Why is my CVS receipt over four feet long?
A while back I stopped at CVS to buy gift cards and a couple bottles of soda. I don’t usually go to CVS for anything, but I was in the area already and they were the closest place that carried gift cards.
Imagine my surprise when the cashier handed me this beast of a receipt:
When she handed me the thing I busted out laughing. This is one of the most absurd things I’ve ever seen in my fucking life. I’ve seen some pretty long receipts, but this had to be a record-holder.
Curiosity got the better of me. I just had to know exactly how long my CVS receipt actually was. So when I got home, I broke out the tape measurer:
Holy fucking shit, this BPA-loaded behemoth was 50 inches long! That’s just over four feet of receipt.
Just in case you think I’m exaggerating, I took a full-length picture of the thing:
As you can see, I had to get on a step ladder to get the full receipt in the shot. I’m not even that short, I’m like 6 feet tall. This thing is nuts.
Curiosity continued to get the better of me, and now I needed to know what the longest recorded CVS receipt was. Apparently back in 2017, some guy on Reddit got a CVS receipt that was almost 6 feet long. The amount of BPA from this insanely long receipt was enough to leave him with a permanent case of soy face.
I have no idea why my CVS receipt needs to be this long. Most of it appears to be useless coupons and other offers I’ll never take advantage of because I only visit CVS once every four years. In fact, I predict that CVS will be out of business by the next time I need to go to one for anything.
Where are all the environmentalist tree-huggers on this one? The amount of paper CVS uses to produce these comically long receipts is definitely a serious contributor to deforestation. CVS claims to service over five million customers a day. Five million people a day are getting these ridiculously long receipts. If every receipt is 50 inches long, that’s around 20,833,333 feet of paper being printed every day by CVS. For reference, one 45 foot tree typically yields 20 reams of paper. A single ream of paper is typically around 3,000 square feet, so one 45 foot tree yields 60,000 square feet of paper. Doing the math on this one, CVS kills approximately 347 trees every day with their receipts alone. I don’t even actually give a shit about the environment, but that’s fucking disgraceful. Global warming crusaders like Al Gore and Klaus Schwab are going around saying that we need to stop driving cars and eating meat, but where’s the outcry about the enormous amounts of waste generated by CVS and their four foot receipts? CVS has an entire page on their website about their so-called “commitment to environmental responsibility”, but they’re over here blowing through hundreds of trees worth of receipt paper every day. It’s clear that CVS doesn’t actually give a flying fuck about environmental responsibility. Yet another false corporate crusader, what a shock.
Seriously though, why is my receipt the same size as a guy who drives a lifted pick-up truck? I could see this receipt tailgating me on I95, then following me to my destination after I flip him off. The receipt would get out of his truck trying to act tough and threatening to punch me in the face, but he wouldn’t be able to reach my face without his 1994 New York City phone book to stand on, so he’d angrily climb back into his truck and speed away while I laughed and sang the Lollipop Guild song from Wizard of Oz. My CVS receipt was so long that it could legally qualify as a dwarf. For reference, Kid Rock’s hype man Joe C. (RIP homie) was 3’9″ and boasted a 10 foot dick. The receipt that CVS gave me was taller than Joe C., and almost half as long as his dick. That’s goddamn incredible.
I’m not sure what benefit CVS actually sees from making their receipts needlessly long, but this is just needless and excessive. There’s no reason that any store should be giving out receipts that are several feet long, especially when someone has only bought a few items. Cities are banning plastic bags and straws in the name of protecting the environment, but this bullshit is okay? CVS claims to care about the environment, but the truth is they don’t really have a leg to stand on. If CVS genuinely cared about the environment they wouldn’t be giving out these long-ass receipts.
CVS, I know it’s kind of become your thing, but please do away with these ridiculous monstrosities that you call receipts. They’re terrible for the environment, but most importantly, they’re annoying.