Grocery Store Bags

I appreciate grocery stores' efforts to provide customers with reusable bags (even thought they are late to the game, since Ukrop's started doing this over 20 years ago, back when "reduce, reuse, recycle" hadn't been reduced to "recycle"). My apartment quickly fills with plastic bags from various establishments, and I simply do not produce enough waste to use them all up as cheap trash bags. So bags that save me from suffocating in a pile of plastic are fine by me.

The problem, however, is that the baggers seem to think that because the bags are more sturdy than a plastic or paper bag, they must therefore be capable of supporting infinite weight. They stuff edible items, heavy and light, into my bags until there is room for nary a candy bar, with no mind to the strength of either the stitching in the bag or the customer before them.

If one places items that would have taken up three plastic bags that I would have easily carried in one hand, you have saved my fingers from the task of gripping six handles. But if the weight is such that I must use both arms for one bag, aside from the fact that it makes it more obvious that I need to start lifting weights, chances are that my reusable bag will become simply... used. I have already split one seam in a bag all the way. Another has a hole that will grow should I every burden it will more than fruit. A dollar a bag is not a deal if it falls apart after three uses.

So, dear baggers, something to remember. Space capacity is not the same as weight capacity. Also, they're reusable. You don't have to conserve them by minimizing the number used. Have pity on my weak little arms!