Betty's List Departments
Signature Sponsors
Media Partners
Betty's List Columns
|
|
Bagging It
By Linda Gebroe
Some people may not consider it an art, but I do. At the very least, it is a skill, one that has been lost on the younger generation. For some reason, they no longer bag groceries properly.
Let’s say my groceries consist of a half gallon of milk, a half gallon of orange juice, six eight-ounce containers of yogurt, a jar of applesauce, four boxes of cereal, salad greens, bananas and a green pepper. Oh, and a box of Mentos I throw in at the check-out stand.
Assuming these items cannot all fit in one bag, here is how they should be distributed, bottom to top. Bag One: milk, applesauce, three of the yogurts, two boxes of cereal and the green pepper. Bag Two: orange juice, the rest of the yogurt, the other two boxes of cereal and the salad greens. Oh, and the box of Mentos I threw in at the check-out stand.
But here’s how today’s whippersnappers bag my goods. Bag One: milk, orange juice, yogurt, applesauce. Total weight, three to four hundred pounds. Bag Two: cereal, salad greens, green pepper. Weight, a pound and a half.
The Mentos, the bagger at the end of the conveyor belt holds for several seconds. He turns the box over a couple of times, as if looking for a sign, perhaps hoping the perky mints will introduce themselves and tell him which bag they’d like to ride in. Feigning confidence, he tosses them into one bag or the other and tells me to have a nice day.
Not gonna happen. Not the way this dude has set me up. After struggling to guide my shopping cart (which is possessed of no two wheels rolling in the same direction), I begin to lift Bag One - the overloaded one. In mid-hoist, I say a silent prayer, hoping the bag’s handles won’t give way before I lower the goods into the trunk of my car. The handles hold.
The same cannot be said for me. By the time I’m able to straighten up, I realize I have crushed three of my favorite vertebrae. Calculating how much this gaff will cost me in chiropractic treatment and determined not to make the same mistake twice, I gingerly lift Bag Two. It’s a featherweight, fairly flying out of the shopping cart. I pop a Mento in my mouth and curse the wretch who packed my vittles.
How did grocery bagging come to this? I blame Proposition 13. Thirty years ago, California voters approved this short-sighted legislation, which provided property owners and businesses a handsome tax break. Those taxes had paid for public education; once they dried up, California’s schools plummeted from near top in the nation to the bottom of the heap. A generation later, we’re seeing that half funding produces half-wits who reason that all liquids belong in one bag.
There is an exception in San Francisco, a place where baggers do not cripple shoppers. That is Rainbow Grocery, the city’s worker-owned “cooperative retailer of natural and organic foods.” At Rainbow, the shoppers are the baggers. Once the cashier has charged you for your goods, you’re on your own. Expecting him or her to bag would be a form of oppression, even if there is no one else in line and the cashier has no apparent demands on his or her time. You can stand there and wait till your organic yogurt grows mold. It’s not going to happen. And frankly, in this place you don’t want to be seen as someone who would like to be served.
So you gamely place your groceries in your bag (if you’ve thought ahead, you’ve brought your own), your action indicating you are one of the People. Not the oppressive kind. The heavy items you put on the bottom, the light ones at the top and if your stuff can’t fit in just one satchel, well then, you know how to distribute the weight evenly among multiple bags because you were educated before Proposition 13. And off you trundle to your car, hopefully a hybrid or, better yet, a bicycle, stopping to give the friendly, probably homeless, definitely oppressed man in the parking lot some money because you have more than he does and that’s not fair.
If only Rainbow sold Mentos.
Bio & Past Articles
Past Articles
|
Betty's List Linda's A-Musings'
Columnist Linda Gebroe.
Linda Gebroe brings more than two decades of professional experience to her role as writer, editor, publications manager and communications consultant. Since 1987, she has owned and operated Gebroe Communications Services, a business that has helped scores of organizations communicate with a variety of audiences and markets.
As a sole practitioner, Linda has been able to do what she loves most, which is writing. Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, and the San Jose Mercury-News, and been aired on KQED-FM, San Franciscos National Public Radio station. A lifelong baseball fan, Linda has also written for the Sporting News, and for the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics magazines.
You can reach Linda at lgebroe@comcast.net. Or visit her web site: http://www.lindagebroe.com
|
|
