Bagging Groceries

 
 I worked in a grocery story for about a year during college.  Smitty's, down on the "levee" in the area between West Lafayette and Lafayette was a family owned, full service, grocery.  Mostly I was a cashier, in the days before bar codes when you had to memorize the price of milk, eggs, and beer, but sometimes I would stock shelves.  Occasionally, if it was slow (and the stock boys were bored) or super busy (and the lines were getting long), we had baggers, but more often the cashiers who rang up the purchases bagged the groceries, too.  We were all instructed on basic rules, like don't put the bread on the bottom, but otherwise we were pretty much left to our own particular style.  I liked to group items--cold things in one bag, non-food items in another.  I tried to balance the weight so that all the cans weren't in one bag, or so that the peaches weren't squashed against the cat food. (It is amazing how many cans of cat food some people bought!)

I guess those bagging experiences have been hard for me to shake and I realize I've become quite critical of grocery store baggers.  I frequently find myself rebagging my groceries after checking out.  Some baggers seem to take it as a challenge to try to fit all my purchases in as few bags as possible.  I always go to the store with 5-6 reusable totes, but if they can get everything into 1 they look so proud. It's like a giant 3D jigsaw puzzle to them.  I live on the third floor and find it much easier to carry 2-3 lighter bags up the stairs than 1 heavy one.

But, I've never had an experience like yesterday's at Trader Joe's.  As usual, I brought my own bag for the 8 or so purchases I made.  As the cashier scanned the items, I put them in my reusable tote.  But, he finished scanning a bit before I finished bagging.

"Here, let me," he said and grabbed the bag and took everything out! 
"Don't you like how I was doing it?" I asked.
"Sorry," he said, "I guess it's just my OCD."
"Well, maybe MY OCD is why I was doing it!"

Now we had it, an OCD standoff!  Who should bag the groceries? I could have argued that the customer is always right and grabbed the bag back, taken everything out and done it MY way. But I conceded the bagging job and let him rearrange my groceries.

"See," he exclaimed happily, "Now you have more room!"

More room for what I wondered?  I was done shopping, I didn't NEED more room.  But he looked so pleased with himself that I just smiled and took my bag.