Reusable Bags

Reuseable Bags (And Why I Hate Them)

While I’m mostly a janitor, I do work at a grocery store, and everyone on the salesfloor can magically become a bagger at any time when one of the checkers picks up the phone and goes, “EVERYONE GET UP HERE! SOMEONE HAS REUSABLE BAGS!”
Since the first actual bagger of the day doesn’t come in until after I leave, it’s usually me. Whoopdefuckindoo.
Why such a frenzy over cloth bags? They’re good for the environment or some crap, sure, but a major pain in the ass to the rest of us. Let me share a typical experience…
A lady walks up. She has a cart spilling over with groceries and a million reusable bags. I hold out my hand to accept these things and the bitch chucks them at my face like she’s trying to get rid of a grenade.

You’d be surprised how much people do this. Yeah, just fucking THROW them at me. Don’t apologize or anything when they hit me in the face either, that will only give me a sense of worth.
One thing I have learned from this job: People treat baggers almost worse than they treat janitors. Almost.
The average reusable bag is covered with a thin coat of mysterious filth. I feel like I need a freakin’ Hazmat suit to touch some of these things. Oh god, and they smell.

Instead of chucking these at my face, why don’t you chuck them in the washer once in a while? Jesus, I’ve found entire ecosystems evolving in them.
On the note of bagging, another peeve I have is when people hover 2 inches in front of my face while I’m packing their groceries, making absolutely sure I pack everything exactly right.

They’ll seriously stand like this the whole time, sometimes with their hands floating over the bag. It’s horribly obnoxious and unsettling.
These are the people that are so fucking OCD that they make everyone around them miserable. “THERE IS A BOX ON THE FLOOR IN THIS AISLE, THIS STORE IS A DUMP. I’M TELLING THE MANAGER.”
Y’know, those people.
No joke, some lady once watched me pack up every item in her shitty cloth bags, hovering over me the whole time…And waited until the last item was packed before turning the bag upside-down and screeching like a howler monkey,
“THE BEANS CAN’T GO WITH THE MILK!”

And that’s all she said before leaving me to stand there in stunned silence, wondering why the hell beans and milk can’t be together in harmony. I tried to explain to her that I was distributing weight evenly between the bags, but she insisted that beans and milk absolutely can NOT be grooving in the same space. Her reason?
“They’re not the same food group!”
WELL I’M PRETTY SURE WE’RE NOT THE SAME SPECIES, HOWLER MONKEY LADY, BUT WE STILL SHARE THE SAME GROCERY STORE. ASS.
So she ended up with one extremely heavy bag with a million cans of beans in it. I hope the bitch wrecked her spine.
Today’s lesson: Do not dump my bag out when I finish packing it, it is quite rude. Also, something about beans and mysterious stains, I dunno.