Since it’s Black Friday and all, figured I might delve into the consumer-affairs arena.

This afternoon, I strolled over to ubiquitous retailer CVS’s Adams Morgan outlet, at 1700 Columbia Road NW. There I purchased a 99-cent bottle of aspirin and two packages of AAA batteries—2-for-1 deal today!

For my $7.32, I not only received the aforementioned goods, but 22¼ inches worth of receipt. Just what am I getting with all that paper?

• About 5½ inches is your usual receipt stuff—store address, date and time, items purchased, subtotal, tax, cash, change.
• One-half inch is for a bar code. Yeah, apparently receipts need bar codes now.
• Three-eighths of an inch is for a “TRIP SUMMARY” informing me I’ve saved $5.99 today.
• Three-eighths of an inch is for a Flexible Spending Account summary, which might be helpful if I had one.
• About 1½ inches is for a 40-word statement explaining exactly why the Flexible Spending Account summary might be helpful.

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Question: when it’s 90 degrees outside does it really need to be below freezing in your office? What’s the logic behind Arctic indoor temperatures in the middle of July?

I blame men’s workplace fashion. If offices would stop forcing men to wear jackets and ties maybe they wouldn’t need the air conditioning up so high. Call me second wave, but I’ve got to assume that men are still setting the standards for indoor climate control.

Note that the U.S. Capitol is the worst A/C freak in D.C. They can kill the global warming legislation if they want; they should just turn up the indoor temperature a little bit for some green brownie points. A Capitol maintenance guy told one Capitol Hill reporter (who keeps a space heater in her office even in July) that the lawmakers would complain that it was too warm and so he sets it as low as it will go – 58 degrees.