Bagger of the Year
Dave Demerjian
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I feel my stomach flip-flop with nervousness as the announcement echoes through the store:

Ladies and gentlemen, we're proud to announce that today in our service department we’re hosting our 16th annual Cashier and Bagger of the Year competition. Please take a moment while checking out today to vote for your favorite. And thanks as always for shopping Star Market: See What Makes Us Shine.

With her thick Boston accent, this last line comes out as “And thanks as always for shoppin Stah Maahkit.” I focus intensely on the scene in front of me. The store’s 14 checkout lanes are awash with streamers and balloons in the official Star Market blue and green color palette. Judges wearing ill-fitting sports jackets and Fashion Bug pantsuits wander from register to register, occasionally scribbling notes on wooden clipboards. A giant cardboard star hangs above each register, the name of the team working frantically below written in cursive gold lettering: Bob and Sandra, Somerville; Denise and Jane, Belmont; Karen and Chris, Mt. Auburn Street; etc. In just a few hours, I will be standing under my own cardboard star, on a mission to become the next Bagger of the Year. I can feel a tension and excitement in the air – my stomach knotted with anxiety. I look over at Mary, my cashier counterpart. She rolls her eyes, yawns, and cracks open another Diet Coke.

The long journey to this moment had begun on a Saturday morning two months earlier. I was sitting in the windowless but brilliantly lit Star Market employee break room stuffing my face with a jumbo blueberry muffin, thinking about all the stylish clothes I was going to buy at the mall after I got out of work and cashed my paycheck that afternoon. That’s when I noticed the poster announcing the Cashier and Bagger of the Year competition, pinned to the bulletin board next to a “Customer Service is Basic!” poster. As I read it, I realized that this competition was clearly more than some silly team-building exercise dreamt up by the Human Resources department; it was a real contest with real judges and real prizes. The champion cashier and bagger would each receive $500 (a small fortune for a 16-year-old who had scored his very own Filene’s charge card and liked to use it) and a new CD player, which was still considered somewhat novel in 1988. But for me, the real hook was in small print at the bottom of the poster: “The winning team will have their photo and caption featured on the front of our weekly Star Market circular.”

“Shit, they print millions of those things!” I thought to myself. If I won this competition, my face would be staring out from every Sunday newspaper and mailbox in greater Boston. The recognition, respect, and popularity that I so craved, and that so far had completely eluded me, would finally become a reality. I had read enough issues of Soap Opera Digest and Teen Beat to know that every success story began somewhere, and it occurred me that becoming Bagger of the Year was the start of mine.

I imagined that in 15 years, I’d do my first prime-time interview with Barbara Walters, probably in my suite at the Four Seasons. Barbara would congratulate me on my fourth Academy Award nomination; look directly at the camera, smiling slyly; and claim to have uncovered a little secret about Dave Demerjian. Suddenly, the screen would fill with a picture of me in my diagonal striped Star Market tie and blue Star Market smock. I'd feign horror, but of course I knew all about it: my publicist had given Barbara’s people the photo the week before. I'd get just a bit teary on camera, remembering. The viewers at home would have trouble believing that Dave Demerjian, with his square, masculine jaw and chiseled movie star body had once been so doughy and chubby, had once been a bagger at a supermarket. But then Barbara would tell the story of the visionary talent scout who had seen my Bagger of the Year photo one morning while clipping coupons and had arranged the screen test that led to my supporting role in a Molly Ringwald film that grossed $125 million domestically, launching my Hollywood career. For millions of Americans, I would become living proof that with hard work and determination, dreams really do come true.

Mary and I watch the proceedings for a while longer, then walk together to the employee lunchroom, where the afternoon teams are gathering. I trip over the edge of the Pepperidge Farm Snack Stick display in aisle 5 and nearly chip a tooth.

“Jesus, Dave, you really need to get it together,” Mary says as she helps me off the floor.

In the lunchroom, we sit at a round table and pick at cold cuts from the complimentary Cashier and Bagger of the Year buffet. I babble away nervously while Mary smokes cigarettes and occasionally tells me to calm down. At 12:45, a razor-thin woman in four-inch stilettos and a cheap-looking pink pantsuit accessorized with a giant rhinestone brooch strolls into the lunchroom. It’s Leanne Brewster, director of the Service Division. Leanne has tan, leathery skin and the most chemically damaged blonde hair that I have ever seen in my life. Word on the street is that she’s a huge bitch, on account of the fact that she spends her days listening to customers complain about Star Market. Leanne walks table to table, introducing herself and passing out special Cashier/Bagger of the Year nametags to each team.

“Mary and Dave,” she says as she arrives at our table, her frosty pink lips stretching into a giant smile. “I’ve heard all about you two. Good luck.”

“What does that mean?” I whisper to Mary. “What has she heard?”

“Will you just relax, Dave,” Mary says for the 800th time that day, popping her gum and fishing in her purse for her lighter. “I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything. Christ, you’re starting to make me nervous.”

Leanne stands in the front of the lunchroom and delivers her welcoming address. Referring periodically to an index card in her hand, she tells us that we are the reason Star Market uses the slogan See What Makes Us Shine. We, Leanne says, are the foundation on which the company had built its reputation and are setting an example for every employee of the entire company. She drones on endlessly, and I began fidgeting in my seat until Mary punches me in the leg from under the table. “The number-one rule,” Leanne reminds us as she finally wraps things up, “is to have lots of fun.”

“The number-one rule,” I whisper to Mary as I slip a Cashier of the Year corsage onto her wrist, “is to win this fucking competition.” She pins a green rose to my apron and gives me a hug. “We’re going to do great, Davey. Just try not to freak out down there.”

My first task, once I had made up my mind that I would be Bagger of the Year, was to find a cashier who could perform at something close to my level. Cassandra Kelly seemed like a possibility: she scanned fast and the customers liked her, but she was also prone to occasional unexplained crying jags and sometimes came to work drunk. Plus, she and I were lab partners in Mrs. Hantman’s chemistry class, and she had wanted nothing to do with me since the day I had accidentally splattered her with a peroxide decomposition solution. Probably not the best choice.

Then there was Jackie Jensen. The fact that she was pushing 80 made her a natural customer favorite, but she was slow as shit, and sometimes when I was working at her register I would catch her mumbling about getting back from the river before dark. I couldn’t work with a demented senior citizen who was going to spend the entire competition talking to herself and passing out her recipe for holiday ambrosia. I needed a partner who was strong and competent, but who understood it was my winning personality that would propel us to victory.

“Forget it, Davey,” Mary said to me later that day with a laugh as she pushed three family packs of Star Select frozen hamburger patties down her belt toward me. “There is no way I’m going to spend a Saturday helping you win some stupid bagging contest. It sounds like the gayest thing I have ever heard.” Mary Cunningham was fast, friendly, and extremely beautiful – everything that the judges would be looking for in a cashier. And even though she ranked high on the Waltham High School social pecking order, she was nice to me. With Mary as my cashier, I knew that there was no way we could lose. As I carefully placed each box of hamburger in a paper bag, I again explained to her exactly what winning the contest would do for us, for our future.