A "How To" Guide to Being a Tourist (5)

IX) Can I Have a Bag?

I hate to admit it but after every trip I make to Tesco, or any other supermarket for that matter, I save the carrier bags I was given on that visit and stuff them in a ‘bag of bags’ in my student flat. Mostly to make myself feel better and perpetuate the lie to myself that “the next time I go I will reuse these bags”. But that almost never happens, I find myself standing in the queue realizing that I will simply have to take even more of these incredibly wasteful carrier bags and once again fail in my effort to save the environment.

This is unfortunate but ultimately excusable because the groceries I am trying to carry home fill 8 bags and there is no feasible way to carry them without bags.

What always strikes me as strange, and further illustrates the extremely wasteful nature of the human race are the people who demand bags not because they require them but because….. well, I’m really not sure why. A bag for a single post card? A bag for a single golf ball? A separate bag for each of the 4 shirts you just bought?

Many people would be shocked to find out that ALL of the oil that comes from drilling in the North Sea is not of high enough quality to make petrol and hence is used in the manufacturing of plastics. I may be failing in my effort to reduce my bag consumption and hence our dependencies on oil, but these people are not even trying.

X) Do You Sell Any Ladies Clothing?

It’s a fair enough question. But I have to tell each customer that asks, “I’m afraid we don’t, the shop simply isn’t big enough to carry men’s and women’s clothing”. Some people smile and respond, “Thanks anyway” while others get rather angry.

Maybe it has something to do with the R&A not allowing any female members, or maybe these people are just bitter, but upon me informing them of the lack of women’s clothing some simply tell me my shop is sexist.  “Women play golf as well you know” or “I would have spent lots of money in here if you did carry women’s” why are these statements necessary or appropriate. Green grocers’ don’t carry women’s clothing; neither do pubs, banks or post offices. Are these shops sexist?

XI) Obama Sucks

Generally a topic that arises when I ask people if they would like a VAT for to reclaim their tax. For those of you who don’t know VAT stands for Value Added Tax and is a 20%  consumption tax present on all luxury items sold in the U.K.  The tourists usually make some snide comment about how high our taxes are in the UK. When I try to explain to them that somebody living in NYC pays the same amount of tax as someone living in London (It’s simply collected by different means, ie we don’t pay tax for our city, township, county, state and federal government – we simply pay council and national tax therefore our VAT must be large to make up the money) it seems to go in one ear and out the other. These tourists hear about a 20% tax and they immediately revert to Republican roots and comment about how Obama is also driving the U.S. into the ground and making it “just as Socialist as the UK”

Let me remind all tourists that even some of our most conservative politicians in the UK would be considered too left or “too Socialist” by the right to be anything but a joke in American politics. And conversely the American right is a joke in Britain, so maybe before you start singing the praises of your home politician (whoever that may be) you should make sure you are in a country where the population will agree.