Tuesday 14 July 2009

Please scold your parents

“Nowadays, my daughter will raise her voice and scold me!” my big boss said.
“Yeah, my son also did the same thing to me” my second big boss continued.

I was standing right next to them and intentionally blurted…”Serve your right”

As assertive as I am, you must be thinking that I have just committed a career suicide. Well, not entirely accurate.

The notion of that day was “usage of plastic bag”. Both the big bosses were talking about how they return with plastic bags after buying groceries of other stuff and their children will be screaming at them.

If you think that the “scolding” was made in a friendly tone, think again. Apparently, their children were seriously giving their parents (i.e. my big bosses) a piece of their mind, citing reasons such as --- all the money earned by the parents will not compensate for the damaged world that the parents will leave behind for them.

This is not the first time I heard of such incidents.

I was in a posh Italian restaurant last year when I overheard a similar conversation. The father was telling the daughter that using paper instead of styrofoam cups is expensive while using the cutleries in the house instead of plastic cutleries is inconvenient. I assume the topic then was some private party.

The next thing I heard was the daughter saying…rather loudly… “Dad, you are so freaking rich. What’s wrong with spending more for paper cups? And we have enough maids to clean the cutleries. Please think about the environment which affects us, the next generation”

You know what is the best thing about all these?

The freaking-rich-dad and the 2 bosses (who are also very rich) are all loving parents and hence, they all agreed to change their habit. I am not sure whether the freaking-rich-dad did use paper cups and house cutleries, but I can tell you that the 2 bosses are seriously reminding themselves to bring their own environmental bags when they go groceries shopping.

So… what are you waiting for?

1 year ago…
Rich-ology

2 years ago… Debit affluence, credit consciencePonder and find the peculiar time

17 comments:

Jerine said...

it's the opposite way for me. my parents always scold me that i always throw away plastic/paper bags after shopping.

Fi-sha said...

Dear Zewt

Thats so sweet of your bosses and that reminds me of my cousins too who would 'reminded' my uncles and aunties about recycling - be it grocery bag, wrapping paper, boxes, you name it, they will make it work :)

While some may call these kids 'stingy', i salute them for being environmentally responsible humans.

p.s. nice new look zewt...hehheh..i wont be able to recognise you Zewt as i have to do DNA fingerprinting to positively identify you :)

Cheerio!

SalamMedia said...

Go green! What a nice way of putting it. I would always remind mom not get a plastic bag if she purchased something small enough to be hand carried.

The way its going now, most huge supermarkets are adopting the bio-degradable plastic bags. Try it and see. Keep a plastic bag for a year and see how it'll disintegrate.

day-dreamer said...

But if I'm not given plastic bags while grocery-shopping in Jusco/Tesco/Giant, I wouldn't have plastic bags for my rubbish bin. Takkan I go buy plastic bags to contain rubbish? Haha.

Swee Ping said...

Zewt, out of curiosity how old is the daughter at the
Italian posh restaurant.

I brings my Envirosax when I do my groceries or even shopping actually and is happy every time I think of how many plastic bags I'm cutting off from using.

day-dreamer: true but i think can buy those biodegradable plastic bags, which is quite affordable :-)

plain jane said...

yes, tiny they may be in size but don't discount their strength and ability to speak their mind. my daughter banned us from eating sharks fins' soup when she was eight or so. she went into a lecture on the finning process.

albeit a little expensive to buy organic or bio-degradable products but in the end, it's all worth it.

a little goes a long way, as they say...

gina said...

Well, for our house parties, we use plastic cups, paper plates and steel cutlery.. even if we do not have maids, we did all the washing ourselves. It all boils down to choices. I even carry my own shopping bag now.

Anonymous said...

Haha..these children are more environmentally conscious than their parents.

Swee Ping said...

zewt, something that's relevant to your post :D http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-07-14/

superdupree said...

zewt, this is one sweet post.
thankfully, both my parents and i are on a mutual agreement that we need to save the environment and will play our parts at home. thus less shouting on my side :)

Cindy Khor said...

i don't think i will scold my parents in a louder tone (i'm that chicken), but probably would start showing them by example or just suggest to them lightly. my parents are too traditional to take in scolding from their children.

Yvonne Foong said...

Eh the picture you used for this post is very gung-ho.

pinknpurplelizard said...

My whole family is the type 1 category so if we have a disagreement its WW3. We argue out our issues and settle it so there's no bringing forward.

On the green side, I put green bags in my car to keep it handy always. :)

jam said...

I have to say elder generations are lack of awareness. In this case, we younger generation can help to create awareness on how to be as environmental friendly as possible.

pei ling said...

wicked cool children. so i'm not the odd one out =D

vincent said...

That's bloody stupid actually.

If silly kids are so concerned about the environment they would take the bus everywhere, walk or cycle. But of course they don't want to be inconvenienced hence they don't.

Plastic bags don't make their lives convenient or otherwise so people go for it. To be honest, that stinks of hypocrisy.

And if Carrefour uses biodegradable plastic bags (which they do), how leh?

zewt said...

vincent - doesnt matter if they use tonnes of paper and pollute the environment with their cars... so long as they do one thing, it's good enough.