Bag It Yourself

The local Carrefour hit a new low, one I did not know was possible. To my surprise and delight, there was no one in line at the cash registers and there were even TWO cashiers there, one to ring up, and one, I reasoned, to bag. The local Carrefour is especially deficient in courtesy and common sense--for example, people form ONE queue for FOUR cash registers which are jammed together so tightly there's no room to bag the groceries-- but I thought hey, no line, TWO cashiers, this could go well. I placed my items on the tiny lap-top-computer size shelf to be rung up by Cashier Number One: she scanned each item and handed it to Cashier Number Two, who held the two grocery bags I had purchased. I thought--being a reasonable person accustomed to some form of customer service, no matter how cursory--that Cashier Number Two was placing my items in the bags. No. When I finished putting my items up on the tiny shelf (not even a conveyor belt, thank you very much) I discovered that Cashier Number Two had put a shopping basket INSIDE MY CART and had simply thrown my groceries into the shopping basket--and the cart--willy nilly, with the two shopping bags thoughtfully placed on the bottom underneath the bacon, eggs, sugar, toilet paper, eight plastic buckets, four dozen doughnuts (par-TAY!) and other assorted items. I squawked a bit--where the HELL was I supposed to repack this shit? After all, the end of the check-out line was the hall connecting the store to the rest of the mall. No tables or surfaces were provided. I was supposed to burrow down past all of those groceries, retrieve the bags, and reposition all the groceries into the bag from the bottom of the cart WHILE  STILL STANDING IN THE LINE. Uh, Chinese people? You know something? You're the people who stand in the middle of a doorway of a crowded store and check the time on your cell phone--or pause at the top of a moving escalator to send a text message--or block the entrance to an airplane with your sudden need to pull out a piece of toilet tissue from the far reaches of your wallet. Well, you frickin' geniuses of time and motion study need to know this: a person cannot BAG THEIR OWN GROCERIES AT ONE END OF THE LANE WHILE THEY ARE STILL PUTTING THEM ON THE SHELF FOR THE CASHIER TO RING UP, PARTICULARLY IF YOU WANT THAT PERSON TO PAY FOR THEM AS WELL. Cashier Number Two? You're full of shit. Would it have killed you to place the items IN the bag, instead of dropping the eggs on top of the loaves of bread and thoughtfully dropping the bags of sugar on top of them all? Frustration, thy name is bored worker from Hell.