Slashdot Mirror
The Long, Long History of Long, Long CVS Receipts (vox.com)
Why is a receipt for cough drops the height of a small child? Rachel Sugar, writing for Vox: CVS is a drugstore much like other drugstores, with one important difference: The receipts are very long. How long are the receipts? For at least a decade, concerned shoppers have dedicated themselves to this question, producing a robust body of phone-picture literature on the subject. You could not major in CVS receipt studies, probably, but you could minor.
Not all CVS receipts are created equal. If you, a non-loyal shopper, mosey into CVS and buy some Tylenol and a package of seasonal candy, you will get a receipt that is unspectacular (read: a normal length). To get one of the iconically long CVS receipts, you need to use your ExtraCare card, which means you need to be an ExtraCare member. (You can join as long as you are willing to turn over your name and phone number in exchange for better deals.) People on the internet have documented this phenomenon with a vigor usually reserved for cats climbing in and out of boxes. On Twitter and on Instagram, shoppers stand next to their CVS receipts, which are often as tall as they are, and sometimes taller.
Not all CVS receipts are created equal. If you, a non-loyal shopper, mosey into CVS and buy some Tylenol and a package of seasonal candy, you will get a receipt that is unspectacular (read: a normal length). To get one of the iconically long CVS receipts, you need to use your ExtraCare card, which means you need to be an ExtraCare member. (You can join as long as you are willing to turn over your name and phone number in exchange for better deals.) People on the internet have documented this phenomenon with a vigor usually reserved for cats climbing in and out of boxes. On Twitter and on Instagram, shoppers stand next to their CVS receipts, which are often as tall as they are, and sometimes taller.
Slashdot is advertising CVS loyalty cards now?
Yeah, doesn't really meet the standard of News for Nerds or Stuff that matters. I prefer the way Meijer handles their loyalty program & receipts. I just punch in my phone number at checkout, and my electronic coupons & everything is applied automatically, and I get my receipt emailed to me as a PDF. If I need to do a return, I just whip out my phone & pull up the PDF. Much more efficient.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Thermal paper rolls are cheap.
Thermal printers are damn fast.
It's unnecessary, but also inevitable that some moron would take it too far on the "just give them all the coupons" front. I'm more concerned about the waste of paper and what the checkouts must look like because for sure I wouldn't touch that receipt and would leave it inside the store.
I know from experience though - I wrote a piece of software that produces a firelist for my employer. We needed a quick "who's supposed to be here now" list, and the software that controls the access control has all the necessary information to tell us but just won't churn it out in a compact enough form.
I put in a little test system with a thermal printer (no ink, quick printing, cheap to run) and when the fire alarm goes off, it churns out a list of my choosing.
It was so successful that over time I was asked to list every member of staff, whether they were in or not, the time they last tagged in/out, plus the people who aren't even supposed to be here, plus all the temporary visitors, plus the other sites, plus.... and then do it twice at both ends of the site so the duty of checking it can be split and we have a "backup".
It still only takes about 3-4 seconds (1ms processing time, the rest is sheer print-time) to churn out a complete list (which is longer than it takes to realise the alarm is genuine), but the list is now over 6 feet long.
Usually I check the paper reels immediately after any fire drill/alert because it uses up so much paper, but it's a good backup to any electronic system and churns out fast enough that you could grab it in a real fire (it's safer to grab that, than to try to check that everyone you think might be outside are - by the time you check anything else, they're already dead, but it takes seconds to skim the highlighted / obvious / simplified list of names and see who's missing).
I'm waiting for the ironic day that what catches fire is the thermal printer itself, or something nearby, and which just keeps feeding more and more paper into it to fuel it...