Is the economy that bad? Six doggie bag stories.

5. It’s not just the young and the poor

Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor/File
In this 2002 photo, a customer at The Town Diner in Watertown, Mass., leaves behind a tip, the ketchup, the salt and pepper shakers, and even the Sweet'N Low.

Tucson, Ariz., marketing consultant Peter Schwartz speaks lovingly of his late grandmother Sylvia, who slipped Sweet'N Low packets into her purse. “All my rich friends do it," she’d tell her grandchildren. "How do you think they got rich?”

“She swiped those packets her whole life, up to the end,” says Mr. Schwartz. “This practice was something my brother, sister, and I did not encourage. We were mortified, but it also gave us fits of the giggles. We got a kick out of the idea that people could get rich swiping Sweet'N Low packets."

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