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It's one of those times of the year when it becomes a necessity to grocery shop in volume. The supermarket I generally visit seems to hire a better quality of teenager to check and bag my goods. They're also 5% to 7% more expensive than the grocers at the other end of town. Thus, for volume days, I go to the cheaper store. While smaller, and more tightly packed, the kids there are reasonably fast on checkout. The baggers, however, are markedly different.

I usually ask for plastic bags. When I'm done I ball them all up and put the bags into recycling. Seems ok to me. Sure they're less durable but for the 12' walk from the car to the house it's not really a big deal. Well, that is when things are bagged with some sort of logic. There's variants on the theme of bagging, and some of them really make me wonder:

Burgeoning Bagging: Let's see just how MUCH stuff one bag can hold shall we? Chances are it won't...

Military Bagging: Only items of like size and shape can be placed in the same bag. If you only have one item of a size and shape it gets to wallow in the bag alone.

BioHazard Bagging: Meats with meats. Dairy with dairy. Frozen with frozen. (I'm actually ok with this since I prefer to keep the meats in the bag even when I stuff it in the fridge. It keeps leaks from becoming catastrophic.)

Demonstration of Entropy Bagging: This usually happens with the fastest baggers. Anything and everything goes into a bag until it reaches capacity. When you get home you'll need to go through 75% of the bags to find that last strawberry yogurt...

Criminally Insane Bagging: This was what I was a victim of last night. Honest to gods the kid put every single item, regardless of size, shape, color, texture, temperature, into its own separate bag. Loading it into the car I just reached into the cart and grabbed fist fulls of plastic and hoped the right end was up. When I got home the volume of plastic was roughly the dimension of the giant bubble that chased Patrick McGoohan down the beach in the opening scene of 'The Prisoner'.

There is one more type of bagging - and that's the Guilt Complex bagging you get when visiting the natural grocers. "WHAT?!?! you didn't bring handmade, earth-supporting, eco-friendly, hemp and cat-gut, Birkenstock-certified bags of your own? Oh the SHAME! We will grudgingly give you paper ones, but keep in mind we shall glare at you with pure contempt for your wastefulness in the process."

Yeah I don't shop there often, but they are open on Thanksgiving.