It's the Store Policy, deal with it!

[RayvenQ]

Where I work, we give bags out if customers ask, but it's not an automatic thing. It makes me want to scream tho, when people just buy one bar of chocolate or pint of milk and ASK FOR A BAG.

I've had the reverse happen to me, had a basket full of stuff and the person behind the counter who happened to be a bit dipsy that day asked me would i like a bag.

[BrenDAnn]

I've had the reverse happen to me, had a basket full of stuff and the person behind the counter who happened to be a bit dipsy that day asked me would i like a bag.

Yes, but in my experience at the c-store, people who have 1-3 things ALWAYS want bags, and people who have a shit load...don't. Now this isn't always the case, but it happens a lot. Oh, and I've had people ask for bags for 12-packs of beer. Yeah. As for the lady in the OP--either attempting a theft, or out of her everloving mind!

[fireheart]

Maybe she wanted a free garbage bag for her car? Other than stealing, that's the only thing I can come up with.

Or a garbage bag full stop. I had quite a few people state that.

Now with the reusable bags we sell (they look a little like the bags you get at certain boutique stores i.e. VERY thick plastic) I still get people using them as garbage bags.

How hard is it to BUY a small garbage bag? If it's for the car and it gets full within say, a week...a roll of 20 would last you 5 months. Two of those a year is equal to maybe $8 tops.

[Magpie]

I've had the reverse happen to me, had a basket full of stuff and the person behind the counter who happened to be a bit dipsy that day asked me would i like a bag.

Or maybe it's not that they're dipsy, but that they've had far too many people be impatient when they told them "I don't need a bag". I have a bad habit of not putting my bags out front often enough, and I hate having to unpack everything from the plastic bags so I can carry them home. (No, I can't keep them in the plastic bags most of the time, they don't fit into the grocery bags as well when they're constrained by the plastic ones).

[Bloodsoul]

Huh. It never occured to me that stores might have a policy on this; granted, the only time I take a bag from the store I'm working for is if there's a sudden, heavy rainfall and thus I need something to wrap around my drawing pad.

[LadyAndreca]

Or a garbage bag full stop. I had quite a few people state that.

Now with the reusable bags we sell (they look a little like the bags you get at certain boutique stores i.e. VERY thick plastic) I still get people using them as garbage bags.

How hard is it to BUY a small garbage bag? If it's for the car and it gets full within say, a week...a roll of 20 would last you 5 months. Two of those a year is equal to maybe $8 tops.

I dunno, plastic bags BREED in my house. Just this past month I took four plastic grocery bags crammed as full as I could get them with other plastic bags to the grocery store to recycle, and we're ALREADY up to a bag and a half of them around the house. I even try to remember to re-use them, not use them for small purchases, or bring cloth ones. (The pet store is always amazed when I put 15-20 lbs of cans of cat food in a cloth bag, but...it'll hold, so I might as well.)

At work, I've taken to simply asking if they want a bag or not for small, easy-to-carry orders. I try to keep my own leanings out of it and just keep it simple: "Would you like a bag?" I've gotten good at 'chirping' the question in a cheerful tone, and whichever answer I get, that's all I need. Yes? Here's your bag. No? No problem, here you go. So far I've only had one person snap at me, but it's not MY fault he was mumbling...

[BeeMused]

I dunno, plastic bags BREED in my house.

Yes yes... that's what happens when you put a male and a female bag too close together...

[Magpie]

I dunno, plastic bags BREED in my house.

Hey, they breed in my apartment too, but I can never find a garbage bag when I need one. You'd think that I'd get more than one bag which fits the holder a month, but apparently not. (The holder was poorly designed, the standard grocery store plastic bag doesn't fit, the idiot company that sells it seems to think that people would buy an under-sink garbage frame that only takes bags that the company sells, so there's only a few bags that I can use.)

[SourRobot]

I remember the time when I worked for Publix and, because of habit, was about to give a customer a plastic bag for a pack of chewing gum. We're talking one of those Wrigley's packs for 25 cents. Thankfully, the customer said she didn't need a bag, but later my manager spoke to me about being he saw what I almost did. Needless to say, I did not try that again.

At my store customers will ask for bags even for things that small, so I'll ask if they want a bag just in case. I don't even really make assumptions anymore, but I'm thinking, Just put it in your pocket or purse!

[bsaana]

When my wife was in the Navy and we lived over in Sicily where she was stationed, we lived off base for about 3 months. Everyone there used the bags from stores as garbage bags. Thats all you would see in dumpsters, store bags full of trash. The stores there also charged about 5 eurocents a bag.