Shopping can be stressful when shoppers are many and parking spaces and cashiers are few. Going to the market the day before Thanksgiving or going to the store the day after Christmas can mean subjecting one’s self to uglier sides of the human personality. At a Walmart store a couple of years ago, an employee was trampled to death by the mob which rushed in as soon as the doors opened. Such extremes are rare, thank goodness, but virtually every time I shop, I do see a violation of the rules of common sense and courtesy.

I would like to offer a list of rules of shopping etiquette to help make shopping a pleasant experience for customers and businesses alike. The first eight rules apply to customers, and the next four apply to businesses.

1. When looking for a parking space, don’t hold up traffic while waiting for someone else to pull out. Most parking garages have multiple levels for parking that have plenty of space even on the busiest of shopping days. These levels are connected with bridges and elevators so it is not a physical hardship.

2. While shopping, try to avoid looking at the same item or area that someone else is looking at until they are done. I sometimes see shoppers look at items just because they see someone else looking at it.

3. When you have a shopping cart, park it in such a way as to not block the aisle. Sometimes I park my cart very considerately, only to have someone else come and park their cart in the area which I had left clear. I then end up having to move when someone else comes along.

4. Do not expect people with more items than you to let you cut in front of them in line just because you have a few items. Go to the express line or just wait your turn.

5. Where there is open but limited seating such as at a food court, do not sit to reserve a table while someone else in your party goes to get the food. Someone who already has a tray of food in their hands should be able to sit and eat at the table while you are only waiting for your food.

6. Remember that your time at the cashier’s is not social hour. Too often I have seen customers and cashiers engage in unnecessarily long conversations. Discussing with the cashier at length how the color of the blouse looks on you or whether it can be work for a formal party is not appropriate when others are waiting in line.

7. Except when it can be done promptly, customers should not expect to leave a line and come back to the same place by asking someone to save their spot. Leaving means going to the end of the line upon return.

8. Stores are not playgrounds for kids. Some hyperactivity is to be expected, but a tag game in and out of aisles with loud yelling and laughter is not. When a customer feels they have gotten in the way of a child, it is the child who is in the way.

9. With the exception of supermarkets, cashiers should be instructed to have customers form only one line if there is more than one cashier open. They also need to continually reinforce this between sales because customers WILL try to form a second line as it gets them to the front of a line.

10. Cashiers must not wait till their line grows very long before asking for a second cashier to open. If there is only one person waiting, and the current sale is dragging, then that is time the cashier should request help from a second cashier. It is the first person who has been waiting a long time for assistance and the customer at the end of the line.

11. Businesses need to respect their customers’ space. One store I visited had 3-4 salespeople continually ask me if I needed help. While I told them that I would let them know when I did, they did not refrain from continually checking on me to see if that time had come. I eventually just left that store.

12. Businesses must be careful with the music they choose to play in stores and the volume at which they play it. Especially offensive are some of the teen-age clothing stores that play especially bad hip-hop music almost as loud as you would expect to find at a party. Even if this were to bring in business, which I doubt, it contributes to the numbing of a customer’s aesthetic sense. Our country is on such a campaign to save our bodies from the harms of smoking, we can’t we do the same for our ears from bad music? Of course the ultimate offense was when I saw a young girl walk into a store with her own music player, having the volume turned on high enough so that the rest of shoppers in her vicinity could also “enjoy” the “music.”

Let us put the courteous and thoughtful treatment of others at a premium so that shopping can be both an efficient and enjoyable experience for all of us.

Ani Bogosian has been a Glendale resident and shopper for over twenty years, meeting the all the material needs of a growing family.

Environment California, a big backer of the bill, held five press conferences Tuesday and organized a phone campaign to assembly representatives on the fence. The campaign now moves on to the Senate.

According to the bill’s author, 41st District Representative Julia Brownley, Californians use over 19 billion plastic bags annually (approximately 552 per person), while only 5-6% of plastic materials are recycled in California.

Brownley’s website noted that:

The California Grocers Association and the United Food and Commercial Workers joined a long list of supporters of AB 1998 today, taking a sound, fair and effective approach to eliminating single-use bag litter, which pollutes oceans, beaches, parks and communities and endangers wildlife.

Petroleum products are fouling the oceans before they are refined and manufactured, and afterwards as well. The “disposable” consumer culture they foster needs to change, and this is a step in the right direction. Yesterday’s blog post on single-use bags has links to inspirations and ideas for reducing use of plastics.

The FCC didn’t name citizens as stakeholders; instead, it asked for input from American consumers. Why, in so many cases, are we consumers instead of citizens? Does the FCC define our interest solely on the basis of our monthly ISP bill and what’s included on it? Shouldn’t civic interests in a “national broadband plan” override consumer interests? Is this a semantic gesture to advocates of the free enterprise system? Here’s the last part of the call –

We seek comment in this Notice from all interested parties on the elements that should go into a national broadband plan. Our plan must reflect an understanding of the problem, clear goals for the future, a route to those goals, and benchmarks along the way. Our plan must also allow for modification as we learn from our experience. And our plan must reflect the input of all stakeholders—industry, American consumers; large and small businesses; federal, state, local, and tribal governments; nonprofits; and disabilities communities. With this Notice, we begin to make our plan.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is widely acknowledged to have been heavily influenced by the telecom industry. Further, as the Free Press notes in its May 2009 book Changing Media, those provisions of the 1996 act that were intended to keep markets open for competition and provide more choices to citizens were subsequently quashed by telecom companies who sought changes in definitions, appeals, and changes in how the law was applied.

This time around, citizens should insist on getting the best technology and the best service, along with a range of choices at reasonable prices. The telecom companies should not be allowed to shut out competition, to receive egregious subsidies, to set tiered pricing or other restricted access schemes, or to change definitions and applications, without citizens’ approval, once a plan is instituted.

Citizens: Check out the Notice of Inquiry, and send in your comments by June 8, 2009 (the end of the document has instructions for submitting comments).

Isn’t our collective debt load bad enough? Why compound the problem with gambling? This is pathological, not beneficial.

Those promoting “paradox of thrift,” the macroeconomic idea that spending is the only way to revive a deflating economy, are ignoring the economic interests of average citizens. As one commenter below notes, they are elevating the interests of the political system above individual citizens.

From an archived post on Redfin’s Los Angeles real estate blog, October 1, 2008, just as Redfin laid off its entire marketing department and the first $700 billion of the (continuing) bailouts was proposed:

If we break out the strategic reserves, $700 billion may keep the engine running…but for how long? Where will the fuel for debt come from after that?

I understand that businesses rely on banks from time to time for short-term funds to keep operations going and people employed. But why are American consumers (with “consumer” a synonym for “citizen”) constantly encouraged to go into debt?

Whether it is a new pickup truck, a home entertainment system, or a major appliance, your retailer has a financing plan for it. The product of this strategy is debt. The engine of our economy is debt.

The strategy is a failure and the engine is sputtering as home equity plummets and and easy credit dries up.

Why, if people are losing overpriced homes to foreclosure, should the government try to game the system? Shouldn’t home prices fall to affordable levels, allowing buyers to assume less debt? Why is our government’s solution a plan to rescue debt holders and provide more debt?

That was five months ago. Hundreds of billions more have been pumped in to keep the engine running, but it keeps stalling nonetheless. Most people won’t drive to auto dealerships and buy a new cars these days if they don’t have to, as a related Wall Street Journal Wednesday feature also noted.

Most main stream news reports and media endorse “paradox of thrift” policy arguments. Here are a few dissenters:

Positive Liberty: