The Path of the Bookseller

The new device caught my eye at the checkout line. The supermarket in New Jersey had instituted a system for bagging groceries, rather like a lazy susan. Each of the three sides held bags on two pairs of hooks. Cashiers could put items into those two bags, then rotate the device and continue with the next two.

“This looks like a really good idea,” I said.

“No,” the cashier replied. “It’s not.”

“Really?” I said. “It looks efficient.”

“Yeah,” she said. “For some people. For small orders. But it really doesn’t work out. You get a four, five hundred dollar order and it’s a mess. When things pile up, and I’m ringing and haven’t gotten to bagging yet, there’s no place to put them. I have to scan a few things, put them in bags, scan again. And the lady shopping is waiting a lot longer to get to the paying part and getting mad.”

I looked more carefully, not having thought of that. We rarely get such pile-ups at the bookstore. “And I guess it doesn’t work as well if you have more than six bags worth,” I said. Shopping with my mother for a fairly small order, we already had five.

“And most people, they aren’t going to be doing what you’re doing, taking the bags away and putting them in the cart when they’re ready. So I have to stop, go put the bags in their carts for them, then get back to scanning. And they haven’t paid yet, so they’re standing, waving their cards around, and acting like I’m the one being stupid.”

“Hmm,” I said. “One of those things that looks like a great idea until you actually use it?”

“You got it,” she said. She rang up the last item and hit Total. “That’s $46.15. You saved $13.48 with your club card. Thanks for shopping here.”

My mother scrutinized the receipt before paying. “$46.15? If I spend fifty dollars, I get a free box of matzah. Should I get something more?”

“Have you ever found yourself not having enough matzah?” I asked.

“We have eight pounds,” she said. “Yes, that should be enough.”

I gingerly made a U-turn with the shopping cart. As with all the spaces in the store, there wasn’t enough to do so efficiently. While someone had apparently designed the aisles so that two carts passing each other had a couple of inches between them, traffic would halt wherever anyone wanted to stop in an aisle and actually look at a product. And with the large population of senior citizens in the area, the number of people moving extremely slowly, frustrating others who wanted to get around them, was also extremely high.

I got the cart turned around and headed for the exit. “Bye,” the cashier said without looking up. “Have a nice day. Evening. Holiday. Whatever.”

“I hope that you have a good holiday, too,” my mother said. We rolled past the cashiers and out the door, preparing ourselves for the dreaded battle of the the parking lot.