So I was at the grocery store yesterday. As I was checking out, the cashier asked if I would like any bags, and I answered two. This prompted the woman behind me in line to snort in contempt.
In case you are not aware, or in case it’s different where you live, stores here charge 5 cents for plastic shopping bags. This is in an effort to limit their use, as the bags end up in large numbers in landfills and so there is a push for people to bring reusable bags. I should note that I always bring reusable bags when I’m coming from home, but I wasn’t coming from home and didn’t have a reusable bag with me.
Anyway, I thought about saying something to the woman, but I really wasn’t in the mood for a fight, so I bit my lip and completed my transaction. Then, just as I was about to leave the store, she said, “You know you really shouldn’t use plastic bags.”
I turned to her and said, “I walked here”. That sure shut her up.
I hung around the parking lot, discretely, and waited until she walked out. Sure enough, she was driving a Jeep. Way to practice what you preach, lady.
Yeah, but you have to admit, they’d be able to see more that way.
This kind of encounter would have prompted me to pull out my crazy hat and say something like, “I *tried *to bring my own, but HE (tilt head meaningfully several times to one side) wouldn’t let me,” and then silently mouth the words, “Help me” to the Enviromonitor as she leaves the store.
Someday in the future, they’ll build a subdivision atop the local landfill. Then a few years later, sinkholes will start to appear, making the whole neighborhood dangerous to live in. Experts will testify: “What the ground needed was a better infrastructure made of plastic shopping bags. It’s a shame our ancestors stopped using them.”
Did you miss the part where the Enviromonitor (great word) told the OP that she shouldn’t use plastic bags?
I don’t know what I’d say to someone that irritating - they don’t know me, and they don’t know my life. They don’t know that I walk to the store with my little cart and bags a couple of times a week instead of driving, and that every bag that comes into my house gets re-purposed for garbage and cat litter or recycled. It’s simply none of their damned business.
Maybe you should have said “Well if you took that stick out of your butt you might could see that it’s none of your damn business.” Frickin’ busybodies! Who needs 'em?!
I think the OP handled it perfectly. Ignoring the first sniff of disdain was just fine, and when she escalated the encounter to address a complete stranger and lecture you on What You Should Do, cutting her off at the knees by reminding her than there’s more than one way to do the environment a solid – especially when it turned out that she wasn’t living up to her high principles in that way – was exactly right. If she has any self-awareness at all, she probably felt quite uncomfortable as she drove off in her Jeep. She may even think twice before instructing the next complete strangers on how they should lead their lives.
I always try to think of such witty retorts in such situations but never actually say them–too many borderline psychotics out there who the smallest thing will set off and it’s really hard to tell which are which. I had one follow me home once (that was frightening) and another vandalise my car.
Guess that makes me borderline paranoid.
Just not worth it to me but your mileage may vary.
I would have given this dimwit a major dressing down.
Plastic bags are NOT a problem. Idiots who LITTER plastic bags are a problem. And people that litter plastic bags are the same damn people who litter all sorts of other things.
I like plastic bags. I take them home and use them for all sorts of things. I line the small trashcan in the bathroom with them. I use them to SORT OUR RECYCLABLES AND TAKE THEM IN FOR REDEMPTION. I use them to pack my lunch in. I use them to pick up doggie poo for disposal.
It really pisses me off that municipalities are banning them because a certain percentage of the population can’t bother themselves to find a trash can.
Its fascinating that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
A hundred years ago, that woman would have snorted at your immorality in your skirt being an inch too short. Sixty years ago, it would have been you not buying American whatever to support the US economy. Fourty years ago it would have been your hair being an inch too long. Thirty years ago, it would have been you not using the politically correct term that was in fashion at the time. Ten years ago it would have been about you smoking or being smoking intolerant. Now it is the environment.
I was that lady briefly when I was eighteen. God help me that now I know better, I will never again be like her, no matter how strongly I feel about my ideals.
