Paper or plastic?

In observance of Earth Day I wanted to write about something really easy you can do to "Go Green" when you are grocery shopping. A really simple thing you can do is to use reusable shopping bags when you go shopping. I keep a few cloth bags in my car so when I go shopping I have the bags with me already. Now this is not to say that I don't use plastic bags when I bag my groceries at the store but I try to fill them as full as I can so I only use as many as I need. Also, I never throw my plastic bags away when I get home. I save them and reuse them the next time I need a bag for something. So next time you're at the store and you're trying to decide 'paper or plastic' here are a few of the environmental pros and cons of both.

Paper Bags:

3 pros

1. Paper bags hold more--which means you get more groceries into each bag and use fewer of them.

2. Paper is biodegradable--if you compost paper it will break down and go from paper to a rich soil nutrient over a period of a couple months. (www.greenhouseneutralfoundation.org).

3. Paper bags are sturdier--Ever leave the grocery store with a plastic bag full of groceries only to have the handle break or the plastic tear on your way to the car? Or throw your plastic bags full of groceries into the back seat of your car and by the time you get home half of the groceries have spilled out? This doesn't seem to happen as often with paper bags because they are studier and stand upright.

3 cons

1. Environmental impact--It takes a lot of trees to make paper bags so paper bags contribute to mass deforestation which results in destroying the habitat of all the plants and animals that live in the forest. (www.greenhouseneutralfoundation.org) It can take over a century for nature to recover from even a small logging operation. (www.angelfire.com).

2. Recycling paper bags requires a process that

3. It requires a great deal of energy, chemicals and other resources to make paper and paper bags. The pulp is made from logs that have been dried and striped of bark and then the pulp is washed and bleached. This process requires thousands of gallons of clean water. (www.angelfire.com).


Plastic Bags:
3 pros
1. The process for recycling plastic is easier and requires less energy then the process for recycling paper. To recycle almost any kind of plastic it merely needs to be remelted and reformed. The remelting process will sterilize the plastic and it can reformed and reused many times over before it becomes brittle. (www.angelfire.com)

2.

3 cons

1. Plastic bags are typically made from oil, a nonrenewable resource. Plastics are a by-product of the oil-refining process, accounting for 4% of oil production around the globe. (www.greenhouseneutralfoundation.org)

2. Enviornmental impact--20% of the plastic bags used are not properly disposed of so they end up as debris and litter. Plastic bags that end up in the ocean cause a threat to marine life, when it's ingested it causes damage to ocean animals digestion. (www.enviroliteracy.org)

3.
So the next time you're asked "Paper or plastic" consider some of the pros and cons of both and make the decision that makes the most sense for you. Or better yet bring your own reusable bags!

Time is Money

I got sick of always being broke so I started trimming the fat from my budget and (trying) to watch how I spend my money. It doesn't always work but I think I'm getting better. Things really hit me when I went out to dinner at the Olive Garden the other night. I ordered a drink, an appetizer, and an entree. The bill was $22.75 (plus tip) and that just seemed really pricey to me. I got me thinking that to make the money to pay from this meal I would have to work for 2 1/2 hours at a job I hate and a crappy meal at the Olive Garden just isn't worth it. So I started to reevaluate how I spend my money. Like my gym membership. Is it really worth it? Well my membership is only $10 a month so I figured, 'Yeah I can handle that.' Or if I want to go see a movie I would have to work about an hour and 15 minutes to pay for the movie ticket. Of course, there's nothing wrong with spending money on a movie ticket--but I realized when you have to work for an hour and 15 minutes just to pay for a movie ticket (and I haven't even added in popcorn or candy or drinks) you want to make sure it's a good movie.

Putting things in terms of how many hours I would have to work to pay for them has really helped me prioritize how I spend my money. I decided when I spend my (very measly) paycheck I'm gonna spend the money on something I need or things I really, really want. My grandfather and my dad have explained this concept to me over the years and I understood it in theory. So by carefully budgeting and eating out less I'm going to try to put it into practice.

Time is money at the grocery store, too. I had a customer come through my line with a huge grocery order. It took me about 5 minutes to ring up her whole order and her total was $208.65. I make $8.15 an hour so for my take home pay to be $208 I would need to work for 28 hours! It was hard to believe that what would take me 28 hours to earn had only taken her 5 minutes to spend!

So thanks dad and pop! I get it (I think)

**This entry is dedicated to my grandfather-- a great guy, a financial wizard, and one of (if not the) smartest guy I know!**

Taking note of this Quote

"Early to bed, Early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."

~Benjamin Franklin

Don't you people have jobs?

