OfficeMax Promotions and logic

Every once in a while OfficeMax has a "15% off everything that fits in this bag" promotion in the Sunday paper. You take the paper bag with you to OfficeMax and, like it says, get 15% off anything that fits in the bag. It just so happened that we needed a few things, so we took the bag to the store yesterday and purchased about about $50 worth of items. As the headset-wearing drone(what's up with those things, anyways? what are these guys, Navy Seals?) behind the register rang up the items and placed them on the counter, I put them back in the promotional paper bag, thinking I'd use it to take my new purchase home and use the bag to hold old newspapers for recycling later.

But no, the cashier told me he had to confiscate that bag so I didn't try to use it a second time, and he transferred everything into an overly large plastic bag, tossing the paper one into a trash can behind him.

What the?????

Hasn't Al Gore taught these people anything? I had a perfectly good recyclable bag in my hand, but no, that goes into the trash, which I'm sure will be tossed in a landfill, and instead I get to waste a plastic bag.

I'm pretty sure OfficeMax sells markers. Anyone think that maybe a better practice would be to grab a sharpie and scribble "USED" across the paper bag? Brilliant, I know. I want credit for that idea when they start doing it. And yes, I wrote an email to OfficeMax. I'm just that annoyed.

I should also mention that one of the reasons we went there was to get raped on new inkjet cartridges. We have a Canon Pixma printer that has 5 separate cartridges, and in theory you "only replace the ones you need." In reality they all empty at the same time, so the theory is complete marketing bullshit.

Normally I would hunt the web to find a good deal on cartridges, but we needed them in a hurry so we figured the 15% promotion would be good enough. When we got there I learned that they now sell an OfficeMax-branded version of the Canon cartridges, at a discounted price. Great. Except that they don't sell the 5-pack, only individual colors. And if you add up the price of the individual colors of the OfficeMax-branded ones, the price is exactly the same as the 5-pack Canon-branded set. Again. Brilliant.