This is an example of why I enjoy James Lileks' writing: to know there's someone else like me always planning, always organizing, and not understanding why my logic isn't apparent to everyone - and trying to laugh at myself instead of taking it too seriously because it is ridiculous. Someone else in the world thinks like me so maybe I'm not that weird.
At the grocery store on Saturday the clerk was bagging the groceries, and doing a...fine job. I admit I make it easy: I load the belt by category and destination. Everyone does, don’t they? It’s part of planning ahead. If I arrange the items so it’s meat / vegetables, then bladders of liquids, then dry food, then domestic goods, everything’s in bags that can be ferried to their property destination without rooting through a bag that has bacon, razors, socks, and cereal. She stocked the bags well, and respected the genre classifications I’d set up.
“Nice framing,” I said. That’s the term for bracing a bag so it has walls, and everything fits together.
“Thank you,” she said. “They don’t teach us.”
“They don’t?
“No, they show us a video on how it’s supposed to be done, but they don’t train anyone. Everything I learned I learned from Byerly’s.”
That’s the high-end grocery store. They have one person to run the belt and another to bag. Half the baggers are retirees, half 20-somethings. I don’t mean a hellish vivisectioned conjoining of the two. They’re all good, and I don’t just mean they don’t put coffee cans on top of grapes. They frame well. That’s the skill of grocery-store bagging: the ability to look at the items on the belt and see the frame.
He is one of my favorites as well, Melinda.
Posted by: Corey | April 27, 2010 at 08:30 AM
I worked at a grocery store, and they did train us. I can still bag a plastic grocery bag to the point where you can kick it, and it will not fall over.
Posted by: Justin | April 28, 2010 at 11:32 AM