I had an Eagle flight at ORD today. I was connecting on a route where I have clothes on both sides so all I had was a small laptop bag. I mean small, like an open compartment, a charger, and my laptop along with some papers. I had no rollaboard and no checked bags.

The flight was delayed a bit so I bought a sandwich in the terminal and carried it in the merchant's small plastic bag. Once we started boarding the GA stopped me and told me I could only take 1 item on the aircraft. The conversation went roughly like this (although I'll add I don't think the GA actually used many complete sentences):

Me: "This is just a sandwich. It will fit on top of my bag under the seat in front of me."
GA: "It is still an extra item. You can either consolidate or you can check one."
Me: "This is just a laptop bag. If I place the sandwich and chips in there they will be crushed and might leak. They will both fit under the seat."
GA: "One has to be checked if you don't want to consolidate."
Me: "I'll just toss the sandwich."
GA: "I can't let you walk back to the trashcan as I've already scanned your BP."
Me: "Uhhh, ok, may I have that valet tag?"
GA: "Here. And I will be counting the number of bags against the number of valet tags I give out so don't try to carry both on the plane." [I call BS on this given the number of people, including me, that reuse tags].

So I walked down the jet bridge, put the valet tag on my sandwich bag, and placed it on the cart. I didn't wait at my destination to see if it came back up though.