what would you have done?

WHat would you have done?
I went to Albertsons with 4 of the $1.00 off Catalinas and only had $6.00 on my food stamps. I grabbed a thing of Deli Fresh Oscar Mayer and 2 bottles of Palmolive. I had a dollar coupon for the meat and (2) .25 off coupons for the Palmolive. I was thinking that I could use the $4.00 for the Palmolive and use my food stamps for the meat. Maybe I should have done 2 seperate transactions...I went to a checker I was not familiar with (there wasn't any checkers that I knew) and she wrang up everything (after asking another cashier why she couldn't see the coupons coming off?) and then took my coupons. I slid my foodstamp card through and it wouldn't work. So I figured that ment that the 1.00 catalinas came off of my food purchase. I couldn't afford the Palmolive that way because I only had a dollar cash to my name. So I explained to her that I wanted to use the 1.00 off meat coupon on the meat and then use the 4.00 off for the Palmolive. maybe I didn't say it right because she used the 4.00 off of the meat, my final total for the meat was .59 . Then she wanted to ring up the palmolive. By this time we had a big line and my kids were distracting me a bit. So I appologized for the misunderstanding and gave her back the palmolive and got those coupons back from her. She just stared at me dumbfounded and asked if I had a cash card. Again I explained that I had the foodstamp card and only one dollar cash. She still didn't understand so I just wished her a good night and left. I was so mad! Do I have a right to be? Maybe I misunderstood how those catalinas work when you use them in a transaction that you have both food and non food items? Anyone have any info on this? What would you have done?