Molly Mackay-Occupation: Grocery Bagger

     The most pristine of jobs, glorified by young and old alike--BAGGING.  It may sound simple and trite, but if we didn't have baggers in the world... I'm actually not going to finish that sentence.  I work at the United States Air Force Academy commissary.  For those of you who have no military background, a commissary is basically just a grocery store, but for military personnel and their dependents.  It's basically the place to be.  I have worked at this classy establishment for almost 3 years.  Time has just flown by.  Especially time spent at the commissary... it's practically Disneyland for poor teenagers that don't have enough money to pay for college textbooks.  Whenever I'm home for break, I spend every waking moment I can at the commissary; bagging, loading, unloading, and bagging.
    
      Here's the breakdown of my commissary's bagger system.  There is a head bagger on lane 9, we call him "el jefe." If you don't know what that means, go buy a Spanish dictionary and slap yourself in the head with it.  There is a long line of baggers in front of the customer service office (where the real head honchos are) they pretty much watch us like hawks, devouring any bagger who double bags without being told by a cashier first.  Whenever a lane opens, a bagger walks up and asks "paper or plastic?"  Then if the customer isn't 'green' enough to bring his/her own bags, we proceed putting their groceries into bags.  Canned goods with canned goods, produce with produce, meat with meat, ice cream with cold jars of pickles.  It really becomes second nature.  Just make sure you remember to put the bread on TOP in a bag of what I call 'the crushables.'  You may think this is all we do, but this is the commissary we're talking about, we actually take it a step further and bring the customer's groceries out to their cars and load them.
     
     As a bagger, we only get paid in tips.  Which can sometimes suck monkies if we only have 3 customers in 4 hours.  Most of the time, we get paid on average about 12-15 an hour.  This mostly depends on how you treat your customers, your gender, your customer's gender, your customer's age, and many other factors that are incredibly politically incorrect and should never be discussed with non-baggers, or what we like to call, 'muggles.'  As a bagger, I have learned to read people very well.  If you get a customer who is a cadet at the Air Force Academy, and you are a female bagger, you are going to get tipped very well.  If you get a customer with a red, shiny porshe, he is most likely an enlisted man who is in debt up to his eye balls and is going to tip you 43 cents and a piece of pocket lint. Yes, bagging is the life.  The customers are may favorite part of my job (the ones that tip me well,) and it is always incredibly rewarding talking to the soldiers that swing by the commissary on their way home.  If I were to fight oversees for 14 months, the first place I would come back to, would be the commissary.

-Dame Shirley