Will I ever learn? Only if bag prices get dearer

Ithink I’ve got about 23 recyclable shopping bags at the moment. I’m not one of those wellprepared women who always has a carrier bag for every occasion. I’ve just got a local supermarket that’s gone plastic bag-free and I’m really bad at remembering to take my recyclable bags.

I am that person who will carefully collect all 23 bags before leaving, place them specifically by the door, walk out of the house utterly engrossed in the memory of an obscure Mesopotamian war that I learned about it in year 10, do a $200 grocery shop and arrive at the checkout only to realise that the bags are still on the bench . . . And so I buy another three for my collection.

It’s one of those things, like wearing ripped jeans, that seems to be taken by strangers as an open invitation to talk to you. As I stand staring at the carrots on the checkout and swearing, the person in sensible shoes behind me never fails to say, ‘‘Ah! Well, you won’t forget them again now, will you?’’

Well sorry, Mr Birkenstocks, but this is the eighth time in two months. I’ve got more reusable bags in my cupboard than I do tins of tomatoes. And we all know that it is mandatory for everyone, especially your mum, to have a minimum of at least 37 cans of tinned tomatoes at any one time.

Now, I know we love to moralise to Sue on checkout 10 about how people only need to make a mistake once in order to learn . . . But I’ve always thought the argument was complete crap.

For a start, it fails to recognise the hole in its logic: what happens if you never get a chance to learn from a mistake? A friend of mine pointed out to me that he’s had numerous conversations with parents who refuse to move their trampolines from concrete to soft grass. The logic being that, if their kid falls off and hurts themselves, they won’t act up so boisterously again. Of course, my friend pointed out, this is in complete disregard of the fact that their kid might fall off and get brain damage.

But the underlying problem is that this is never going to work at the checkout. For people like me, the consequences of the mistake have to be absolutely dire before we stop doing it. And let’s face it, how often are high-stakes battles fought in the vege aisle?

Look at it this way, I am terrified of being late for on-air interviews. I once tried to be environmentally friendly and take the bus to a radio interview. Which sounds high and mighty in theory, and was sweaty and shaky in reality. It ended up with me careering into the studio with literally 20 seconds to spare, sweating and bleeding profusely with a piece of glass in my foot after sprinting up the hill to the studio, holding my stilettos, after the bus took 40 minutes to drive two kilometres.

‘‘I will always’’, I vowed while picking a bottle cap off my heel, ‘‘be early for live interviews.’’

Now you’d think that I’d have learned to be on time, right?

But if I’m running late and it’s a bad mental health day, I still stand paralysed in my wardrobe for 40 minutes tearfully convinced that everything I could possibly wear makes me look like an overcooked dumpling.

As much as the rational side of my brain screams the dumpling side of my brain keeps me there panicking until the very last minute.

So basically the consequences of the mistake have to be really, really high for me to take action, as they have to outweigh all the other powerful forces going on in my decision-making.

Not everyone’s the same. For a lot of Mr Sensible Sandals, buying extra bags or staggering to your car with a bunch of stuff is enough of a bad consequence to stop you doing it again.

I am that person who will carefully collect all 23 bags before leaving ... and arrive at the checkout only to realise the bags are still on the bench.

But unfortunately for me, and my rapidly shrinking available storage space, I don’t really care if I spend $3 at the checkout each time because I forget bags. I don’t really mind having a rapidly breeding bag population at home. I also don’t really mind carrying armfuls of stuff to the car.

What would constitute dire consequences for me would be if I needed three bags and they cost $10 each. That’s my weekly coffee budget gone. Or if it impacted on someone I love.

I’m currently trying to be more on time now with partners, because one of them once explained to me that it made him feel like crap when I was late. And I may forget bags, but I always remember which perfumes to avoid around my mum or it’ll trigger her asthma.

So Countdown needs to make the stakes ridiculously high before I’ll remember to bring my own. Until then, me and fellow bag breeders will just keep forgetting.