Holding the Bag

"When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking."
- Elayne Boosler -

Has anyone else noticed how much less fun shopping has become since Toronto introduced the new five cent plastic bag fee? Like most people, I've probably already spent a hundred dollars buying reusable bags. For some reason, I never seem to have them when I need them. I've either left them in the trunk of the car or in the kitchen after I've unpacked the groceries. The bags I've bought to carry non-grocery items seem to have legs. I have no idea where any of them have ended up.

Paying a nickel to buy a plastic bag isn't the biggest deal in the world but frankly it bugs me. If I'm grocery shopping without my reusable bags, I often have to deal with a cashier who will somehow find a way to express her disdain that I'm a polluter. All of a sudden, grocery shopping comes with a heaping helping of guilt. Most often, she will demand to know how many bags I want before I even put my groceries on the conveyor belt. "However many it takes" seems to be the wrong answer. Last week, one cashier refused to give sell me grocery bags for items she deemed large enough for me to carry individually, like a loaf of bread and a bag of frozen peas. I left the store with about twelve individual items that needed to be loaded into my trunk. Yesterday there was the cashier who didn't want to give my sister an extra bag because she had already completed ringing in her grocery order. I'm not sure how she thought the rest of Cathy's groceries were going to get transported and she didn't want to ring in a separate five cent charge for one more bag. Fortunately I was in line behind her and I had her additional bag charged to my account. The other thing I've noticed is that when we made the transition from provided bags to reusable or purchased bags, a lot of cashiers stopped packing the groceries. How did it suddenly become my responsibility to pack my groceries just because I've brought or am now paying for my own bags? If I wanted to pack my own groceries, I would shop at No Frills.

It's not just groceries either. I spent $600 dollars last month to buy Jacob a new suit. Turned out to be $600.05 because I had to pay the bag fee. I noticed Swiss Chalet added a bag fee when delivering my order the other day. Last weekend I made an unscheduled stop at Winners where I found a cute sequin tank top. I had a large purse with me, certainly big enough to house a tank top but I had to practically beg the cashier to put some tissue around it before I slipped it in my purse.

I'm really annoyed by the bag fee. But I'm also annoyed by the large retailers who haven't stepped up yet to provide paper shopping bags. When we were young, the options at the grocery store were paper bag or box. Department store shopping bags were paper bags with handles. There is no reason they can't be again. It is the stores that get to keep the money from bag fees. I certainly don't want to penalize small retailers but perhaps we should be looking at making large retailers step up to their responsibilities in providing environment friendly packaging.