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19 Items Per Minute, or, How bagging groceries instructs my life

April 3, 2011 //  by Terra Osterling

Paper or Plastic?

Never pack bread on the bottom.

In one of my earliest posts I mentioned that I would periodically discuss my various past jobs. Looking back over a littered landscape, each one did provide valuable lessons. My first job, at a large grocery store, by far taught the most lasting lessons.

I first put on the blue apron when cashiers were still required to ask every customer whether they would prefer that their groceries were packed in paper or plastic bags. Nowadays you are an ecological moron if you don’t have reusable bags.

Back then, paper was still a fairly regular choice. Of course there were the power shoppers who wanted double-bagged paper, or double-bagged plastic, or paper inside plastic (my personal favorite). Bags tied; bags not tied. Fill the bags; please don’t make the bags too heavy. You get the idea.

Over time I realized that the customers were, in fact, real people who were not intent on inconveniencing my teenage life. For example, paper-inside-plastic was popular among the senior citizens who arrived by bus each Thursday morning; the sturdiest choice for tired hands and I suspect that those Depression-survivor folks were reusing every bag before recycling was in vogue.

Lesson:

People have their reasons. Don’t judge.

Punch In

Cashiering in a large grocery store can be grueling. I was a teenager and it wiped me out, for a job I didn’t have to work (unless, of course, I didn’t want a social life or any of the personal products important to a teenage girl). There were people who needed that job to support their family.

Then there was the customer who at the end of her order pulled out the books of food stamp coupons that were issued before benefits cards were introduced a little over 15 years ago. She was sheepish. I had likely already handled hundreds of dollars in food stamps that day; what’s the big deal?

She starts talking. Her husband has left her. She is a single mother to two children and has gone back to school in preparation for a career to support her family. But she is falling short and this is her first time using food stamps. In all the compassion I could muster from my teenage bones, I explain that lots of people use food stamps. I say that it sounded like she was working hard for her kids and that food stamps are for people in exactly her situation. I answer a few questions she has about food stamps, and then I never see her again.

Lesson:

Everyone needs compassion. Especially when it’s inconvenient.

 

People are strange

Every type of person imaginable visits the grocery store because everyone has to buy groceries. No one particularly enjoys it. I have been spit on (close talkers), bled on, proselytized, and yelled at. I have also been sought out for my bagging prowess, my apparently kind demeanor, and because some shoppers think I resemble their ethnicity (who then attempt to speak to me in another language).

I couldn’t invent these scenarios if I tried:

  • I witness a heated argument between two adults over the number of items one has in the express lane (my lane). Aggravated, I yell, “HEY! This is NOT kindergarten! Stop acting like it!” They stop.
  • A shoplifter tries to make a break for it and is tackled right next to where I am standing, trapped in my little two-foot-square cashier area. Fists fly, legs kick; they drag away the shoplifter to wait for the police. I Windex my scanner.
  • A clearly exasperated woman holding a fussing toddler abruptly grabs the child’s hand and bites it. The child screams even louder, and I say nothing. Is the customer always right?
  • I have smelled a family well before I’ve seen them. They look like they live wild in the hills and I feel badly for the shabbily-dressed, dirty children. And then they pay for two huge carts of groceries with the biggest wad of cash I have ever seen.

Lesson:

The world is full of all kinds of people. Generally, they don’t bite.

Except when they do.

Punch out

That first job has been my longest at seven years – throughout high school and college. The current job will tie that record this year. At all the jobs in between, I constantly return to the lessons learned “on register.” Basically, I learned how to deal with people. I also learned that I prefer NOT to work with the general public. But I can do it if I have to, and can for the most part remain calm when I encounter weirdoes. That comes in handy no matter what I do for a living.

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Category: Experiences, How I got "here", Inspiration, Old jobs, StorytellingTag: Change my life, Life Lessons, Self-awareness

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. teresa wood

    February 3, 2013 at 3:40 PM

    Thank you, and very clever, to mention your other well-liked posts in your latest post, thus, I like BOTH! I’ve never bagged groceries but I am probably one of the “weirdoes” that the check out clerk cringes at! I come in with about 5 different reusable bags and I know exactly what I want in each bag and how I want them packed. “Sorry,” all you great bag checkers, please learn from Terra’s bagging experience, and allow me to be weird because it makes lugging those groceries into the house and putting them away SO MUCH easier for THIS customer.

    • suddenwriteturn

      February 5, 2013 at 4:33 PM

      You think you are demanding when it comes to your bagged groceries? Ha! I’m sure the cashiers cringe when they see me coming — I put all my items on the belt grouped the way I want everything packed. Hey, I did this for 7years, I know how it should be done. Tip: It helps to scan the checkouts for someone who looks like they have shopped for, carried and put away groceries for a family. They seem to best know how to do it!

  2. Grace

    April 4, 2011 at 8:55 AM

    I definitely think you should expand this and submit it somewhere. Not sure where, but I’d be happy to talk about it. Very engaging.

    • suddenwriteturn

      April 13, 2011 at 6:52 PM

      Thank you, I would love to talk about it!

  3. morninglightmama

    April 3, 2011 at 9:50 PM

    Wow- those are SOME stories!! I’m willing to bet you have many, many more. The only job I worked where I dealt with customers was in a pool store- one side was supplies and such for swimming pools, and the other sold billiards tables and accessories. I was your friendly water-tester, cashier, shelf-stocker extraordinaire. I found out that older gentlemen liked me. 🙂

    • suddenwriteturn

      April 13, 2011 at 6:50 PM

      This is only the tip of the iceberg – I have 7 years worth of stories! The older gentlemen like me, too. I had repeat customers. 🙂

  4. Mary Grabski

    April 3, 2011 at 4:13 PM

    So true Terra so true. This brought back so many memories and made me laugh.

    • suddenwriteturn

      April 13, 2011 at 6:51 PM

      Oh, Mary, you were there for many of these stories!

Trackbacks

  1. Not Thankless | SUDDEN WRITE TURN says:
    December 1, 2013 at 4:54 PM

    […] I’m thinking about the job I had at a grocery store all through high school and college. Tops Market was just a few miles from home and I started there as a cashier the summer I was 16 years old. It was not glamorous and only sometimes fun. I saw it as something I had to do, not something I wanted to do. […]

  2. Popular: Viral without the vaccine | Sudden Write Turn says:
    February 3, 2013 at 3:17 PM

    […] Posts about babysitting my nephews are usually big hits. This post about loss struck a chord, and this post about bagging groceries along with this post about being a bad guitar student both draw a steady stream of browser […]

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