December 19, 2006

Receipts of Unusual Size

K Mart ReceiptHow many customers do you think it takes before K-Mart goes through a mile of paper in cash register receipts? It may not be as many as you think.

On Sunday, I found myself needing to purchase a cheap lamp. So I went down to my local K-Mart and picked one out. I also bought a light bulb. Upon checkout, along with the merchandise, I was given this ridiculously long receipt. I measured it. It’s 21 inches long. I bought two items and got a receipt that’s 21 inches long. Is wasting that much paper really necessary?

I couldn’t even get the whole thing to fit on my scanner. I had to scan it in pieces and then stitch it together in Photoshop.

I did a little math. If every customer purchases exactly two items (an underestimation, I’m sure), then K-Mart goes through approximately one mile of paper every 3,017 customers. Only the top 6 inches of the receipt contains information relevant to the purchase: the date, items purchased, price, store number, etc. The remaining 15 inches contains ads for things I could have purchased if I’d known about them before I went to the register, and also a list of store hours. I don’t know about you, but when I want to know a store’s hours or what they sell, I never dig out old receipts to find the answer. I never even glance at that information. Are there people who read their old receipts? It seems like a big waste of paper to me. 15 wasted inches of paper per customer. That comes to one mile of paper wasted every 4,224 customers.

How many miles of paper must K-Mart waste every day?

I wasn’t going to attempt to answer that question, but then I realized that once I had my receipt scanned in and resized and placed alongside the text on this page, the image was longer than the text. And that was messing up the layout of this page, causing my browser to do some weird things. So I decided to do some more digging and see what I could learn. K-Mart’s corporate website has all sorts of information about the number of stores they have, but not the number of customers. The most recent data I could find was in a BusinessWeek article from 2000, where K-Mart’s CEO referenced K-Mart’s “30 million store customers a week.” By now, many of those store customers are probably shopping on-line in greater numbers than before, and the number of K-Mart stores has surely changed since they filed for bankruptcy in 2002, but even if only half as many people still shop in the stores, that comes to 507 miles of paper wasted by K-Mart every single day in useless cash register receipt ads.

I think I see an easy way for K-Mart to become a bit more eco-friendly.

Comments

I’ve got a K-Mart within walking distance that I go to about once or twice a month on a Saturday morning to pick up nit-noids and give myself an excuse for a walk. In the past two days I’ve picked up three items: a cheap MP3 player for my 11-year-old (since odds are he’ll lose it in a week), and the next day, a football jersey for my wife’s little brother and wrapping paper. About thirty dollars each day. Two receipts just as long as yours, and for no apparent reason.

I don’t remember in months past the reciept being so long when I was picking up a coke and a candy bar day before thanksgiving last month…

That’s awful. Who sits and reads receipts for shopping tips anyhow?

“Created by nature… inspired by love.”
What bollocks.

Thanks for bringing this up- these huge receipts consistently peeve me. Yours is a perfect example of where one single item can yield a receipt suitable for a cart filled with groceries. Assholes.

I thought I was the only one that wondered about receipt length… a local chain of grocery stores (Food Lion) also has some pretty outlandish tickets. And these don’t even have shopping suggestions! Yeesh.

You should contact Cary Elwes. He could do public service announcements about the dangers of ROUS’s.

Circuit City and Toys’R’Us also have amazingly long receipts “for the holidays.”

And do you have a rebate? Oh, that’s an extra three feet of receipts.

These also include the now-ubiquitous GIFT RECEIPT, which I have never needed nor used, but which _doubles_ the paper used. Only Target gets the gift receipt right. It’s a tiny thing with only a barcode, as I recall.

Oh man, the sheer cluelessness is astounding.

You should consider posting this story at www.sutori.com — it’s a good way to build consensus around an issue like this and (hopefully) get the company’s attention.

(full disclosure … I helped create Sutori)

You’re not kidding. This has been going on for awhile. Useless waste of paper.

What’s worse are the chains that hand you the super long receipt-then a second stip just as long that automatically prints out with coupons that you won’t use…because you crumple them up with the freaking receipt.

