Double The Bags, Half The Brain

I’m scanning and bagging my almost $300 worth of groceries while the monitor employee comes over.

Employee: “Why are you double-bagging all of your groceries?”

Me: “Excuse me?” 

Employee: “You are wasting our bags!”

Me: “If you don’t like the way I’m bagging the groceries, feel free to come on over here and bag them yourself.”

Employee: “That’s not my job!”

Me: “Okay, then I will bag my groceries how I please if that’s all right with you.”

Employee: “Why are you using two bags?!”

Me: “Because the bags are weak and I don’t want the handles to break or the bottoms to rip out.”

Employee: “Well, that’s because you are putting too much stuff in the bag. If you took half of that stuff out and put it in a different bag, then you wouldn’t need to double-bag.”

This is followed by ten seconds of me just staring at her.

Me: “So, you want me to split these items in half and put half of them in a different bag so that I don’t have to double-bag.”

Employee: “Exactly.”

Me: “So, I would still be using two bags to hold the same number of items.”

Employee: “No, because you wouldn’t be double-bagging.”

I’m pressing two fingers to my left eye in an attempt to make it stop twitching.

Me: “Okay, so here I have a jug of milk and a bottle of juice double-bagged. If I take the milk out and remove the double-bagging and just put the milk in the single bag and the juice in that single bag, I’m still using two bags for these two items.”

Employee: “No, because you are not double-bagging them, so it’s not the same number of bags.”

I’m looking around at about ten other customers who are enjoying the show.

Employee: “Never mind, you just don’t get it.”

And with that, she went back to her little podium.