The "Back In The Days When Grocery Bagging Was A Supermarket Art" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Standing at the end of the check-out line, putting our groceries in the fabric bags we had purchased a year or so ago.  Got tired of trying to find a place to reuse the plastic bags that our groceries were placed in for years.  Finally decided to buy a few reusable fabric bags that our local supermarket had at the end of the check-out line.  Week after week I would bag our weekly purchases and from time to time the check-out girl or guy would thank me for saving them the trouble of having to bag everything.  Usually gave them the same old spiel about working at a grocery store years ago and bagging groceries all day long.  Got pretty good at it after doing it long enough.  It was back in 1960 that I got my first official job.  My dad was the manager at a local wholesale jewelry store and one of his customers was a fellow by the name of Doc Bennett.  Doc was the manager of the local Acme Supermarket and one day my dad and Doc got to talking and...well when he came home from work he asked if I wanted a job at the Acme Supermarket stocking shelves and bagging groceries.  I would get paid $2.32 an hour for the job.  Didn't take me long to snap up the job since most of my friends were getting $1.00 an hour pumping gas.  But, in order to begin the job I had to go to "Grocery School."  I was driven, along with two other new hires, to Philadelphia to participate in a two-day school on how to stock shelves, bag groceries and run a cash register.  We were taught how to pack a bag so it wasn't too heavy or so it didn't tear and how to stock shelves by moving the current stock to the front and placing the new supply to the rear.  As far as using a cash register, we were taught how to figure out what the price of one item might be if the product was priced at perhaps 3 for $.49.  To this day, I still thank them for making my math skills, especially in mental mathematics, fantastic.  I began my job at the Lancaster Acme Supermarket on North Queen Street a week after returning from my schooling in Philadelphia.  At first I stocked shelves and packed grocery bags, just as I had been taught at grocery school.  Enjoyed the job, but loved the pay check at the end of every other week.  Before long I had enough money to buy my own car and keep gas in the tank.  By the time I was a Senior in high school, I was operating a cash register at the Acme.  Not the type that you see in grocery stores today, but cash registers where you had to punch in the price of each item and when necessary calculate the cost of one item when the price was 2 for or 3 for or maybe even 4 for one total price.  No hand calculators or cell phones to do it for me.  I had to rely on my memory to do it for me.  Perhaps the reason that after my Senior year in high school, I wanted to be a math teacher.  To this day I can still calculate unit prices at the grocery store when Carol and I shop each week.  Would you know what one can of soup would be if the price on the shelf was 3 for $.49?  Answer is $.17 a can.  I had to figure out unit prices quickly in my head or go back to bagging.  Funny, but I can still remember that my very first customer I checked out had a total bill of exactly $50.  The customer, after I told them they were my first customer, was sure I had made a mistake, since what are the chances that the bill would come out even like that.  Manager arrived at my register and after looking at the receipt, told them I had done a great job and in fact their bill was actually $50.  My manager at the Acme, if you remember, was my dad's good friend, Doc Bennett!  I loved my job and when a brand new Acme Supermarket opened two years later near Millersville, Pennsylvania, which was close to Millersville State Teacher's College, where by now I was a student, I was asked to change job location and work at the Millersville Acme.  Worked there part-time until I graduated in 1967 from Millersville.  Well, I still enjoy packing my own grocery bags and when the check-out person at the local Giant Supermarket sees me in line, they know they will not have to do any packing for this customer.  Most employees in the store know my story by now, since I tell it to anyone who will listen.  Just ask my wife!  And...now you too know it!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.