It's all in the phrasing.

I’m a bit of a hippie. I will fully and openly admit that. I try to reuse anything I can and use fewer resources whenever possible. I’m not actually that good at this whole green living thing, but I’ve got some good Catholic guilt going on whenever I don’t bring my reusable bags to the grocery store, or take a shower that’s longer than necessary. So, even though I may not be so great and example of living green, I do try to contribute where I can. That includes simply not taking a bag if I’ve bought something that I can carry without it.

Along with that, I encourage others to do the same.

I work at a music store and a lot of customers buy only one or two items at a time, definitely a reasonable amount to carry without assistance for most people, especially those with a decent sized purse. More as a means to cut costs (because Dimple is cheap) we don’t automatically give every customer a bag with their purchases. The practices that each of us use to find out if a customer wants a bag vary a bit.

I’ve recently heard a lot of, “Do you want a bag for this?” When I ask a customer, my question is whether or not they, “need” a bag. Just that one little word difference is a whole different message. I don’t know how many customers are swayed by the one little word, but I hope that enough of them are.

With words having such a significant meaning, I can only imagine what one could really do with a full essay. Let’s hope that I find a magic way to communicate that to some teenagers within the next couple of years!