Beware the green bags

Shopper Report, The,  May, 2008  

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Many of the shoppers who carry increasingly trendy reusable shopping bags into the supermarket or specialty store use the bags to hold some their purchases aside to stay colder, scan, or pack separately for mom or a neighbor, or for any of a dozen other possible reasons, including pilfering. I've seen shoppers say "Wait a sec" when cashiers and baggers were about to place scanned purchases into one of their totes. They then empty the contents of the tote, perhaps a few frozen entrees and yogurts, onto the counter, and the associate resumes.

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I haven't actually seen anyone get bagged merchandise through a checkout without paying for it, and it's entirely possible that environmentally responsible bag-toting consumers would find slipping a few freebies into their bag too shameful to contemplate. But when prices are high, so is temptation. And so is the opportunity for other shoppers to observe what looks like an easy path to freebies.

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COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning