Grocery Store Baggers

Due to a severe lack of good Chinese food in our area and an abundance of delicious Jasmine rice cooked daily by our rice cooker, I have decided to take it upon myself to experiment this evening with a dish called Egg Fried Rice. This dish would be pretty hard to whip up with the spaghetti and chicken we have on hand, so I ventured out into the world to pick up a few items at my (new) neighborhood grocery store, Albertsons. Now, you may not have an Albertsons where you live per-say, but I can guarantee that you have a grocery outlet that is owned by their parent company – Safeway.

The store itself could use some updating, but I kind of like that sort of charm – plaid patterns on the wall where the labels for “Meats” and “Fruits” are located, along with outdated freezers kind of give this place a homey feel. I almost expect to find my old-time favorites like 7-Up Tropical Splash (R.I.P.), but they do a good job of keeping up with the times and not stocking too many Werthers Originals on their already cramped shelves. I found everything I needed in a decent amount of time, even spend a bit chatting with an elderly lady in a wheelchair, helping her get some produce items that were out of her reach.

Then came the problem, I had forgotten about this issue for awhile as I usually go to the grocery store at off times, also preferring to frequent an organic food market instead of a major chain. At smaller these smaller mom-and-pop stores they do not have the extra money to hire some high school kids to bag groceries, so I happily load my items into a reusable bag without the “assistance” of a pimply-faced teen. Today was different though, I was at a major retailer and was actually using my largest re-usable bag as my purse, so I would have to suck it up and take plastic; plastic grocery bags make excellent dog poo receptacles, see Pooper Scooper post for further explanation.

I felt guilty asking him to leave and let me pack the groceries myself, so I submitted to his “help” and watched awe-stricken as he managed to pack my $25 worth of groceries into 7 bags. Yes, 7 BAGS! Here is a breakdown of what each bag contained:

Bag 1 – 2 packages of ham and Cool Whip

Bag 2 – Eggs

Bag 3 – 2 cans of spaghetti sauce

Bag 4 – strawberries, jalapeno peppers and green onion

Bag 5 – a package of romaine lettuce

Bag 6 – a bottle of Soy Vay and package of ziti

Bag 7 – gallon of water (which I specifically told him I did not need in a bag)

Now, I have to ask, do I look like I have some sort of physical disability that would prevent me from carrying bags that weighed over 1 lb? Or do the “new and improved” Albertsons bags only have a weight rating that maxes out at 1 lb? Maybe this is some sort of underground technique they are using to get people to switch over to reusable bags, although over-packing the flimsy bags and making them bust in the parking lot would probably have a greater impact than simply using more bags if this were the case. I would like to pretend that this was an isolated incident, but I always manage to walk out of any major grocer with about two times too many bags. There is just no need for this…

If this happens again when I go in there I am going to whip out my experience as a high school grocery bagger and show these kids how to actually pack a bag. It all comes down to geometry, find items of similar temperatures that fit together well, make sure the bag does not weigh more than Mr. T would be able to tote around and you are good to go. Stinky merchandise should be separated from edible items, and eggs should be packed with light stuff – this is not rocket science. What would possess someone to put a package of lettuce in a bag all by itself? It is already in a bag in the first place, just hand the damn lettuce to me if you really can not mentally decipher where it could fit in. I need to make my rice.