Monday, February 9, 2009

Stealing?

First of all, who needs to steal when they are coupon spenders?

Yesterday I headed to CVS (my favorite CVS) to purchase all of the papers needed for my classes this week.

I didn't want to wrestle with 4,000 plastic baggies post check out, so I brought a few of my cloth bags with me. (I'm really trying to be more "green'.) As soon as I entered the store, I grabbed a cart and began filling my bags with newspapers. When I had all of the papers that I needed I hopped into line and waited my turn.

It was kind of busy and so two lines were processing orders, the main line and the photo line.

When it was my turn to pay the cashier who was not checking me out scowled at me and said "don't forget about her bags."

I thought that she meant that I was going to get a $.05 bag credit for bringing my own bags... like at the grocery store. I said "thank you."

She replied more firmly "you need to pay for those!"

I said "Um, they are mine."

She said (very accusingly) "I saw you pick those up when you walked in- you have to pay for them!"

I was shocked! Was she really accusing me of stealing? Seriously? Or pre- stealing at least?

As pleasantly as possible I replied "Actually, my bags say Rite Aid on the side... because they really are MY bags... I apologize for bringing a competitors bag into your store, but they truly are mine!!!"

She quieted right down and began minding her own business once again. I still was frustrated that my being "green" caused me to be called a thief and a liar in a crowd of shoppers...

Do any of you use recycled bags? How do you handle shopping with them- especially at the store where you bought them?

Thank goodness they were Rite Aid bags right?

4 comments:

Anonymous

I have been using my own cloth bags for a year now and I have never been accused of stealing. However, they hardly ever remember to do the bag credit, and the only store I know that does it is Kroger. I asked at Meijer yesterday and got a no. What has happened to me on numerous occasions is people looking at me weird because I have my own bags (less and less people think it is weird now though) and completely throwing off the baggers. They just don't know what to do if they can't put practically everything in it's own, wasteful plastic bag! I do most of my own bagging now, because it blows their minds!

Shannon

Can you write your name or last name in permanent marker on the bottom? That way you have proof that they are yours (unless they think that you wrote it on there while at the store-then they can check their video tapes).

Anonymous

We get plastic bags but use them in our diaper pail; they work well and go to good use! Sometimes we have more bags than we need, but somehow the diapers multiply to fill most of them :-) Even though our son is 2 now, with baby #2 on the way we may start running out of bags again...

Erin

I have a variety of reusable bags. I tend to pick one up in each store I visit. I love to pick up bags when we are on vacation or amusement park trips. I've gotten some looks and been asked, "Where's (insert store name)?" I have written my last name on the upper portion of the side of all my bags. We have enough bags that I actually divided them into two piles so we could have some in each vehicle.