Two Little Examples Of Why We're Going Down
I visited the local cheapo Rite Aid© mart last week because I needed a watch. The sad thing is I'm hell on the things because my wrist is too active to have a piece of plastic tied to it and after several years of smashing it into car doors and such it's time for a new one.
The revolving selection was sparse but I settled on a Casio that had the one needed feature - a face light to see in the dark. Got around to sitting down this morning to try to program the little apparatus, and I mean little. The thing was a tiny computer that literally came with a book and my tired old eyes needed my reading glasses. It turned out that it was far too busy for my needs and since the main selling point was that it supposedly had a 10 year battery that only had 2 years left to it, the watch would have to go back to the store.
Looking at the Rite Aid© site I found that this store opened at 8:00 AM so I showed up at 8:15 to do my thing, only to be told that no, the site information was wrong and the store didn't really open until 9.
All right, meanwhile I'd go do the next thing on my list and shop at a local grocery store until 9.
When I got to the checkout, where in this store you bag your purchases yourself, I noticed a guy next to me putting all his items in those small plastic bags with handles. He was putting just a few things in each bag, just like the checkers inevitably do at Safeway© or Albertsons© or tens of thousands of other mindlessly wasteful food stores all over the country.
Now this dude was big and brawny yet had a cart full of these little bags. He happened to be parked next to me so when I pulled out and drove past the open hatchback of his SUV I saw what he had done with his bag collection.
It seems his vehicle had come with hooks attached to the back of the rear seat expressly for hanging little grocery bags from Safeway© type stores, no doubt to keep things from falling over.
file foto
Maybe this is common knowledge but it was an eye opener to me. Vehicles are made in a way that actively encourages you to use those plastic bags with handles, with just one or two things inside. Billions are thrown in the trash and are dumped in bulging landfills or wind up adding to that swirling garbage pile out in the Pacific that's merely the size of, oh, the continental United States.
Back to Rite Aid©, when I went in to the "courtesy" desk the girl there told me she couldn't accept my returned watch. Why? There wasn't any money in the till yet. No problem says I, it was bought with a credit card and she could merely refund directly to the account.
She said she couldn't do that.
The machine was set up so that it wouldn't allow her to make a refund in any way, card purchase or not, until there was money in the till, .
A pucker faced manager came over to tell me all over again why I had to go away until later.
By the time I artfully explained to pucker face where Rite Aid should be inserted, she and her vapid little cashier suddenly remembered the probably common but avoided workaround that got me my refund. These two tried to suck me into their helpless, victim littered world where people were subservient to the System, and don't you forget it, buster.
I demanded a receipt.
The revolving selection was sparse but I settled on a Casio that had the one needed feature - a face light to see in the dark. Got around to sitting down this morning to try to program the little apparatus, and I mean little. The thing was a tiny computer that literally came with a book and my tired old eyes needed my reading glasses. It turned out that it was far too busy for my needs and since the main selling point was that it supposedly had a 10 year battery that only had 2 years left to it, the watch would have to go back to the store.
Looking at the Rite Aid© site I found that this store opened at 8:00 AM so I showed up at 8:15 to do my thing, only to be told that no, the site information was wrong and the store didn't really open until 9.
All right, meanwhile I'd go do the next thing on my list and shop at a local grocery store until 9.
When I got to the checkout, where in this store you bag your purchases yourself, I noticed a guy next to me putting all his items in those small plastic bags with handles. He was putting just a few things in each bag, just like the checkers inevitably do at Safeway© or Albertsons© or tens of thousands of other mindlessly wasteful food stores all over the country.
Now this dude was big and brawny yet had a cart full of these little bags. He happened to be parked next to me so when I pulled out and drove past the open hatchback of his SUV I saw what he had done with his bag collection.
It seems his vehicle had come with hooks attached to the back of the rear seat expressly for hanging little grocery bags from Safeway© type stores, no doubt to keep things from falling over.
file foto
Maybe this is common knowledge but it was an eye opener to me. Vehicles are made in a way that actively encourages you to use those plastic bags with handles, with just one or two things inside. Billions are thrown in the trash and are dumped in bulging landfills or wind up adding to that swirling garbage pile out in the Pacific that's merely the size of, oh, the continental United States.
Back to Rite Aid©, when I went in to the "courtesy" desk the girl there told me she couldn't accept my returned watch. Why? There wasn't any money in the till yet. No problem says I, it was bought with a credit card and she could merely refund directly to the account.
She said she couldn't do that.
The machine was set up so that it wouldn't allow her to make a refund in any way, card purchase or not, until there was money in the till, .
A pucker faced manager came over to tell me all over again why I had to go away until later.
By the time I artfully explained to pucker face where Rite Aid should be inserted, she and her vapid little cashier suddenly remembered the probably common but avoided workaround that got me my refund. These two tried to suck me into their helpless, victim littered world where people were subservient to the System, and don't you forget it, buster.
I demanded a receipt.
posted by nolocontendere at 5:27 PM
2 Comments:
A woman in Portland is creating beautiful artistic hats out of discarded plastic grocery bags. I wonder what else could be made from them. Clothes, maybe.
That would be something positive from a ubiquitous and truly ugly social mistake.
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