Plastic Bags

I am so old. I so old that I recall when grocery stores made the switch from paper to plastic. I PAINFUL recall this change, you see I was a bagger in a grocery store when management mandated that plastic be the bag of choice unless the customer specifically requests paper.

Plastic bags are a challenge when it comes to bagging. Paper bags have natural walls to support items. Plastic bags do not. There is a fine art to bagging in plastic. First you must take items such as cereal boxes and build walls on the side and then in the middle you can place items such as produce that do not lend themselves well to wall building, but then become supported with the cereal boxes. Its not difficult to bag in plastic, it only requires that you plan your bag carefully. (Cantaloupes are the exception to that rule. There is simply no way to bag a cantaloupe in a plastic bag. The best you can do is put 2-3 in a bag, depending on the size, and tie the bag at the top. Failure to place a knot at the top of the bag results in cantaloupes having a tour of your car as you drive home.)

I usual do my weekly grocery shopping at a store known as Macey's. They are local to Utah, have good sales, understand the Mormon shopping mentality, (ie, food storage), and for the most part have good customer service. That is until it comes to bagging in plastic.....

I am asked each week if I would like paper or plastic. I figure when it comes to being green it probably about a toss up, because I recycle both. My natural instinct says bag in plastic, because it was drilled into my mind, during my youth as a grocery bagger, how much more expensive the paper bag is to the store. (Yes I have considered going completely green and bringing my own bags, but right now with my crazy life having the responsibility to bring the bags to the store, and then remember to bring the bags INTO the store from the car, might send me over the edge mentally.) So I allow them to bag in plastic.

Grrrrrr......apparently today's teenage baggers are not forced to watch endless videos of how to correctly bag in a plastic bag, because at my local Macey's I have yet to meet a bagger who has any concept of building walls in bags. Their idea of bagging is to mindlessly throw items into the plastic bag. Now I could probably live with that, but my bigger issue is they only place 2-3 items in each bag, and if it is meat, each meat items gets its own separate bag, despite the fact that I have individually wrapped each meat item with a bag from the meat department. Now because I grocery shop only once a week, I usually have a pretty full cart of groceries, which means when I come home from the grocery store it is basically no different from coming home from Costco. I am hauling in individual items, only with more plastic.

Now I am not one to sit back and let life, or rather teenager baggers, control my grocery shopping destiny. So I began asking the baggers to place more than 2-3 items in the plastic bag and fill up the plastic bag. I have asked to have all my meat placed into one bag. They can't do it. It is impossible for them to place more than 3 items in any given bag, despite my instruction. I have showed them how I want my groceries bagged, to no avail. Finally I requested paper. For some reason they are capable of placing more than 2-3 items in a paper bag, that is IF you can get them to bag in paper. 4 out of 5 times I am asked my bag preference, and I say paper, which is completely disregarded, and everything ends up in endless amounts of plastic sacks. It is a battle I am loosing, or rather have lost.

But alas there is hope in site. I noticed several months ago a rather large building being built near where I get on the interstate, which is only a mile from the Macey's I frequent. I wondered on more than one occasion what was being built. About 10 days ago a sign appeared on the building which said "WinCo." My bagging prayers have been answered, not only will I continue to get low prices on my food, I get to put those bagging skills of mine to use, and now all complaints about bagging will be taken in house!