Paper or Paper?

Paper or Paper?
I hate it! I love it!

Beginning Saturday, our FM store, along with others around the area started running out of plastic bags. the warehouse isn't coming through, so we're stuck with ordering an overly abundant amount of paper bags.

Paper bags, although having the ability to carry more volume-wise than plastic, are a heavy promoter of dry hands and paper cuts that I'd just rather not deal with. But since Sunday, I've had to. Bag after bag I slam them down and throw shit in. Bitter at whatever caused the plastic shortage. But what can you do? The QFC across the way is out. Bellevue and Lake City and other Fred Meyers are equally experiencing our pain.

Me? Well, although its a pain in the ass, I've found something in all this madness that puts a smile on my face.

Tell me if this is wrong.

I LOVE saying NO to the customer.

Since when have I been able to do that? Never.
The customer sees the paper bag getting plopped down:

"I want plastic!"
"Could I get plastic?"

And for the real intuitive:
"Are you out of plastic?"

Depending on the actions of the customer, I gauge my response. From the top two responses to seeing the paper bags, depending on the tone, I could either give a, "Nope. We're out." and leave it at that, or if the person strikes me as a decent person, I'll go into the spiel that I did above to inform them a bit about the drought we're experiencing.

I love the final response the most and will be the most kind to those people.
They look at were there are usually reams of plastic bags, and notice there's not even ONE sitting on the rack. Hence, I'm not out to fuck them over with paper, I just have no plastic.
They get a fucking gold star for thinking before they speak.

But is that really evil of me? To get my jollies from turning people down? Most people don't realize the amount of catering that a grocery clerk, such as myself, has to endure just to make some rude fatass more able to waddle up the 8 steps to their house.
Of course there are nice people out there who know what it's like to be in my position, but there in an increasingly larger population that forget that there's a whole world out there full of people that aren't them.
Those are the people that I salivate for to come through my line in these coming days.

FUCK YOU! TAKE YOUR HANDLELESS PAPER BAGS, FATASS!
I DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH YOU ONCE YOU'RE OUT OF MY REGISTER.
SOME EXERCISE MIGHT ACTAULLY DO YOU WELL. THREE MORE TRIPS UP THE STAIRS WON'T KILL YOU. Well, in your case it might.

What a fucking delight.
See, I wouldn't think it were so bad, but I doubt that many of my coworkers feel the same way.
They just see it as coping with a new obstacle.

Which brings me to my other topic I wanted to cover.
In reading my book, Collapse, it seems that all societies succumb to their doom through one of two manners.
1) hostile overthrow. 2) lack of resources.

Although FM ain't goin' down simply because it ran out of the once seemingly ubiquitous plastic bags, the nerd in me took notice of how the dwindling resources seemed to dissappear.

Being a parcel on Saturday, D-Day to some, I got an outside view of the goings-down of the plastic bag dispersal: cashiers frantically rummaging through the lesser used checkstands for unclaimed bundles of plastic bags, me walking by the backs with my own unclaimed bundles, passing to see who needed them the most (or who I liked the most). Cashiers who received tribute shouted how much they loved me for my generosity. Others grabbed their bundles and hid them away.

Getting down to the end of all plastics in our department, I thought I'd pilage the other two departments that have registers at the other two enterances. I sweet-talked the girl from apparel into giving me a few bundles.

See over there, they were not away of the mayhem that was about to come upon them. How devious am I? I should be a politician.

Then I went to the other entrance and scoped out the place. Nothing but a half empty box of plastic bags. Feeling sorry for them, I took only half and left them unknowingly to a quicker run-in with the paper-only trend that will soon hit.

The reconnaissance went fairly well and I distributed those bundles as I had previously done.

But this was the thing that actually interested me. Even though I was given or stole bags from either entrance, they still outlasted us!
By the time Sunday rolled around and it was my time to face the music, apparell and hardware were still going strong with their plastic bags, while we at the central checkstands had totally blown through our supply.

Is that how it is in the real world?
The largest consumer, even if they get the largest influx of a resource/product, will diminish them sooner than a smaller, lower density user. I guess that makes sense. It was just confusing because we had massive quantities, and they were left with next to nothing and yet they still survived longer than we did even through the trade and pilaging.

This is probably how it would go down in the real world. Before supplies are totally diminished, the larger consumer would act in the similar way: nicely request supplies from some and squarshing others, however probably for their complete supply.

My question is this:

Is this what we're doing right now with oil?
Is it that close to the end? Or just close enough to enact these methods...

And then a further question:

Will we then, being the largest consumer, be the first to be devastated by the lack of oil, whereas other, less dependent societies will still continue to thrive a while longer to a point where alternative fueling sources can be found?

It's an interesting thought.
Is that what has brought down other great societies?
Their demise was brought upon them from the relative depletion of a luxury item?
Enough to where their dependence upon the resource can't be met within that society, but can still be sustained in other smaller outliers?

Damn. I wish I had answers.
I guess that's what archaeology is all about: physically finding them.