The clerk at Natural Grocers asked if I wanted my receipt. I said, no.
My wallet was already bulging with receipts from Walmart and City Market.
The Walmart receipts are useful, because occasionally I have to return this or that product. It didn’t fit, or it didn’t actually match my sofa.
Or my cat Roscoe wouldn’t eat it.
But what’s with those City Market receipts? I have rarely had to return a bag of potato chips to City Market. Or a chocolate bar… or a can of soda pop.
Still, the electronic voice at the City Market self-check instructs me to “Be sure and take your receipt.”
I don’t really want the receipt, but when an electronic voice tells me to do something, I usually obey. So every couple of weeks, I have to empty my wallet and throw away all these useless little pieces of paper that I never wanted in the first place.
When I think of all the receipts that Americans accept, every day, that they really don’t want, it probably comes to millions. Millions of useless little slips of paper, each with an inflated opinion of its self-worth. Which is, usually, no worth at all. There’s nothing worse, really, than a receipt with a false sense of its own value.
That’s one of the reasons why I feel good about writing for the Daily Post. There’s no paper involved. When you’ve had enough, you just ‘click’ and you’re on to the next time-wasting activity. Your slim, uncluttered wallet stays slim and uncluttered. No one asks, “Do you want your receipt?”… because you didn’t buy anything.
So I can imagine a future where there are no receipts.
I think John Lennon could have included this sensible idea in his famous song, ‘Imagine’.
Imagine there’s no shopping,
No soda cans or chips,
No wallets overflowing
With useless paper slips…
I truly understand why he decided not to include that verse, however. Now that I’ve actually written it down.
Nevertheless, I believe a ‘world without receipts’ is a whole lot more realistic than a world without war or religion or hunger. Based on what I remember from my World History class in 10th grade, humankind has never been without war or religion or hunger. But certainly there was a time, in the distant past, when we lived without receipts? When you were hungry, you just went out and killed a woolly mammoth or a sabre tooth tiger? No receipts needed?
And if it happened back then, why can’t it happen again?
And while we’re at it, how about a world without political junk mail?
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.