As I approached the checkout in an organic grocery store the other day, the cashier asked me, “Are you a member?” “No,” I said. He was visibly disappointed. “After all, this isn’t the members’ only club,” I continued. The lanky, curly-haired cashier smiled meekly and tenderly began scanning my items. After some silence, I decided to start up the conversation with, “You know the clothing brand, ‘Member’s Only’? Didn’t Michael Jackson wear a Members’ Only jacket?” The cashier faintly smiled again, and I added, “Yeah, he definitely did.” After the aloof cashier finished scanning my items, he outstretched his hand for payment. When the transaction was completed, he blankly stared at me. After several uncomfortable seconds, I asked, “Can I get a bag?” At first, he gawked at me. Then he let out a drawn-out, powerful exhale. “No, but, like, we can give you a cardboard box.”

This cashier was a jerk. A not-so-recent-study has shown that merely looking at organic food can make people judgmental. Yes, merely looking at organic food.

This study was conducted by Kendall Eskine, a professor at Loyola University in New Orleans. The research team divided research participants into three groups. One group looked at images of organic food. I wasn’t aware that organic food looked a certain way. The second group was shown images of comfort foods. And the third, control group, was shown images of non-organic, non-comfort foods, like ketchup and mustard. The researchers then asked the participants to rate how willing they would be to help a stranger. Participants were also asked judge fictional characters. The researchers discovered that the organic food group was less likely to give more of their time helping a needy stranger. The organic food group also judged the fictional characters more harshly.

So, did the cashier not like me because of my personality? Or was he mean because he stared at vegetables for too long?

The customer service at organic grocery stores is much different than the experience at an All-American grocery store, like Walmart. Walmart. Where you are uncomfortably greeted and given a plethora of plastic bags. At organic grocery stores, the employees are stand-offish and there’s an extremely limited selection of bags.

The system of expecting people to bring their own bags to the grocery store relies on people being planners, but that isn’t how the world works. That’s why there are so many people on this planet. Not all of us are born planners. Some of us are more spontaneous, like myself. I reserve the right to take my Segway to the grocery store if I feel like it. And sometimes, bringing a reusable bag doesn’t fit into the mix.

Plastic bags are the backbone of our society. Could you imagine what would happen if we went packaging-free? They’ve been around for centuries. The founding fathers reportedly used plastic bags as makeshift lunch bags. Furthermore, what would happen to our tiny waste baskets?

For reusable bags to pay off, they must be used hundreds of times. A reusable cotton tote must be reused every day for an entire year before the energy used for production becomes equivalent to the production of one plastic bag. A canvas bag needs to be reused 171 times before the energy used for production becomes equal to one plastic bag. Reusable bags are also better for animals. Plastic bags sometimes make their way to the ocean, which ultimately threatens marine life. Marine animals sometimes mistake the plastic bags for food, but, hey, who hasn’t done that at some point? After all, the HyVee logo does look pretty delicious.