since 1996.

I briefly wondered if there had been some sort of tortilla-related ruling I had missed.

The cashier explained another option.

I stared at him.

He stared at me.

My daughter stared longingly toward the parking lot, presumably calculating whether she could sneak away and walk home.

Eventually, after several minutes of talks that I believe qualified for State Department oversight, I finally said the sentence I should have opened with:

“I need 24 of your cheapest tortilla-based items with beans and cheese inside. What should I order?”

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Done.

We had food.

The Bean and Cheese Crisis of 2026 had ended peacefully.

And I realized something.

There are very few situations made better by pretending you know more than you do.

We assume admitting ignorance makes us vulnerable. Maybe the salesperson will take advantage of us. Maybe the cashier will think we’re ridiculous. Maybe everyone else received the Adult Handbook explaining Kohl’s Cash, insurance deductibles, HVAC systems, tipping etiquette, and what exactly you are supposed to do when the mechanic starts pointing at things under your hood and we were absent that day.

So we bluff.

We nod thoughtfully.

We say things like, “Right, right,” when nothing in our brain is right, right.

We maintain eye contact while hoping additional information will arrive telepathically.

But I’m finding the opposite approach works much better.

“I’ve never done this before.”

“I don’t understand how this works.”

“You clearly know WAY more about this than I do. What would you recommend?”

And nine times out of ten, something wonderful happens:

The person you were afraid of looking stupid in front of becomes the person helping you.

Apparently there is no prize for remaining confidently confused.

There is, however, something strangely disarming about simply telling the truth.

Maybe that shouldn’t surprise us.

Humility has never meant thinking less of ourselves. It means we can finally stop spending so much energy managing what everybody else thinks of us.

Sometimes humility involves admitting you were wrong about something important.

Sometimes it looks like saying, “Ma’am, I have $70 in Kohl’s Cash and no understanding whatsoever of your shadow economy.”

Either way, people are remarkably kind when you give them the chance to be.

And you are far more likely to leave with the correct burritos.