Just to give anyone reading this fair warning: This is going to be just about the most hypocritical thing I have ever said/thought/written. I came into Starbucks today because I wanted to sit down and get some writing done. First off--I felt very stereotypical--the underemployed person recently graduated from higher education with millions of dollars in student loan debt--walking into a coffee shop with their laptop in the middle of the afternoon struggling to write something really good but really just hoping it turns out halfway decent. All I wanted was to order a drink, sit in one of the big cushioned armchairs by the outlet so I could plug in my laptop and start writing (what will undoubtedly become a very important literary work). But the place was PACKED and imagine my disbelief when some middle-aged, slightly overweight, gray haired business man in a suit is sitting in my cushy armchair. He has his laptop and some files in front of him like Starbucks is his own personal office (And yes, I am fully aware of the irony of complaining about this man as I am walking in with my laptop and my bag overflowing with three spiral notebooks, a binder, a datebook and folders like I fucking own the place) But this man has a suit and a job and presumably an office--shouldn't he be there? Eventually the man got up and I got my seat and plugged my laptop. I stayed there throughout the afternoon writing and watching people come and go. As I was watching the customers come and go, I just thinking to myself, "Don't these people have jobs?" Why aren't they at work? Presumably these people were wondering the same thing about the girl in the corner with her laptop--who refused to give up the good armchair by the electrical socket. But I have a reason for being here--I'm a writer...right? Maybe...but not really. It was that experience that emphasized for me how much I really miss having a definite place to go from 9:00-5:00 during the work week. I think given the choice people want to work. They like to work. It's nice to be part of a working team and to feel like you're doing good work and contributing to something. I imagine not having can be a real hit your self confidence--actually, I don't have to image it...I know it is.

Just give it right back

After I finished my shift the other day I went shopping for a few things before I left and as I was shopping I realized that I almost never leave work without buying something. I decided I would force my self to do the math and see exactly what the damage was. I figure every time I work I spend an average of $8.00. That basically means for every shift I work I am working one hour for free. And I'm honestly not saying this is bad. I actually did the same thing when I used to work at the bookstore but it was much, much worse because I got paid about the same amount I get paid now but I would spend more on the books. I generally don't do large grocery shopping trips--I tend to do smaller shopping trips once or twice and week-and many of things I buy are on sale, so $8.00 bucks a trip doesn't seem that bad to me. But there are definitely times when I make impulse purchases or buy something just because I'm already at the store and it's so convenient to just grab it. And once in a while I buy food to eat on break which is money I wouldn't otherwise be spending. Although lately I have been bringing snack packs from home so I have something to eat on my break. That seems to be working out well. So I am going to make a conscience effort to try to limit the amount I spend when I go shopping at work but mostly they pay me money for working there and I just turn around and give it right back. I image this happens to a lot of people working customer service(or maybe I just have no willpower). I think that if I worked at Old Navy or Macy's or Target I would just spend half my paycheck right there.

Just say what you mean

A woman and her daughter came through my line over the weekend and right from the start she was mean and nasty. But it was the beginning of my shift and since I had just gotten there I was pretty patient with her. As I was scanning her order there were two items at the end that she pulled aside and said, "These are separate." So I said, "Ok.", and continued scanning her order. I rang her up and gave her the total. She slide her credit card through and paid. Then as I was putting some of her groceries in a bag she huffed and said impatiently, "Well you didn't ring up these other two items with the rest of my order." Now normally, I don't outright contradict customers and I would have just let it go and apologized for not ringing up the whole order together but now this woman was really starting to piss me off so I decided to speak up. I told her (as calmly as I could and trying to be polite) "I didn't ring them up yet because I thought you said you wanted that to be a separate order." "I wanted it to be bagged separately, not a separate order!" she snapped at me. She then huffed and said, "Well now I have to find my card again." and she made a big show of digging through her entire purse before finally pulling out her wallet out and getting her card. I would also like to point out that she had just had her card out literally 5 seconds earlier so it could not have been that hard to find.

Now I have tried to be empathetic to the customer's point of view here--it might have been mildly annoying to have to get her card out again but in the grand scheme of things it is not that big of a deal. It was only an extra 2 items. It took less then a minute to scan and bag them. But the point that I would really like to make is that the whole situation was really easily avoided if she had just clearly stated what she wanted in the first place. All she had to do was say what she meant. All she had to say was, "I would like these bagged separately, please." These 7 little words would have solved the whole problem! Or just say, "Please bag these separately." I guess that was too difficult for her to do so she just expected me to psychically know what she meant when she said, "These are separate." Which is as ambiguous as Ryan Seacrest's sexuality. And if she hadn't been so nasty I might have asked her ahead of time what she meant but I just didn't feel like dealing with her. And she seemed to be in a rush but she was wasting her own time--not mine--I had to be there either way.

Don't spend it all it one place

I was at work the other night when Carrie came up and handed me a letter in a sealed envelope. At first I just took it and said, 'Thank you.' Not really paying attention to what she had given me, I just assumed it was my paycheck. I finished checking out my customer and looked at what Carrie had just handed me. When I looked at it again I realized it wasn't my paycheck, it was actually a letter with letterhead from the corporate office. My mind ran through all the possibilities. Was I in trouble? What had I done? Was I being named employee of the decade?--ha ha. I tore open the envelope and read the letter. As it turned out it was none of those things. The letter said, 'We are pleased to inform you that based on your performance and length of employment you have been approved for a pay increase. Your current hourly wage is $8.15 an hour.' I thought to myself, "Oh my god! Now I know what it must feel like to win the lottery! What will I do with all the extra money? I can buy myself that brand new car and finally take that trip to the Caribbean! Or...maybe not. Now, of course, a pay raise is always good news and I don't want to sound ungrateful but I think most people would agree that a .25 cent raise doesn't really amount to much. So as I said any raise is nice but it is sort of disheartening to see in black and white that your monetary value is $8.15 an hour. I just hope I don't go spending that extra 15 cents all in one place.