1kr for a bag

I just paid 1kr for a plastic bag at Lagerhaus--a trend setting knickknack shop with high-priced crap. Some stuff is fun so I like to peek in and buy me some cheap crap.

Ringing up cheap crap I see that Lagerhaus has joined the penny-pinching retailers who charge customers for a bag to carry their goodies home. Back when, only supermarkets and IKEA were stingy enough to charge for a bag. Systembolaget followed suit and now the flash retailers have turned to sucking pennies/kronor out of us consumers.

I was so close to asking the poor shop assistant, "Isn't it embarrassing to charge customers a krona for a bag?" Because it has to be. You buy several hundred kronor of inventory and they want to charge a krona--one krona--to take it home with you in a bag.

The argument I hear people use to defend this greedy practice is "Otherwise people take a whole bunch of bags home with them." However, before this trend mushroomed, the retail shops put your purchases in a bag they took from behind the counter and handed you the whole shebang. Now you not only have to pay for the bag, but put your own cheap crap away.

I can accept that I'm stuck somewhere between a cheapskate and thrifty with irrational bursts of spend-thriftiness. I would like to think I am always generous --but that's not what this is about.

It's about us consumers allowing ourselves to get suckered out of kronor here and there and we think it's just and fair...we're fools. If I have a shop and I could get away with having people pay an admission fee I suppose I would do it. If people are wasteful enough with their money to throw it away--I suppose my motto should be the same as the cheap crap shops...

Throw it my way.