KINGSTON- A 31-year-old Kingston man saved 5 cents today at the Hannaford grocery store on Ulster Ave. by carrying 13 grocery items in his arms from the store to his 2016 Volkswagen Golf to avoid paying the 5-cent-per-bag surcharge.
“When the prompt came up on the self-checkout machine asking if I wanted to use paper bags for 5 cents a piece, I just remember thinking, ‘Hell no, I’m not going to lose 5 cents if I can avoid it,’” said Jeff Sanchez. “I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I figured as long as I could get the items to my car, I was good. Luckily, I was successful.”
Sanchez managed to carry the following items using only his hands and arms:
- 3 avocados
- 2 tomatoes
- 1 bag green lettuce
- 2 boxes Annie’s Shells and White Cheddar Macaroni and Cheese
- 1 16-oz bag 8 O’Clock coffee
- 2 bags frozen spinach (storebrand)
- 2 12-oz packages Oscar Mayer Hickory Smoked bacon
Hudson Valley Mountain River News was able to confirm Sanchez’s achievement using video from the overhead camera on the store’s ECRS Self-Checkout machine. The video revealed several false-starts before he arrived at the proper approach.
“If I had someone there feeding me the items, I could have easily carried even more,” said Sanchez. “But I was flying solo. That meant once one of my hands were full, that was it, I couldn’t use that hand to place any more items under the other arm. So I had to consider both placement (which items were best suited for the area between each arm and torso and which required the more secure grip only a hand can provide) and sequence (so I could place the items in their designated spots without dropping any).”
The county’s paper bag surcharge was instituted last year following passage of a law banning plastic bags and levying a 5-cent charge for each paper bag used. Dubbed the “Bring Your Own Bag Act,” the law was intended to cut down on waste and promote the use of reusable cloth shopping bags. (Sanchez said he owns several such bags but often forgets to bring them.)
Retail psychologist Glen O’Connor said such laws work because even a small fee creates an incentive toward the desired action thanks to what’s known as “loss aversion.”
“What is remarkable is in this case, while the subject was willing to go to great effort to avoid a small surcharge for a bag that would have substantially improved the ease of transporting his items to his vehicle, he made no attempt to apply that same frugality to his actual shopping. The subject brought no coupons and has repeatedly declined to enroll in the My Hannaford Rewards program. On just the items he bought alone, he could have saved $3.50; that’s 70 times more than he saved by not using a paper bag!”