A few weeks ago, I driving home from the barn, dying of thirst and completely out of water. I took quick detour to Giant and grabbed a Vitamin water drink, since I hate buying bottled water - might as well spend the money on something with flavor, right? (Side note: Vitamin Water 10 is gross. I know they glorify it because it's naturally flavored with Acai, but to me it tastes like Sweet N Low. Blech.)

Anyway, I pay for my drink, and the register spits out a receipt about as long as my forearm. Seriously? A 14 inch receipt for a $1.50 bottle of yuckiness?

The offending receipt.

The worst part is, if I had paid with a credit card, the receipt would have been 3 inches longer because they print out a separate CC portion. Ridiculous.

What's the big deal, you say. Here's my problem with it: Giant tries to pass off this image of being an environmentally friendly grocery store chain. They have the bins in front for recycling plastic bags, they sell reusable shopping bags, their stores are energy efficient, blah blah blah. However, they apparently don't seem to follow the whole idea of conserving paper. Every other grocery store I've been to uses at least half the amount of paper in their receipts. From what I've seen, they use smaller font, shorter line heights, no stupid logo, and generally don't put erroneous crap that no one reads (e.g., sub sandwich points).

Ideally, grocery stores would be like gas stations and give you the option not to print a receipt… or, better yet, electronic receipts. The only downside to that would be missing out on those coupons on the back that everyone uses. (insert sarcasm here.)

Awhile back (before the Vitamin Water incident), I even wrote Giant an e-mail asking about whether they were planning on modifying their receipt machines so they'd be somewhat shorter and less wasteful. The dude that wrote me back said they were planning on fixing this, but that was about 6-7 months ago, and obviously nothing has happened.