An Employee Story: Theirs ...Or All of Ours!

Here ... I am at grocery market scanning and bagging my almost $200 worth of groceries while the employee who gets paid to "monitor" the checkout process walks toward me and then this happened.

She says - why are you double bagging all of your groceries?

So, I response while turning toward her - excuse me?

She immediately says - you are wasting our bags!

So, in my most polite tone I suggest - if you don't like the way I'm bagging the groceries, feel free to come on over here and bag them yourself.

To which this employee states - that's not my job!

Once we established that this was my job I said: - okay, then I will bag my groceries how I please if that's all right with you.

She cycles back to ask: - why are you using two bags?!

As if it isn't obvious I advise her - because the bags are weak and I don't want the handles to break or the bottoms to rip out.

Clearly showing her grasp of the situation she barks out - well that's because you are putting too much stuff in the bag. If you took half of that stuff out and put it in a different bag, then you wouldn't need to double bag.

 *10 seconds pass … of me just staring at her.

Calmly I say - so you want me to split these items in half and put half of them in a different bag so that I don't have to double bag.

Monitor gal quips - exactly.

I looked at her and note - so I would still be using two bags to hold the same number of items.

She said loudly - no because you wouldn't be double bagging.

*Next … I begin pressing two fingers to my left eye in an attempt to make it stop twitching.

To clarify why I don't know, I say - okay so here I have a jug of milk and a bottle of juice double bagged. If I take the milk out and remove the double bagging and just put the milk in the single bag and the juice in that single bag, I'm still using two bags for these two items.

Before this new information could land, she says- no because you are not double bagging them so it's not the same number of bags.

*As I was pausing in wonder I looked around at a dozen or so customers who at this point were enjoying the show.

As I looked for some understanding, I questioned her - is this like that Common Core Math stuff I keep hearing about?

With a stare from a movie scene she retorts - never mind, you just don't get it!

And with that, she went back to her little podium so she could continue texting or playing games on her phone or whatever it was she was doing before she decided to come over and “critique my bagging skills”.