Turn on any family sitcom and the grocery store bag boy is likely to be a high school student. But can just any kid become a bagger? What does one need to don an apron and go from unemployed Johnny Stuckinthewell to 2004 National Best Bagger Tina Tasso? Bagging groceries may be harder than it appears.

            Baggers must ignore logic and certain environmental truths while stuffing a bag with cans of soup and hemorrhoid cream.

            “Some people will ask you to put a whole bunch of groceries in one plastic bag,” said Rael Enteen, Class of ’04 alumnus and former Goodlife grocery bagger. “You tell them that it’ll break, and they say ‘Oh, it’s only a short trip.’ Then they come back a few minutes later because their bag broke.”

            Overbagging can be equally irritating, according to courtesy clerks.

            “One request that sort of pisses us all off is when someone asks you to double-bag something really light,” Tower Market bagger Alex Suess said. “I guess it’s not environmentally friendly.”

            Paper bags at Tower cost about 8 cents each.

            “We go through about 12 bales of bags a day,” Suess said. “Each bale has 150 to 500 bags in it. I’m not sure of the exact number, but they’re really heavy”

            Paper bags at Bell Market cost 6 cents each, and the market may go through as many as 3000 bags a day, according to the manager of operations at the Noe Valley Bell Market, Hank Dever.

            The bags are expensive, but the bag boys often are treated as if they are worth less than the brown paper tools of their trade.

            “You have to be able to put up with a lot,” Enteen said. “Everyone has their own idea of how something should be bagged, and if it doesn’t get bagged that way, they yell at you. They think they’re better than you because they’re not wearing an apron.”

Baggers, or courtesy clerks as they prefer being called, must passively accept such criticism and suggestions daily.

            “Most of the customers at Tower are old people or pretty well off,” Suess said. “If we don’t bag groceries the way they want, they will complain.”

            Dever, a former courtesy clerk, added that the occasional complaints regarding improper bagging frequently stem from customers who request that their groceries be bagged in violation of basic bagging logic.

            A lot of complaints are initiated by people who think they have come up with a way to “bag their groceries creatively,” Dever said. 

            Despite the seemingly oppressive environment, bagging requires a certain amount of creativity and stylistic flair. The National Grocers Association holds an annual bagging competition. In 2005, the competition will be held on Feb. 10 in

Las Vegas.

            The contestants are judged on speed of bagging, proper bag-building technique, distribution of weight between the bags, style and the bagger’s attitude and appearance, according to 2005 Official Training Manual for Contest Coordinators for the annual “Best Bagger” contest.

            A booklet explains proper bag-building technique and includes a sample list of groceries that may need to be bagged.

            “Double bagging paper bags is an acquired skill,” Enteen said. “Eventually you learn to fit the bags geometrically.”

            “The (bagging) styles are basically something to do to keep from getting bored,” Suess said. “You are basically putting groceries in a bag.”

            Suess explained his signature bagging method: “I usually grab a bag with my right hand and throw it up so it spins two or three times. Then I catch it behind my back with my left hand and twirl a second bag into it.”

            Suess said that no bag tricks have names except for one that the bagging managers can do.

            “We call it the power-bag,” Suess said. “They grab two bags at once and open one by flicking it really fast and shove the other bag in.”

            District 7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd was a bagger at Tower Market.

            “You needed to do something to break up the monotony,” Elsbernd said.

            Safeway, however, represses these stylistic bagging flairs according to

Lincoln

High School senior Fernando Enciso-Marquez.

            “You just don’t do it,” Enciso-Marquez, said. “It’s like not professional, or something.”

             Not all stores employ courtesy clerks; Rainbow Grocery allows customers to experience supermarket bagging hands-on by providing bags without baggers. Rainbow does not hire baggers for safety reasons, according to Naomi Jelks, a Public Relations Committee member for Rainbow.

            “Repetitive stress injury is a problem,” Welks said. “Bagging is ergonomically bad for the body. We also want to hire people who can work long enough hours to receive health care and benefits.”

            Jelks added that Rainbow’s bagger-less status may be temporary.

             “If we were to get an outpouring of frustration from customers about having to bag their own groceries, we would change our policy,” Jelks said.

            Jelks added that people in the customer service department already do some bagging if customers need it and that bagging shifts are scheduled during busy periods.

However, Rainbow customers do not appear to have a problem with bagging their own groceries.

“I personally have no problem,” Rainbow Grocery customer Reverend Gonzales said. “I think that the store passes the savings onto the customer.” Gonzales added that he had previously worked at Safeway and knew how to bag things properly.

            Elsbernd said that bagging was useful.

            “It was my first real job,” Elsbernd said. “It taught me responsibility, the value of the dollar, how to interact with people.”

            It also taught Elsbernd how to bag groceries. Who knows, maybe if you start bagging groceries, you could become a city supervisor. 

Austin Ngo

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