I normally don’t like to write complaint pieces, but this issue really bugged me.

My wife went to the grocery store the other day and picked up a few groceries and some new cloth bags. The bags were on sale as the store was changing their policy on plastic bags and had started charging 5 cents per plastic bag. Not a big issue for me as we had started converting a while back. When my wife got to the cashier, she pulled out her iPhone and ask the cashier if an electronic copy of the 50% off coupon for the cloth bags was acceptable. Here is where things get stupid. Corporate office had sent an email (environmentally friendly electronic mail) to all the store managers that the company required actual printed (gutenbergish tree killing) copies of the coupon.

Now lately I have been able to go to concerts, theme parks and even boarding a plane with e-tickets on my Blackberry or my wife’s iPhone. A sign of a maturing society that realizes we cant keep hacking down trees for such disposable printed materials. But when a grocery store spends years promoting their green products and organizes a cloth bag campaign saying “something MUST be done”, you would think that they would plan the whole process out completely and say “hey! maybe we don’t need that paper coupon for this go green promo”.

Fortunately the head cashier was walking by and said to let it go through. Even she thought the email was stupid and couldn’t understand what the big deal was considering the vendor of the bags was the grocery store corporate office. It’s not like they need to prove to a vendor how well the sale went.

So next time your at the grocery store, try offering them an e-coupon, from their e-flyer. If they say they can’t accept that, ask them why they don’t still offer paper bags?

Time to get off the soapbox…
Peter