JOIN THE REVOLUTION

I want to spearhead a Receipt Revolution. We are nuts crazy about receipts.

We buy thousands of things each year, for almost all of which we get receipts and are advised to keep them on the possibility we might wish to return something and will invariably be confronted with the dreaded "Do you have a receipt?" How often do we return things? 1% of the time? So, 99% wasted receipts, wasted paper, wasted ink to print them, wasted time and effort to store them, wasted garbage bags to ultimately throw them all out, wasted money to pay garbage people to pick them up, to incinerate them.

Oh, yes. Running a business? Gotta keep those business related receipts to get tax deductions. Keep them for maybe 6 years in case of audits. Careful, receipts tend to self-destruct...the ink wears out and you wind up with a folder of blank paper. Don't forget to set up a separate folder for those business receipts, don't forget to keep the receipt for the folder in the folder. Doing some work on the computer? Don't forget the receipts for the cost of the computer, the printer and the paper and ink used with it, the electricity used to power those marvels of technology, the desk they sit on, the chair you sit on.

Drive your car for business? Receipts galore...for every gallon of gas, every 25 cent toll, every oil change, every brake light, every tire alignment.

Where did this this fetish, this mania, for receipts come from? An unwarranted malevolent view by tradespeople, by government, that we are all plagued by the deceit virus...that we will deceive you, lie to you, steal from you, every chance we get. All of us. What did Michael Jackson sing? "I'm bad, I'm bad." Presumably we are all bad, all deceiters. The prevalent accepted solution? To punish us and make us receipters.

If you want to join the Receipt Revolution, load up all the receipts you have and place them in a bucket...open your window and yell at the top of your voice, "I am mad as hell and I am not going to keep them anymore"...and dump those receipts and that bucket out of the window and out of your life.

And smile.