Bagger of the Year (Cont.)

“That’s just stupid, Dave. You think winning some dumb contest at Star Market is going to make you famous?” I slapped a PAID, THANK YOU sticker on a 10-pound bag of Carolina enriched white rice as it came rolling down the belt. “There is no way in hell I’m doing it. I have no interest. Zero.” She looked at the mountain of bags on the belt in front of me. “She wanted plastic bags, Davey, not paper. You better learn the difference before you enter your little contest.”

I was sitting in my bedroom that night feeling completely dejected, flipping through a copy of First for Women that I had shoplifted from the store that day, when I heard my mom yell to me from the kitchen.

“I think it’s that friend of yours, Mary,” she said with a forced smile as she handed me the phone, clearly disappointed that the only person who ever called for me was The Girl Who Smokes Cigarettes and Drinks Wine Coolers.

“Dude, you should have told me that we were going to win $500!” Mary yelled in my ear. I heard the clanging of glass in the background, and knew that she was calling me from the payphone next to the bottle redemption center. “Why do I have to read some poster in the lunchroom to find out there’s a fat cash grand prize involved? Of course I’m going to do it.” I dragged the phone into the basement with a smile. Mary and I began planning our future.

1:15pm: As we file out of the lunchroom to the service department, I tell Mary that I’d like five minutes alone to meditate quietly, but she absolutely prohibits it, steering me by the elbow toward the door. I’m shocked by the carefree attitude of our competitors as we walk together toward the front of the store: they are smiling and laughing as if this is just another Saturday at work, rather than an important competition that could determine the very course of their lives.

“Dude, you are making a total ass of yourself,” Mary whispers in my ear as I lean against the wall of the courtesy booth to complete a series of simple but effective stretching exercises. The floor manager hands Mary a cloth bag filled with change, and directs us to register seven. A cardboard star sways lazily above our heads in the air-conditioning, the words “Mary and Dave” written in gold glitter and sparkling in the store’s overhead fluorescent bulbs.

Our first customer of the day approaches with six whole pineapples, which are notoriously difficult to bag, and 18 cans of frozen Pina Colada mix. I suggest to him that perhaps he'd like me to put the pineapples in a large cardboard box so that they are easier to carry. He agrees enthusiastically. The judge with the oily ponytail and green eye shadow looks over at us and scribbles a note on her clipboard, undoubtedly dazzled by my ingenious use of alternative bagging methods and ability to problem-solve creatively. Already, this looks like our contest to lose.

2:15pm: The store is dead and we haven't had a customer for nearly 15 minutes. I’m well aware that looking busy even when you’re not is a key strategy to maximizing point totals, so I've Windexed and wiped my bagging area three times, restocked the freezer bags, and swept twice, but now I’m running out of things to do. I begin reorganizing the Breath Savers on our candy rack alphabetically by flavor. Mary looks at me nervously and starts cleaning the keys of her register with rubbing alcohol and a Q-tip.

2:35pm: While rearranging the stack of paper bags on my bagging station for the third time, I notice a small crowd gathering around Brad and Jennifer at register 12. I watch in shock as Brad juggles four lemons before letting them drop into a paper bag, and the crowd bursts into applause. A judge smiles broadly and makes a note on her clipboard. I grimace and walk to the front of our register, looking for a customer to bring through.

3:00pm: A family of four approaches our line, two carriages filled to overflowing with complicated, difficult-to-bag items. The mother asks if I would mind giving her paper bags inside plastic, and I tell her with a huge grin that there is nothing I'd rather do, despite the fact that this small request has the potential to decrease my efficiency by 13-15%. I see her son stuff a package of Reese's Pieces into his jacket pocket. I'm not sure if reporting shoplifting will increase my point total or make me look like jerk, so I keep my mouth shut. The frizzy-haired judge with the earth-tone checked blazer, oblivious to the theft in progress, winks at me as I affix paid stickers to three 12-packs of Diet Coke.

After this year’s competition had been announced, our store manager Mark Tempesta placed a ballot box in the employee lunchroom so that the entire staff could be involved in the nomination process. Mary and I marched upstairs to Mark’s office as soon as we saw it. “You can’t open this up to everyone,” we told him emphatically. Winning was the most important thing, we explained, and if Mark simply handed us the nomination, we could get to work preparing for the contest. We were the only ones really qualified to compete anyway, so why waste precious time with some silly nomination process?

“Besides,” I blurted out before Mary elbowed me in the stomach. “Most of the people who work here are morons. You think they’re smart enough to actually pick a winning team?”

But Mark insisted it was his job to make sure the voice of the people was heard. So Mary and I did what anyone in our position would do: we stuffed the ballot box. When the votes were counted, our store’s 85 employees had placed a total of 228 votes, and we were the clear winners.

As soon as we had nailed the nomination, I developed an intensive, two-month training schedule designed to whip us into shape for the competition.

“Are you kidding me?” Mary asked after skimming the first four-and-a- half pages.

I waved my latest Filene’s bill in her face. “We need to win this competition, Mary. It’s $500, and I’ve got bills to pay.”

“Yeah, I guess when you put it that way, I really need to win this competition too,” she said quietly as she took a gulp of her Diet Coke. “But still, I cannot believe I’m giving up two months of my life for 500 goddamn dollars.”

“It’s not just $500,” I reminded her. “Our picture will be featured on the front of the Star Market circular, distributed to 2.5 million Boston-area homes.”

She ignored me and flipped to the appendix. “Christ Davey, do you really think we need a section on standard customer greetings? This is ridiculous.”

“It’s not ridiculous,” I replied. “It’s our ticket to greatness.”

“Whatever,” she said. “When do you want us to start?”

For the next seven weeks, we wandered the aisles of our store late at night, filling shopping carriages with problem products: bulky, odd-shaped packages that would be tough to bag, frozen foods and oily meats with bar codes obscured by frost and grease, exotic fruits and vegetables with hard-to-memorize codes. We'd wheel it all to our practice register in the corner of the store and see how fast we could get everything unloaded, scanned, and bagged. We repeated this night after night, analyzing our performance as we went. The cashiers working the night shift would gather around to offer suggestions and pointers as we worked, and we would sometimes see Mark staring down at us from the manager’s office upstairs, an intense look on his face.

Mary perfected the "swim," a complex, high-speed technique that required the cashier to scan one item while simultaneously reaching for another with her free hand. By the end of week seven she was up to nearly 60 items per minute (IPM) – an all-time record at our store.

While Mary jacked up her IPM, I focused on the bagging fundamentals: speed, separation, and weight distribution. Regardless of how rapidly Mary was hurtling items down the belt or what sort of stupid, time-consuming request a customer made, letting groceries pile up in the bagging area would be the kiss of death. But in my quest for speed I couldn't neglect the basics. Product separation was key: household cleaning agents were always placed in their own bag away from food. Leaky packages of poultry or fish, toxic items, or anything from the freezer case got its own small plastic freezer bag. Items too large for a bag needed a PAID, THANK YOU sticker, without