Comments on: The Other Brown Paper Bag

By: WhiteCoat

WhiteCoat — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:12:54 +0000

When my wife’s grandfather died and we cleaned out his apartment, he had a freezer full of rolls he had taken home from the diner down the street. Supposedly he would put all the rolls into a bag and then ask the waitress for more.
I kind of think we ingrain this behavior in ourselves at a young age. We encourage kids to start collections of various worthless things and then the “collection” gene never turns off.
My son will shovel the driveway right now for a $2 pack of “GoGos” even though he has a damn Tupperware container full of them.

By: Soronel Haetir

Soronel Haetir — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:24:00 +0000

Unfortunately HP printer quality has gone down the toilet in recent years. The old ones are very good but the new ones are built cheap and it shows. Unfortunately all of the low end consumer printers are like that now.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:37:50 +0000

I too love getting useful materials for free. I live by the university medical center here, so I was beyond happy when I found their cardboard recycle pile consisting of a hundred boxes a day. Cardboard, bublewrap, and styrofoam have a million and one uses (cardboard = cheap wood, bubblewrap = cheap shock absorbers, styrofoam = great sound and thermal insulation) so it works out well in my “direct recycling” scheme.

@Katherine, a “cheap” (~$70) black and white laser from HP is a very good investment. Even if you only print a handful of pages a day, the machine will pay for itself since toner never dries up like ink, and the machines last forever…got a 4 page per minute one still printing 15 years later. Over the past 2 years I’ve printed about 4000 pages and saved roughly $160 vs. paying to print each page.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:02:23 +0000

What I would love at my work is the opportunity to pay for stuff that I print there. I don’t have a printer at home, and when I do buy one it isn’t likely to be as good as the ones at work. I only print the occasional thing so it isn’t really worth buying my own

By: Cyndi

Cyndi — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:03:56 +0000

My grandfather who died in’08 just shy of his 90th birthday had mugs full of cheap pens at his house. Once I asked him why he had so many assorted pens and he proudly shared that every time he signed a credit card slip he kept the pen.

The man was quite well off, but nothing pleased him more than to strike a bargain to save a $1 on a spool of weed eater line at the local flea market.

Depression era economics? Character flaw? Petty theif? I still shake my head.

By: DefendUSA

DefendUSA — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:51:12 +0000

If you don’t have a sense of humor, then much of the time the job you do would wear you down…

Thanks for a good laugh!

By: SeaSpray

SeaSpray — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:36:13 +0000

Ha ha! Funny WC!

Maybe they were poor and they save money that way or they do it just because they can. Maybe the chest pains were brought on by the stress of the great heist and get-a-way!

Did you check your pockets? Still have your stethoscope?

When I was a teenager, my aunt used to steal hotel towels for my hair. I always felt weird using them because they were white with the *hotel name imprinted* right on them and so I was always reminded. I don’t know why she did that because she had plenty of towels and could buy all the towels she wanted.

When my girlfriend’s father would take us in a store where they had open barrels of candy ..he always took one for each of us and said it was okay ..that the store expects people to taste the candy.

You know how people will take office supplies from work? They think no one will miss the clips, pens,post it notes and yet that adds up to a lot of money multiplied how many times over. I never do that. I asked my boss once if it was alright for me to take home the left over blank stickers (good for organizing used to identify the various paperwork that we would just throw out and she did say yes. Although ..I did copy non work items and so that is using up paper… and so I’m not a saint either.

Thanks for the laugh.

By: ndenunz

ndenunz — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:26:36 +0000

Better start counting the Bandaids and gauze pads, too.