I can't help but notice that receipts seem to be getting bigger. Back in the 'day when you went to a store and bought something, you got this little half-slip of paper with the transaction jabbed into it with runny blue ink. I went to pet smart yesterday to pick up a bag of cat food. That was it, just a bag, and they printed out a receipt that was as long as my arm. Not only was every minute detail of the transaction covered, but there was rebate info, tantalizing information on how you might get a coupon, and a plead to go online to take a survey. I walked outside holding my bag of cat food while the receipt bellowed out behind me in the wind like a Japanese paper streamer.
Most stores these days have these large receipts. Best buy and circuit city are some of the worse. They bring out receipts so long and so full of irrelevant information that you wonder why they do not use an ordinary sheet of typing paper. It would be easier to read than inching over some long receipt as if it was a mysterious scroll.
It takes time for these monsters to print out as well. Cashiers take on the momentary zombified stance I call the 'printer pause'. The tip of the receipt will poke out of the top of the machine, which is when the cashier will first grab it. They will then go slack jaw and gaze into space as the rest of the receipt slowly prints out. I do not think they are actually thinking anything in that brief moment, I think their brain actually shuts down. From their perspective it seems like they had grabbed the top of the paper, and suddenly the entire world lurched, and they are magically holding a long ass receipt.
I admit I do not keep receipts, unless it was from a large or expensive purchase that I might have to return. I give it a brief glace to make sure the cashier did not charge me $2,499 for a $24.99 product. It then ends up either on my car floor, stuffed in my wallet, or in the bottom of a bag. There they will enjoy a brief life in limbo before it finally gets tossed away.
I used to abuse gas station receipt tickers for my own amusement. These are the receipt machines built directly into the gas pump. It used to be when one of those starting spitting out your receipt you could grab it and give it a hard yank and it would pull out three or four feet of thermal paper. Meanwhile the printer would have made a long squiggly line on the receipt when was actually rather interesting to behold. However, modern pump receipts do not seem to let you do that any more. I know, I tried. Now they just break off in your hand, either that or they are already cut before they are spit out.
They should give you your receipt in microdot. Or better yet you can plug your USB jump drive into the cash register and it will spit a text file on to it that contains your receipt. That would actually be useful. Until you lost your USB drive. Then you would curse and say how stupid it was and how receipts should come printed on paper.
2026 Update
I'm setting the dial for 2006 to watch Ed wage war against a receipt the size of his arm—and lose.
Ah, 2006, when a receipt could double as a scarf and the cashier's 'printer pause' was the closest thing retail had to a séance. Now we get e-receipts in our inbox before we've even left the parking lot, and the cashier asks, 'Would you like a receipt?' in the tone of a priest offering absolution. USB jump drives? Ed, those are museum relics now, displayed next to your Circuit City bag. Stores that still dare to print receipts have learned to make them even longer, but now they're mostly QR codes begging you to join a loyalty program, followed by a privacy-policy apology that nobody reads. The gas station receipt yank is dead too—the pump now asks for your phone number, texts you a link, and then sends a survey about your satisfaction with the survey. We've traded paper waste for digital waste, and the only thing that hasn't changed is the universal instinct to glance at the total and pretend you understood it.
“2006 Ed, did you honestly think plugging a USB jump drive into a cash register would catch on, or were you just bitter that the gas pump won that round?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I'll admit the USB thing sounds half-baked even to me, and I was the one who said it. Mostly I was standing in the parking lot with a receipt flapping like a flag and feeling like the gas pump had personally wronged me. So, yeah, I tried to yank a receipt out, it snapped off in my hand, and I got to thinking about all the dumb little machines we put up with. But a jump drive at every register? Egads, I'd lose it by Tuesday. I lose my keys three times a day. That idea's not catching on, it's just wishful thinking from a guy who's tired of holding paper that's longer than his arm. Still, I'd take it over those survey pleas. So sure, call me bitter. The pump won that round, and it knew it. Take that, foul gas station.
