Killing Us All, One Bag At a Time

Alright, so I'm a poor college student. As a result, I do a lot of shopping at WalMart. I'm a sucker for the whole roll back prices thing. Last night, I stopped to buy a few things to make dinner with. When I made dinner, it's only to feed 4, so I really don't need that much.

I was in a rush, so I hurried to the checkout stand holding my 5 average sized cans and one box of pasta. As my very efficient cashier rang everything up, I was quick to swipe my debit card. Then I noticed, what he was doing. He put all 5 cans in the same bag. I felt REALLY good about that. Only, he then decided that his bag was weaker than a wet piece of bread, cause he had to double bag it. THEN to prevent breakage of my pasta (and I do appreciate that) he put that in a separate bag. That means I had 6 items and 3 bags.

Now, when I was a kid, I was very inquisitive. My dad was all about showing us answers. For example, one day I asked him why forks and spoons had a bend in them. Rather than just explaining that the curve helped food stay on the utensil, aided in picking it up, and that sort, he proceeded to go outside, flatten a spoon and fork and then have me use them to eat. I learned very quickly that the bend was very important. My family actually still has the fork. The spoon was utterly useless, but the fork is a good reminder to me. Well, that and my family can use it as blackmail cause when they tell the story they use a lot more details, and somehow make it pretty embarassing.

On a similar note, he wanted us to see how long it took a plastic grocery bag to deteriorate. So he tied one to our fence, right behind a tree so it didn't look bad. I think after 10 years, my mom finally took it down cause she was sick of looking at it. But the bag was still there. So I am very aware of what plastic bags do to the environment. This is why I like to recycle them.

Being a somewhat environmentally friendly person, I normally try to get as few bags as possible. (well, and I'm lazy and it takes me forever to remember to take the bags in for recycling. As in they will be all over my room and taking over the world before I finally take care of it)

I've noticed that almost every cashier at WalMart does this. Unless I specifically ask them to shove it all in one bag, they use as many as possible. It's like they have this secret plot to ruin my life and take over the world. Can you just see them in their Team Meetings? The lights are dim, and there is a tall man who may or may not look like the Bowler Hat Guy from Meet the Robinsons leading them all on, wiggling his eyebrows, teaching the cashiers his evil plot. Then they all throw back their heads and laugh as a never ending deluge of plastic bags comes pouring down over all of us!

Ok. I'm sure it's not like that, but really, why does anyone need so many bags?

Oh, and they always try to double bag my milk too. Who wants their milk in one bag? It comes with a handle! It's strange, really.