• by Larry Dobrow , Featured Columnist, June 2, 2016

In this crazy, mixed-up world of ours, we are beset with any number of problems. There’s famine. There’s mold. Rising sea levels aren’t all that super. Pretty much every -ism is problematic, with the exceptions of optimism and Buddhism. The Black Eyed Peas will almost certainly reunite within the next half-decade. And don’t even get me started on the temporal challenges created by the proliferation of #peakTV.

But none of these problems stabs at the heart of our common humanity with the intensity of overlong register receipts, a scourge which CVS boldly confronts in a pair of videos that debuted this week. Do you consider CVS a trusted health partner, one whose presence in your life will likely intensify as the healthcare system continues to evolve away from the doctors-do-it-all model? Well, you are wrong, pal, and should be assigned to a detention camp until we get our hands around this whole mass-deportation thing (also troubling!).

The clips are designed to herald CVS’s decision to offer digital receipts to anyone who requests them, an option that will become available at some point in the near future. The problem is that CVS invests this announcement with a degree of self-importance - and, ultimately, self-unawareness - usually reserved for the rollout of a new iPhone.

Take “The Last Receipt Costume: CVS Says #ReceiptYouLater With Digital Receipts, in which self-pronounced “CVS Receipt Costume Guy” John Baker recounts the wacky series of misadventures that motivated him to devise a CVS Receipt Halloween Costume. Get this - the guy went into CVS looking for some Tic Tacs. When he paid for them, he was given an “insanely long receipt.” Ergo, his costume. Costume Guy then recounts the ensuing mirth (“when people saw me, it was pretty funny”) and how his posting of a photo went viral (“it just went viral”).

A few questions here. First, was this anywhere near the viral sensation that Costume Guy and CVS believe it to be? Second, is it possible that his definition of “insanely long” (approximately three feet) differs from my own (long enough to gift-wrap a plane)? Third, is it within the realm of believability that his definition of a “magical epiphany moment” might also be a tad overstated? I mean, it’s not like he found a perfectly good ham lying in the street. Fourth, might CVS have been better served by sticking a proper microphone in front of Costume Guy, rather than asking him to voice his narration from afar?

It’s as if CVS wants to create an alternate reality, one in which its long receipts achieved pop-cultural ubiquity. That’s certainly the story it spins in the second clip, “The Long Receipt Journey: CVS Says #ReceiptYouLater, Ushers In Digital Receipts.” In this one, we’re told that CVS’s receipts were lingering in a kind of unloved retail purgatory, until “coupons and Extra Bucks rewards were added, which made them a total hit.” We’re told about Costume Guy once anew and that his paper-suturing antics “kind of broke the Internet.” We’re told that there were dedicated long-receipt Twitter accounts and a long-receipt wedding dress (that last one maybe checks out?). We’re told that “long receipts even became the punch line for late-night talk show hosts, compelling one of them to run for Vice President.”

It is at this point where I stop to ask a final question of my own: Huh? If all of this happened - and really, I have no idea what would motivate CVS to rewrite history here - that’s fine, even if I have no idea what the dickens it’s talking about.

But the videos come across less as an attempt to sell us on digital receipts as they do an effort by CVS to congratulate itself about the supposed whimsy of its handling of our double-supposed fixation upon the long receipts. Was there some controversy that demanded to be addressed - maybe about the acres of trees that died so that CVS could offer me 90 cents off my next mouthwash purpose? I am genuinely confused.

That still sidesteps the larger issue here. I’ve been a CVS customer in one form or another (prescriptions, taffy, etc.) for as long as I can remember. I have no clue why, at a moment when CVS stands to present itself as a convenient, cost-effective resource to people overwhelmed by the complexity of modern healthcare (which is to say: all people), it chooses to yammer about receipts. Sometimes, there’s value in not being part of the conversation.