Much has been written lately about the environmental scourge of those damnable plastic shopping bags. As a nation, we go through 100 billion of them annually. That’s 12 million barrels of oil used just to make shopping bags. I’m sure the trees are happier now that we’ve all switched to plastic, but the environment is less than thrilled.

Now I do try to be environmentally conscious, but I admit, I haven’t switched to canvas bags yet. Awww, who am I kidding? I’m lucky I remember my shopper’s club card. There’s no way I’m going to remember to tote bags into a store. However, I do try to recycle and reuse the bags as much as I can. But today I decided that the easiest and most efficient way to reduce the number of bags used is for the local market to take young Katie the cashier and publicly flog her as an example to other cashiers.

I stopped at the market to pick up a few things on my way home tonight. I purchased 25 items (yes, I counted). Dear sweet otherwise pleasant Katie, somehow, managed to stuff those 25 items into just 12 bags. Three of the bags only contained single items, one of which was a jar of peanuts. That’s just nuts!

Taking a brief respite for a little math… assuming Katie can check-out 10 people every hour for 7 hours/day, 5 days a week. And assuming she manages to rip through as many unnecessary bags with every customer as she does with me. This chick uses 2 barrels of oil a month just in her check-out line. She must be stopped.