One of my favorite restaurants is Bagger Dave’s in East Lansing, probably because the fries are warm and soft, and they will put an egg on your hamburger.  I am not sure where Dave got his bagger experience, but mine was at Meijer.

I was at the store in Okemos for a couple of months, waiting for the summer Married Housing crew to get started.  It was my first union job.  Baggers could not work any more than 40 hours in a week – no overtime.  Baggers were part time.  Baggers couldn’t work 40 hours for more than four weeks in a row, because then they would become full time.

Regardless of all the rules, I had a great first week – nights, forty hours – changing all the fluorescent light bulbs in the store.  This was before the Open 24 Hours store policy, so we would wheel the scaffolding systematically through the aisles all night long. The best part was throwing the old bulbs in the dumpster and watching them explode.  Clearly, our environmental savvy was not high. 

There were several other cool tasks involved.  Getting outside to collect and pull in the carts was refreshing in the spring.  June bugs had to be cleaned off the doors early in the morning where they had piled up overnight.  And when someone dropped a jar of pickles or mayonnaise , the call went out for “service on lane 12” to clean up the mess.

There were no UPC codes, scanners, or computers.  The cashiers had to find the price tag and enter the amount by pushing buttons on the cash register.  Then they threw the item down the lane for the Bagger to “bag.” There was no plastic and no one brought their own cute recyclable bags – everybody got bagged in paper.  Some baggers were quick and talented enough to handle two check-out lanes at a time; you had to respect the devotion and dexterity but it still didn’t help them become a full-time employee.