Tuesday, July 10, 2007
convenience store bagging
At Japanese convenience stores, it's standard that cold and hot items be placed in separate plastic bags for the customer's convenience and satisfaction. So you often end up with two little plastic bags; one holding your bottled drink and one for your teriyaki burger or french fries. I usually use plastic bags as trash bags, so the little versions aren't very useful for me. Also, I don't really care if my drink gets hot or my bento lunch cools down a bit from being in the same bag, so I usually ask that they put the stuff together. I always have to get the request in pretty quickly otherwise they've already put my stuff into bags, so it's a challenge of timing it to right after they've given me my change. The same with the cases when I don't need a bag (I've been carrying around my blue Moomin eco-bag). If I'm not quick enough, everything's in a bag before I know it, and then I feel bad asking them to unbag it.
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4 comments:
Ha ha, I totally know what you mean. I'm always trying to catch people before they bag my stuff and am always returning straws/chopsticks/etc. Although the bagging thing is not so bad now that most places are required by law to charge you for bags, so they ask first. I think Germany originally started the practice - it's great!
Ooh, that's a good practice. Only a couple stores do that here. They had some ad campaigns about using re-usable bags for shopping, but I don't see too many people using them.
Straws and chopsticks are interesting - sometimes they ask if you want them but usually they just stick them in.
Some supermarkets (I know the AEON chain of markets for sure) charge, others just offer extra points for bringing your own bag, which isn't as much of an incentive.
If I'm buying just one thing I usually tell them to just put a "seal" on instead of getting a bag.
Life supermarket offers points, but I've only run across a few stores that charged for bags.
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