Larocque and Roll

To the people who pack my groceries January 13, 2008

Hi! You may know me from some of the grocery stores I shop in - the woman with the motley collection of cloth bags and small selection of plastic bags in case I purchase chicken and/or fish, which could be hazardous if they leaked.

I come to the front of the check-out line and quickly give you my cloth bags because all too often, you don’t bother checking with me if I need plastic bags, and by the time I manage to get your attention, you’ve already thrown the first four items into the plastic bag. Therein ensues much eye-rolling and heaving of sighs as you make a display of hauling my stuff out of the plastic bags, then grudgingly putting them into the cloth bags I’ve given you.

Now, I hand you something like five or six cloth bags - all of which are in good condition [1]. Yet, even though there are *clearly* enough bags in which for you to put all my groceries, you take great pride in putting all of them into one or two bags. What gives?

You did this when I got back here after Christmas vacation, and I had to get quite a bit of stuff. You got everything into four bags even though I’d handed you every single cloth bag I was able to round up before I left the house [2]. When I got home, not only were the heavy things on the top, a package of tofu was busted and the milk [3] was leaking because you’d packed one of the bags in a sloppy manner.

And today! I watched you put everything into two cloth bags as the other three say unused and rejected beside them. I watched as you struggled to pick up the bag to put in in my cart, decide it wasn’t heavy enough, and then put more stuff in it! Yes, I rolled my eyes; and yes, I grabbed an empty bag and put half of what was in that first bag into the second bag while you watched - you put the grapes and bananas at the bottom of the first bag, and I didn’t want them squashed when I got home!

Can we not come to some sort of understanding? That when a bag is too heavy for you to pick up, there’s probably too much stuff in it and it’s time to grab another bag?

I’m just making a suggestion…

[1] They’re all pretty solid bags, even if not a single one of them is for whatever grocery store chain I happen to be in. Why buy cloth bags when I’ve got a dozen bags from various conferences laying around?
[2] Let’s call it an even dozen bags of various shapes and sizes.
[3] My expensive, organic milk!