Well, the reciepts are significanly shorter after the holidays end, at least. I work at Kmart, and on the busiest days during the holidays (ie black friday) we have to replace the reciept paper roll about once a day per register. Some of them are even longer than the one pictured for not many more items, but also keep in mind that not every customer gets all those ads, though I’m not sure what criteria there is for who gets the really long ones and who doesn’t. It doesn’t seem to be affected by the number of things they buy. As just one of the grunts working for the company, I’m not trying to defend them, I just thought you guys may like to know this additional info.

they’d stamp advertisements onto our foreheads as we leave the store if they could.

This annoys me too, and about six months ago, I started doing this: when handed the giant receipt, tear off the relevant top part and hand the rest back to the cashier, stating, (nicely!)”Thanks,but I don’t need this.” If enought others did the same….

Maybe that’s why they went bankrupt-the cost of paper for those machines isn’t free.

For years, Jay and I have talked about something similar…we would like to redesign receipts for major retailers. Not only are they way too long, but the few pieces of information you might actually need are IMPOSSIBLE to find.

We noticed this while waiting around at Taco Bell for our food to show up. They were calling out numbers, but we couldn’t figure out what number we were. It was buried in with a bunch of other numbers, all of which were the same size. Very poor information design. Yo quiero better receipts.

i got one nearly 5 timees the length at a comp usa a while ago

The ones from Home Depot are just as bad - so much extra info, like crap about taking some customer survey.

Perhaps I’ll take the survey and tell them how idiotic those receipts are!

Would you mind if I posted this on a KMart message board? I found it really interesting & right on target.

I work at Kmart… and the receipt lengths can vary depending on what kinds of items you purchase (from what department) and the dollar amount of the purchase. Sometimes I’ll get a receipt that is over two feet long, and sometimes it it’ll be about 8 inches long. It varies a lot. But, we definitely do go through a lot of paper because of it. Although, most stores keep register tape in major stockpiles. Though, the other thing too… the register tape varies from store to store, because other businesses can purchase ads that print on the back of the receipts (which vary from store to store). So receipt paper can be custom made for an individual store or a whole district.

It does definitely get annoying though. I do find however, that a lot of customers I get returning things at customer service tend to tear off the lower portion of the receipt.

The receipts are supposed to be long. There is a company out there that contracts the receipt from the store. A company actually pays K-mart, Home-depot, best buy and all major grocery stores for this business. Then the company has other companies pay them to run ad’s on the coupons on the receipt. The receipts are triggered by items such as GE light bulbs who pays the ad company a fee and then you purchase a light bulb or lamp a coupon is printed out. I think the receipts are going to get longer as more money is made in this business.

The receipts are supposed to be long. There is a company out there that contracts the receipt from the store. A company actually pays K-mart, Home-depot, best buy and all major grocery stores for this business. Then the company has other companies pay them to run ad’s on the coupons on the receipt. The receipts are triggered by items such as GE light bulbs who pays the ad company a fee and then you purchase a light bulb or lamp a coupon is printed out. I think the receipts are going to get longer as more money is made in this business.

You say all this about how no one reads their papers but with it being so long you read it. So did everyone reading things on this site. Kmart must have gotten their point acrossed.

I have to comment too i was going to portest about this but i seen other people have I thank you! This should be changed i bought 4 items and it is ft. long thanks Kmart for wasting paper…

Slundered hahaha now im also smart for wasting paper

Albertons/Sav-on do the same thing…
Two items, when I tore off the relevant portion and compared to the remaining paper, its 1/3rd the length.
so 2/3rds is a waste to tell me what?
something about

Change .00 (uh duh I used debit)
Cpns tendered 2
My Preferred savings 2.00 (already shows in top portion of receipt)

Survey with a barcode.
Bilingual Spanish equivalent.

I bought beer, so a section called Age Verified. Huge spaces and empty lines. Just ridding of the extra empty lines would decrease the receipt by half.

Thank the Lord above that I found a support group for this - I thought I was the only one who is baffled at the waste. Most companies aren’t running the ads on the backside of coupons anymore… this is just wasteful.