Things I dislike about modern society

From what I have read; The 9/10 cent price thing started with a federal tax on gas, way back when gas was around 10 cents a gallon, a full penny would have been too much so they used tenths. Once the practice was in place, gas stations exploited the fractional cents for marketing 1.99/9 appears cheaper than 2.00, same as the .99 is ubiquitous in retail. Apparently the rounding up of fractional cents adds up to around half a billion dollars a year, so it's probably not going away anytime soon.
 
I remember as a kid buying our milk from a local dairy packaged in glass gallon jugs. The jugs were returned on each visit, washed and reused. About 20% of the time the milk was sour. I have not seen sour milk in a plastic jug for many years and then, it was after it had been opened by me.
Beer and soft drinks used to come in glass that was reused. My brother in law worked in a brewery out of high school and used to wash the glass returns. He would occasionally find a dead mouse in a returned bottle.

Surgical instruments and syringes used to be autoclaved to ensure sterility. Nowadays, they are one time use packaged in sealed plastic. One on my pet peeves is seeing people in the produce section examining the produce with a microscope before tossing it back into the bin. When I am picking produce out, I go to the very back of the bin where it is less likely to have been touched by numerous hands.

There is a big push to have people buy local organic produce. It has been our observation that the oranic produce is more likely to be contaminated with insect life and it spoils more quickly the the "industrial" produce.

As to the use of plastic bags, I package my produce on the way to the checkout. No way do I want to just throw it into the cart where who knows contamination resides and have it handled by the person at the checkout, not knowing what they have previously handled.
 
GeneT45 said:
I was told many years ago that the .99 thing started to curb theft *by the employees*. A 'round' sum was readily paid with exact change, and if the employee didn't have to make change it was easy to pocket the cash without ringing anything up. Having to get at least a penny back was supposed to force the employee to ring up the sale - creating some accountability.

That would not seem applicable to the partial penny at the pump - but perhaps that has a different reason.

GsT
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I think credit cards have pretty much wiped out that problem. Especially at major brand gas stations that are always trying to push their card on you. One restaurant that I used to frequent a lot has started a no cash, credit or debit cards only policy.

Tom
 
Remember when (in the US at least) that you would use a written check for most purchases then when CC took over, businesses started refusing to take checks. Looks like the same is going to happen with Cash now. Not sure that is a bad thing.
 
Boswell said:
Remember when (in the US at least) that you would use a written check for most purchases then when CC took over, businesses started refusing to take checks. Looks like the same is going to happen with Cash now. Not sure that is a bad thing.
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Just the opposite is happening at places we do business in our area. More and more businesses are starting to prefer cash to credit cards. Within the last couple months several either refuse credit cards or add a 3% charge for using them.
 
Not long ago I bought breakfast at a well-known fast food chain. The amount of plastic waste was absolutely appalling, the worst I've seen. I took a picture and sent a complaint to corporate.

California had such a problem with the lightweight single-use grocery bags that they were banned. As a concession to the grocery industry, they were allowed to SELL heavier weight, reuseable bags at $.10 each. Now those damn things are everywhere. Just give me back the free paper bags, for which they also charge a dime.

I too long for the returnable milk bottles like grandma used to get, though I don't object to the gable-top cartons. The plastic jugs are the worst. From time to time, when buying a gallon, the clerk will ask if I want it bagged. I look him/her in the eye and say "It's already in a disposable plastic container with a handle, why would I need another?"

All beer bottles, carbonated beverage and water containers have a CRV (California Redemption Value) added to the sale price. They are (in theory) recycled but not reused. Not so on wine or other containers whether glass or plastic. All of it ends up in piles or bales, waiting to be shipped somewhere so someone else can do something with it. To compound the problem, we use more oil to make plastics than anything else (including fuel). I envision a day in the dystopian future when we will be mining our landfills.
 
MrWhoopee said:
Not long ago I bought breakfast at a well-known fast food chain. The amount of plastic waste was absolutely appalling, the worst I've seen. I took a picture and sent a complaint to corporate.

California had such a problem with the lightweight single-use grocery bags that they were banned. As a concession to the grocery industry, they were allowed to SELL heavier weight, reuseable bags at $.10 each. Now those damn things are everywhere. Just give me back the free paper bags, for which they also charge a dime.

I too long for the returnable milk bottles like grandma used to get, though I don't object to the gable-top cartons. The plastic jugs are the worst. From time to time, when buying a gallon, the clerk will ask if I want it bagged. I look him/her in the eye and say "It's already in a disposable plastic container with a handle, why would I need another?"

All beer bottles, carbonated beverage and water containers have a CRV (California Redemption Value) added to the sale price. They are (in theory) recycled but not reused. Not so on wine or other containers whether glass or plastic. All of it ends up in piles or bales, waiting to be shipped somewhere so someone else can do something with it. To compound the problem, we use more oil to make plastics than anything else (including fuel). I envision a day in the dystopian future when we will be mining our landfills.
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One of the main reasons for switching to one time use plastic containers was cost. The machinery, cost to store, wash, and reuse glass bottles was well beyond the cost to produce the plastic bottle. At the time there was no consideration for the need to recycle anything. We were living in a disposable society. By the time the light went on that we could no longer just throw away every container the machinery once used for refillable bottles was long gone.

If we want to go back to the reusable bottles, we'll have to reinvent the wheel so to speak as far as storage, and cleaning and packaging machines are concerned. While the old ones did the job today's version will need to be more automated. At a minimum wage of $15.00 an hour the labor cost of running the old machines and storing the clean and dirty bottles will outweigh any savings from attempting to reuse the containers.
 
markba633csi said:
If we ever stop using fossil fuel for transportation, we'll still have the problem of packaging
I think we should go back to wax paper and foil, and bioplastics made from veggies
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I take somewhat bitter consolation in the fact that someday there won't be any fossil fuels left and we'll have to do what we should have done anyway.
 
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