Great Service

I find it difficult to blog during the summer (Why blog when you can wiffle?). So, for the next few weeks (or months), instead of coming up with new material, I'm going to post stuff I've written for various classes.

"Great Service" was the last thing I wrote for the BFA writing program. And they still let me graduate.

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I bag groceries for a living. Well, no. If this was my living, I would grab a plastic bag, throw it over my head, and tie the handles securely around my neck. Then the night manager would tell me to untie it and put it back, because each plastic bag costs a penny, which may not sound like a lot, but every single penny matters when competing against those Wal-Mart jerks.

But beating Wal-Mart isn’t only about saving penny bags and going on sabotage missions at three in the morning to rearrange their carefully shelved items. No, it’s about service.

That’s why I got into the grocery bagging business in the first place—I wanted to give great service. (That, and I have absolutely no useful skills, unless you call being a master at Hungry Hungry Hippos a skill. Unfortunately, most employers don’t, although I still list it on my applications.)

And so, every weekday evening between four and eleven, I give great service. How? Here’s a typical example.

A lady with gray hair full of curlers and a red shopping cart full of bread and cat food pulls up to the register. For me, great service always begins with a simple question—“Paper or plastic?” I don’t ask the lady, of course. I ask the cashier, because the cashier is trained to handle people. I am trained to handle jars of pickles.

“Paper or plastic?” the cashier asks.

“Paper in plastic,” responds the lady with the curlers.

“Paper in plastic,” the cashier tells me, emphasizing the “in,” because us baggers tend to be a little slow. That’s why we’re not cashiers.

“That wasn’t one of the options,” I say. But the cashier has already begun scanning items and must not risk breaking her intense concentration to acknowledge me.

Paper in plastic is the bane of baggers everywhere. It requires that large, blocky paper bags be opened and placed within tiny, amorphous plastic bags, which—according to every single law of physics—is impossible. If the good Lord had intended for paper to go inside of plastic, He would have pre-wrapped the world’s trees in giant black Hefty bags.

Well, last I checked, that wasn’t the case, and still, when old ladies hear the paper or plastic question, they seem taken aback. They look as if they had just been asked whether they wanted a peanut or butter sandwich.

Even so, every weekday evening between four and eleven, it’s my job—nay, my duty—to give great service. So I smile and nod and mash the two bags together, ripping and tearing and sweating and cursing until I end up with a conglomeration that looks akin to that one kid’s costume in the third grade play that clearly wasn’t made by his mother—the one with the cardboard tube-arm glued to the side of his head.

Monstrosity in hand, I break procedure and address the lady directly. “I’m only making one of these, so the bag might get a little heavy.”

Without glancing up from her pink-leather covered checkbook, she replies, “Yeah, whatever. Just don’t crush the bread.”

Bread is the one bit of leverage that baggers have. Bread is more precious than gold, and we control its fate. Be nice to the bagger, and the bread enjoys a safe, smash-free ride home. Be mean, and the bagger will take it upon himself to ensure that the bread ends up beneath a couple cases of beer and a bag of water-conditioner salt.

Emptying the counter, I pack the bag as densely as I can until it weighs about as much as a Buick.

“It’s not too heavy, is it?” curlers asks.

“Nope” I say while lifting the two handles. They immediately break off, while the bag itself remains firmly attached to the counter—which has began to creak and sag under the weight.

“It’s just one bag, you should be able to handle it,” I inform her.

She takes her receipt from the cashier. “Yeah, fine. But I don’t see the bread? You didn’t crush it in the bottom of the bag, did you?”

With complete and total sincerity I say, “No ma’am, your bread is fine.”

She grunts. Then, in a supernatural display of strength, she hoists up the bag with her non-pursed arm, and leaves the store. I smile, satisfied and content, knowing that I did everything I could to make sure the lady received great service—right down to keeping her bread safe. I wanted to keep the bread so safe, in fact, that I didn’t even bother packing it in the bag.

Let’s see Wal-Mart top that kind of service.