Receipts

You know for someone who gets irked as often as I do by the slightest thing in our 21st Century world, you think I would be posting to this blog more often. I'll try.

The latest thing to grind my gears is the proliferation of sales receipts. Do we need these things? You get them everywhere, I mean everywhere. Go to 7-11, get a banana and the paper, there's a receipt. Go to Taco Cabana, get a taco and a beer, there's a receipt. Put gas in your car, there's a receipt. Watch the cashier become indignant if you say "I don't want it" and thereby making his life miserable because he has to throw it out. They can't understand why you don't want to walk out of the store with a piece of paper that certifies that you paid $1.07 for a bottle of water. Maybe someday there will be receipt police standing outside the door demanding proof that you bought the water and didn't steal it.

Somewhere on this planet there are people who probably save these in chronological order somewhere. Why do that when in about 3 months the printing turns to invisible ink and they are totally illegible? The rest of us are just putting ours into the landfill along with the millions of plastic bags you get everywhere: 7-11, WalMart, etc.

What I have also noticed is that at restaurants if you charge your meal it isn't a simple matter of a receipt, what you get is paperwork. I remember an innocent time when you gave them your card, they ran it through a manual crimping device to emboss a three-ply carbonless form (I remember the carbon ones too, but lets not go there), you signed it and tore the yellow copy off for yourself (white to card company, goldenrod to merchant [what the hell is a goldenrod anyway, a flower?]), and folded up the copy for your records. This was a document, my friends. The size of an envelope. Paper with weight. Easily kept if need be. Not one of these flimsy dissappearing ink deals. And, getting back to the matter of paperwork, what is with the three separate receipts they give you, and no more carbonless convenience either. This means you write down the tip and total and then sign one for the restaurant, then if you need a copy you have to write down the tip and total on another copy. Isn't this repetitive? Then the other receipt? What do you do with that? It's itemized. It has the name of the waitress (Brandi.... with a happy face dot over the "i"). Who gets this? And whatever became of the goldenrod company. Are there millions of goldenrod manufacturers out of business now?

Life goes on.