Re your suggestion #4 - unless the bags of coffee grounds are light enough for me to handle easily I ask for help. Get mine at a Starbucks in a large grocery store.

I'm a Texan by birth. Moved to SC years ago and learned that many people think it's bad luck to say thanks. Isn't that a hoot? I'd say "thanks" for a plant only to be told it wouldn't live if I did.

Sometimes Starbucks people do offer to carry heavy bags, & that's very nice of them!

Many years ago, my aunts & all their friends & neighbors passed along plants, & none of them ever said thanks;
it was an old superstition that you had to pretend that the plant had no value, therefore there was nothing for which you should thank the person, etc.

& there was a correlary to it:
if someone asked where you got it, you were supposed to tell them you stole it!

The first part sounds like the traditions of complaining when you get what you want, so the gods won't be jealous & take it away from you;
maybe 'tell them you stole it' part just grew out of it somehow.

In this day & age in Texas, I hardly ever run into anyone who still goes by that old tradition;
intereseting that there are still pockets of old-fashioned traditionalists, cuckoo southerners though we may all be!