Thank you for allowing me to serve you

I've been meaning to write this post since just after we moved here but largely for reasons of dullness I haven't. Still, I am meant to be recording my observations, for me as much as for you (there, I've said it) so here goes.

Bag packers make me nervous and irritable.

The people who stand at the end of the standard less-than-spacious supermarket tills waiting to pack your shopping for you in theory sounds marvellous I'm sure. The truth is somewhat different. Supermarkets are set up for people with cars. Fact. They just pretend to be non-car people friendly by having doors in from the pavements. Tills are set up for people happy to stand around aimlessly while someone else packs their shopping for them. There has been room allocated for one person, one employee, at the end of the till to pack bags. The side arm of the till has actually been cordoned off with cunning use of a machine which gives you your coin change. Folded money change is dolled out in the standard way from the cashier, so you somehow have to negotiate collecting money with both hands - notes in one, coins in the other - whilst strapping your purse or wallet to your chin (I knew that unsightly Velcro patch would come in handy) and dropping anything else you may be holding on your toe. Usually a can of beans.

Paying by card is also fraught with trauma. The swiping card mechanism is much less forgiving than you would expect and I have stood there melon-like swiping and re-swiping five times before. Eyes have been rolled, however surreptitiously. Then you are asked questions before and after entering your pin number, which vary depending on which store you are in:
Do you want to donate to this particular charity today? Y or N
Do you want cash back? Y or N
Now are you sure because you might need it later for bus fare? Y or N
OK then if you are sure, are you happy with the amount for your shopping? Please note that if you press no, you will have to start again. Y or N
Have we asked you too many questions today? Y or N
Please come again soon. Bye. Love you xx

I have seen grown men weep in the face of the unrelenting questions. This isn't strictly true but I have actually seen people weaken under the pressure of the questions, stumble, fall and have to start again with the cashier cracking the whip and shouting 'faster, faster' the whole time. Wait, that isn't true either. I have seen people struggle through the whole process and I have even had to help people confused by which button to press at which time. True, but less dramatic.

Presumably while the customer is tangled up with the interrogation machine, the bag packer steps in and neatly packs all your food, frozen and fridge things all together, bread on the top of the bag, weight equally distributed, so when you emerge dazed and poorer from the instrument of doom, you are gently guided out of the door. There is a further service where the bag packer can take your items to your car and pack your boot for you. I'm sure more kindnesses will be rolled out soon like driving your poor bewildered body home, packing all your food away, heating some soup and spooning it into your face. A quick wipe up around the mouth you mucky pup, and the bag packer has left you sat on your sofa, cupboards and belly full and mercifully with no memory of the traumatic episode, ran back five miles to the store just in time to pack the bags of the next customer in line who is still struggling with the inquisition.

For those of us (me) who do not drive to the supermarket, but carry an empty backpack there in order to fill it to a certain point of just tolerable heaviness, known only to me owing to years of practice and almost back breaking episodes, the bag packing service is not required, thanks all the same. It is possible to give your own bag to the bag packer to pack for you but having once been intimidated into doing this, and suffering badly on the way home, and reduced to tears at the sight of the front door, I now wholeheartedly and firmly, sometimes rudely when all other nice options have failed me, refuse. You would literally be amazed at the added trauma this causes.

It's a tricky one. People have been employed to do this job and I don't want to seem ungrateful or portray that somehow I am superior in the back packing stakes, but at the same time, I am capable of packing my own bags quickly and simultaneously confounding supermarket staff by rolling off the answers to the ceaseless queries from machines and humans. Maybe I should list this as a talent on my CV? There are people who need this service for one reason or another, and luckily I am not one of them. But, some people insist I should have my bags packed for me, and that is where the trouble starts.

By now I moreorless know the people who will leave me alone and the ones who will help me to death. I avoid shorter queues if there is a helpful type at the end of it. Sometimes I am thwarted and the bag packers change on me mid-queue so I have to grit it out. There are two people in particular who even after a year just CANNOT comprehend my polite no thank you. One of them likes to wrestle my backpack from me and just WILL not take no for an answer. I have come up with a strategy for him which is to bring another bag for him to put some specific things of my choosing in, things that I already know will not fit in the big bag. This sounds so stupid to be even talking about. I am admitting that I have a special system up my sleeve for one belligerent man whose name I don't even know but whose sullen haughty face has been etched in my mind. He doesn't much like my special system because he wants to do it all and when I leave my bag to go to pay, he zooms over to it to do it up for me. He also doesn't like it when I thank him. He is as uncomfortable with that concept as I am with someone packing my bag - once he shrugged and said "It is my job." Next time I have decided that I will say "It is my bag."

The other bag packing chap is ridiculously friendly. He waves at me when he sees me in the queue. He turns me packing my bag into a game. Believe it or not, supermarkets are in the habit of employing grown ups and not toddlers. He knows I like the heavy things in my bag and he picks up the remainder. However as each item comes down from the cashier, he likes to check with me, loudly, grinning from ear to ear. Mine? Mine! Yours? Yours! And boy, is it fun and not irritating at all! Hey, everyone else in here, wake up from your comas. There are two people packing bags over there and it looks like fun! Maybe you could try packing your own bags, rather than standing there letting your cashier who actually has her arm in a sling pack yours? No, you didn't notice? There's a surprise.

Worse, far, far worse than all of this is the fact that every single time I pack my own bags, I am thanked. It really bothers me. It bothered me from day one and on day 406, I am still bothered. This is the dark side of the service industry as far as I am concerned. In Walgreens (sort of a strange hybrid of Superdrug and Woolworths) the end of the receipt is printed with the name of the cashier and the words 'Thank you for allowing me to serve you today.' As if they have been elected by the people to fulfill this function rather than be taken for granted as they carry out dull servile duties day in day out, smile never faltering, only for people on their phones to ignore them as they wait around for their bags to be packed. It seems to me that expectations of certain unimportant things are very high, and other far far more important matters, shamefully ignored.

My name is Karen. Thank you for allowing me to write this today.