Paper or plastic?

The cashier at Shop Rite wanted my Price Plus card. I was buying a bag of cat litter. $2.29. She demanded my Price Plus card. I wondered why. What sort of marketing research can they be doing at Shop Rite headquarters that says, "People with cats buy cat litter." You just never know when he'll start pooping.

Then, the lady at the liquor store wanted to know if I wanted a receipt with my six-pack of Golden Monkey. "No," I said, "We don't need any proof of this." It leads me to believe that large numbers of alcoholics are demanding receipts.

To follow up on yesterday's opinion of having "a snowball's chance in Hell" of getting those AIG bonuses back, this appeared in today's Inquirer:

Experts in employment law say the administration faces high legal hurdles because the bonuses, paid with federal bailout funds, apparently were mandated by contracts that would be difficult to break. "If it is in an employment agreement, there is an obligation to pay the bonus," said John Martini, a Philadelphia-based lawyer and expert on employment contracts at Reed Smith L.L.P.
"Typically, there is no wiggle room." Steven Balsam, a professor of accounting at Temple University's Fox School of Business, said he doubted the company had much choice in paying the bonuses, nor did the government absent the force of moral persuasion.
So that's that. No wiggle room for the snowball. My guess is that, if the government decides to press the issue the ensuing legal costs will be pretty much equal to the bonuses.

Meanwhile, here's another of those "new studies" that I find so fascinating:
LONDON – Being obese can take years off your life and in some cases may be as dangerous as smoking, a new study says. British researchers at the University of Oxford analyzed 57 studies mostly in Europe and North America, following nearly one million people for an average of 10 to 15 years. During that time, about 100,000 of those people died.
There ya go. I'm guessing that if you followed a million people for 15 years that a fairly large percentage of them would die regardless of how fat they were, but it provided a nice income for the gang at Oxford (love your shoes) and further proof that being fat is bad.

I'd like a receipt.