Then, I moved to Costa Rica. A plastic bag free-for-all. There’s no question these bags with handles are handy, and since it does rain in Costa Rica, paper bags aren’t always a good solution especially when one has to take the bus or walk home. But the other day when I came home, my AAA batteries (which are encased in plastic to begin with) were inside a plastic bag inside another plastic bag. After a shopping trip, I will easily accumulate about 15 bags. Recycycling? Remember what it was like in the 1980s to recycle? Lugging the bags to faraway bins. If you were lucky you lived by the Goodwill. That’s kind of what it is like here. I moved to a city that used to recycle, but the program stopped. Now I’m back to driving my bottles to a bin, or finding a fellow I can take them to who will gladly haul take them from me every few weeks.

There’s no place to recycle these bags other than the bathroom. For those who do not know, living in Costa Rica is much like living on a boat: you can’t flush the toilet paper down the bowl. Those plastic bags come in handy for the little garbage pail that sits in all bathrooms. But we just don’t use the bathroom enough to recyle about 30 bags a week I end up brining home. I feel like I’m drowning in the things.

But, I’m returning to my roots. While shopping for curtains, my daughter and I came across this great orange, zippy looking pull-cart. Kind of an up-to-date, stylish model of the metal cart with two wheels.

Hey! Let’s get it. It’s not in the budget, but think of the gas we’ll save by walking to the store!

We choose orange over all the other bright colors.

The next day, we walked to the grocery store. I put the grocery cart next up to the cashier and started unloading the items onto the belt. My daughter started in on her deep desire for M&Ms. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the grocery boy pulling out little white plastic bags.

NO! Stop!

I had even brought cloth bags to pack the vegetables in. I snipped at Coco to forget the candy and dashed for the vegetables. The young man looked at me as if I was looney. In a manner of ten seconds, he’d already packed up about eight plastic bags with an average of two items in each bag. My daughter still loomed long-faced by the chocolate and the cashier was ready for money. I felt like a defensive player on the basketball court: no matter how big I spread my butt, I couldn’t keep my court safe.

The grocery boy flung up his hands, rolled his eyes (crazy Gringa!) and went back to the his bench. I paid and began taking items out of the plastic. I left a pineapple and some plantains in bags so they wouldn’t leak in the cart. It’s not easy being green. But darned if we aren’t going to keep trying. We tipped the orange cart back and started walking for home.

*You can get fresh, organic food delivered right to your door in the Central Valley of Costa Rica from the fine people at NaturaStyle.

As those of you who live in Costa Rica certainly know, customer service here is… well… almost non-existent. Coming from the USA, it is one of the culture shock items that can make even a mellow person want to spit nails. Time and time again, I have learned that the seeming philosophy of business here is that they would rather try to get a new customer than retain the old one. Those of you who went to B-school are probably cringing at this statement, but it is true. Many companies here have yet to figure out is is FAR cheaper to keep a customer happy.

So I went to Office Depot on Valentines Day to buy two new phones. I wanted the 5.6 Mhz type that did not crash the wireless in the offices. I bought one for the home and another for the office… the office system had two handsets.

Last week, the second handset stopped taking a charge, and I immediately went into my “Oh geez… now I have to go try to get it replaced (wasn’t going to happen) or wait to have it fixed, praying that I would still be alive when it came back. More bad news… I could not find the receipt… just a copy of my bank statement showing the charge. This was not good.

So off I go the the Office Depot in Uruca expecting the worse, but fully prepared to be my most pleasant self and give it a shot. I was, of course, told no, they could not help me. Like any good consumer, I appealed to a higher authority, in this case, the store manger, Francisco Menjivar. It seems I may have stumbled upon the only enlightened manager in Costa Rica! He promptly resolved this issue, replaced the defective handset, and I was out of there in 2o minutes. I have no idea if his bosses would approve of his actions, but for sure I did!

So why am I writing this? The simple fact is that I will return to that store and I will buy again, and I will do that because of this manager. I doubt his bosses will ever read this, but they should. You done good Don Francisco. You saved a customer, and you can bet I’ll send you others if I can.