Cashier shamed elderly woman for plastic bags. Response left the rude man feeling like a fool

Maybe the real reason behind global warming and other environmental issues is that we just got lazy, relying on unnecessary technologies to do our everyday chores.

Good Inside Us told the story about an unnamed elderly woman who had to put a young cashier at a grocery store in her place after the cashier started sermonizing about wasting plastic bags and hip conservationism.

This is how the story goes: The old woman was coming through this young cashier’s checkout line. As the older lady started checking out, the cashier tried to remind her that using plastic bags for one’s groceries is not the most eco-friendly thing to do nowadays.

The cashier recommended the elderly woman to start bringing her own reusable grocery bags to reduce unnecessary waste. At first, the customer apologized and even explained herself telling the cashier: ‘We didn’t have this ‘green thing’ back in my earlier days.’

The old lady was being secretly condescendent to the girl who wasn’t aware that she was messing with the wrong elder because this woman certainly knew one thing or two about living a more sustainable life back in her days.

The old woman thought that this apology was going to be enough, but the cashier wouldn’t have it and kept going, telling her: ‘That’s our problem today, your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.’

This arrogant accusation to her entire generation by an uninformed youngster gave fuel to the old woman, who decided to teach the girl a lesson reminding her the way things used to work at least 50 years ago in the western world.

‘Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles, and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled,’ started the old lady.

She really had many things to say to prove that when she was young people had habits that were more sustainable than contemporary habits even though back in those days it wasn’t a trend and didn’t have a name.

The elderly woman went on to inform the cashier about the many uses her generation gave to brown paper bags from groceries, for example, to protect school books to make sure not to damage public property, as the books were passed to other students in time.

She also reminded the girl that back in the day people washed the baby’s diapers instead of using disposables. The old woman kept going about how in her time clothes were dried on a line, using only wind and solar power.

Certainly, her generation relied less on electricity and machines than on their own efforts. ‘We blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us.’

These were only a few of the things the old lady pointed out to the baffled cashier in her speech, and the cashier had no words to reply to the proud woman, who finally gathered her things up and left the store.