Refuse the Receipt

As ya'll know, I'm a big fan of changing things one small step at a time. Here's another great grassroots idea from my friend Jeffrey Abramson, who runs the Gen Art Film Festival...

REFUSE THE RECEIPT!!!

"Refuse the Receipt" . . . what an unbelievable amount of paper is wasted and sent to the landfill when stores automatically print out receipts. I'm sure that 99.9% of receipts printed immediately get tossed in the trash. People should have to request receipts (like they should have to request a bag). It's ridiculous that some stores have policies that if they do not just give you a receipt you will get something for free!

So I encourage people to tell store clerks to not print a receipt . . .and if they have to - then refuse to take it - let them watch the receipts pile up in their own trash and maybe they will start to realize what a problem it is!

Comments

[Jenn]

This is a good idea in theory, but what if I need to return something? It can take hours to locate a singular transaction in a database, provided that the customer knows some pretty specific parameters (date, time frame, method of payment). Stores have receipts as their own source of CYA. Like I said, good idea in theory, but this will probably be next to impossible to implement. I for one keep every single receipt. Even if it's just for McDonald's, for at least a year. Then I recycle it.

[Mother Earth]

I took this on this last year, and love it -I had a drawer for saving these useless pieces of paper that is now empty. I use my debit card for most of my transactions. So if I need to go back for a return I ask retailers to look me up in their system, based on the date. My debit card records tell the whole story - it's all there and it's all online. Clean and Green! Not hard to implement at all. I love it when a store asks me if I need a reciept. I get to say no!

[jserra]

I know you advise users that there isn't a way to permanently change their margin settings, but mac users on word 2008, and possibly 2004, can edit the template file word uses so when a user selects to create a new blank document it uses the new settings. It is therefore unnecessary to petition Microsoft to change the margins.

All the user needs to do is find the template file. For word 2008,
the normal template file is located at:

Users home directory >Library>Application
Support>Microsoft>Office>User Templates>Normal.dotm

If they navigate to the above file, open it, change their margins and save the file, each time they start a new document it will have the new settings. IT IS IMPORTANT THEY KEEP THE FILENAME EXACTLY AS IT IS: Normal.dotm.

As I was typing this I decided to look through my old files and see
where ms office 2004 kept its default template. Locate the file the same was as described above only go to this directory.

Users home directory>Documents>Microsoft user data>Normal.dot

The file on my system does not have a file extension attached, but it recognizes the file as a .dot. USERS SHOULD OPEN THE (NORMAL) FILE FROM WORD BY GOING TO FILE>OPEN. IT IS IMPORTANT THAT NO OPEN BLANK DOCUMENTS EXIST OR WORD WILL NOT LET USERS SAVE THE (NORMAL) FILE.

I know if there is a way to do this on a mac that the windows version must work the same.

I hope this helps your users change the margins in a more hassle free way.