A discount, too.
For a long time now I’ve been refusing bags when I buy a small number of items. My hands work just fine, you know? Surprisingly, it’s pretty hard to convince people to NOT give you a bag. (With Whole Foods being the exception, I love that they assume that you don’t want a bag.) At regular stores, I usually have to tell the clerks at least 3 times that I don’t want a bag. Even then, they sometimes still give me one.
So I was pleasantly surprised when I stopped by the regular grocery store recently. I bought a 1.5 lb bag of cherries, and a loaf of raisin bread. Two items. Both pre-packaged in bags. The checker immediately started to put them in a bag, and as usual I told him I didn’t want a bag. Instead of looking at me like I was crazy and repeating “What, you don’t want a bag? Are you sure? You really don’t want a bag?” as he slipped the stuff into a bag anyway, he smiled and mumbled something. Since he’d stopped with the bag action, I wasn’t too concerned about what he’d said. Turns out he did some mumbo-jumbo with the cash register and gave me a discount for not using a bag.
Then the bagger came up and the checker stopped her from putting my stuff in a bag. I wish I’d gotten the checker’s name so I could go through his lane every time.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:14 am
Oh my gosh, I know!! I think it’s because they like you to first pay them for their goods, and then for the privilege of forking over your cash, do their advertising for them for free by toting around a bag with their big, bad logo on it. Um, no. That’s what your marketing budget is for.
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:53 pm
I’ve heard of these places that give a discount when you don’t use their bags. I guess it saves them money so they pass the savings on to you.. or something. :)
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:01 pm
In clothing stores or jewellery stores, I do the same thing. I just carry a big bag and start stuffing things into there.
If you bring your own reusable bag and begin bagging things yourself, or showing them that you have it, it might help…
August 3rd, 2007 at 4:57 am
There’s a couple stores in our area that actually charge for bags, now I personally like getting the bags in the stores because I use those bags as garbage bags. Living in a condo doesn’t afford me a full sized garbage bag so small is in. At least I recycle the bags for something.
August 5th, 2007 at 7:59 am
The first time we took cloth bags to our local grocery store we just started loading things in (we often help bag our own anyway). When the bagger came by he filled up the last of the cloth, then almost *apologetically* asked if he could put the rest in plastic.
We use the plastic for trash too, it’s how I was raised, but that only uses maybe a third of them. We space out enough that I don’t think we’ll run out of plastic.