Paper or Plastic?

I can’t tell you how many times I ended up asking this question as a teenager, and I know for a fact that I wasn’t the only one–it’s a quintessential question asked by kids all over the country. It acts as the great equalizer, forcing both celebrities and mere mortals alike to answer the same monotonous question after perusing their local grocery store. For most of us, it’s a mundane part of our lives as we do our errands, but for some, it’s a time machine. With three simple words, you are reminded that however old you are, you never forget your first. Your first kiss that introduces your body to the confusing cocktail of hormones and puppy love. Your first car that unlocks a brave new world of both freedom and the inevitable seething of road rage. And for those of us who were indoctrinated into the teenage workforce, the single most significant first that will forever shape how you move through the world and treat others. I am, of course, referring to your first job.

Your first job isn’t just a job–it’s a crash course in human nature that hopefully instills empathy into kids everywhere as they serve and bag their way to young adulthood. Some might even call it a trial by fire that somehow teaches you the value of a dollar while also scaring you for the rest of your life. It can take the most pure, fun-loving kids, steal their innocence, and introduce them to how the world really works.

Okay, so maybe I’m being just a teeny bit overdramatic, but your first job really does stick with you for the rest of your life. I know that, as a Midwesterner who grew up in a middle-class American suburb, I learned a lot from my first job, mainly because I had no discernible skills to speak of. After all, when you’re fifteen years old, you are far too young to be well-versed in anything remotely close to a valuable skill. You know, something like creative problem-solving, attention to detail, or critical thinking. (Or really any kind of thinking, for that matter.)

Fortunately for me, I was able to ramp up and cut my professional teeth on random tasks around the house. Unfortunately, I quickly realized you could only earn so much while working from home. For those of you born after 2000, I don’t mean the type of “working from home” everyone found themselves doing during and after the coronavirus lockdown. I’m talking about the original remote work (i.e., household chores). Like many teenagers across the country, I half-assed my way through a laundry list of chores for a weekly allowance, the greatest hits including taking out the trash on the wrong day, scraping over hidden rocks while mowing the lawn, and my personal favorite, walking the dog as it openly shat in our neighbor’s yard. Basically, all of the things my parents hated doing.

If I’m being honest, chores never really bothered me because, as I mentioned, I had a borderline addiction to comic books, and these odd jobs were the only way I could fund my nerdy habit, one that was way less cool than drugs or alcohol. In exchange for blood, sweat, and the occasional tear, I escaped my boring suburban existence, one page at a time. I would follow Batman as he chased the Joker across Gotham’s rooftops, root on Peter Parker while he fumbled through his early years as Spider-Man, and wonder how in the world Superman kept his identity a secret after simply removing his glasses.

As I quickly morphed into an awkward teenager, my spending outpaced my earning potential, and I was faced with a harsh realization: it was finally time for me to get my first real job. Afraid of letting down my current “employers,” I decided to soften the blow and find something else before putting in my two weeks’ notice. (What can I say? Even as a teen, I was somewhat responsible.) Fortunately, one of my close high school friends had charmed his way into getting his first job as a bagger at a local grocery store mere minutes away from my parents’ house, and I, having no resumé to speak of, convinced him to put in a good word for me. Remember, kids—it’s all about who you know.

In a soul-crushing twist of events, there were no other openings at his particular store, which meant I would be exiled to another location even further into the suburbs. As a fifteen-year-old whose life revolved around his friends, this store may as well have been on the moon…or in Kansas. Did I want to goof around with one of my best friends while getting paid? Of course! Would we have gotten each other fired within the first few days? Most definitely. Admittedly, I was in no position to negotiate–I had been too lazy to apply anywhere else–and despite every fiber of my being telling me to run for the hills, I reluctantly accepted the job.

From the moment I stepped foot inside this so-called “friendliest store in town,” it became painfully obvious grocery store marketing executives don’t consult their employees when coming up with their taglines. This store was anything but friendly, a random mix of zombified adults and aloof teens counting down the minutes until they could clock out, go home, and do anything but interact with another human being.

Nowhere else was this indifference more apparent than in the break room, a beige prison where everyone did everything in their power to avoid any and all eye contact with each other. The only distractions in this pre-smartphone era were texting with friends or, God forbid, reading a book. I’m dating myself here, but since this was before unlimited data, I found myself doing much more of the latter. During one particularly mind-numbing break, I sat reading at one of the round plastic tables when an older coworker walked by and suddenly felt compelled to comment on my taste in literature.

“Aren’t you a little old to be reading Harry Potter?” he asked, his voice dripping with judgment. “My granddaughter started reading that a few months ago.”

“Aren’t you a little old to be working a dead-end job?” I shot back, glaring at his one good eye, the other idle and cloudy. I’ll be honest: I myself was shocked to hear these words come out of my mouth, but I guess that’s what happens when you introduce a young, impressionable teen to a motley crew of lifers. We were all being worn down by this prison of perishables.

“Touché,” he mumbled, a cigarette already hanging from his crusty lips as he walked outside for his regular smoke break. I’m sure deep down inside, he knew that he had also enjoyed the magical world of Hogwarts, which meant he was in no position to throw stones. With any luck, that daily smoke break would catch up to him, and I wouldn’t have to see him in the break room much longer, or anywhere for that matter. (I’m telling you, this job brought out the worst in me.)

Outside of those four bland walls, it was the Wild West. Self-checkout had yet to be invented, which meant lines were longer and tempers were shorter. Most people blatantly ignored the “10 items or less” rule while standing in the express lane, spewing verbal diarrhea on their cell phones. When the cashier asked, “Cash or check?” these same people would mouth, “I’m in a hurry,” oblivious to all human life around them. When it came time for me to ask, “Paper or plastic?” they would once again whisper something to the tune of, “I don’t give a fuck,” and go back to yelling at their spouse on the other line. Whenever these ding-dongs strolled through my counter, nature would suddenly call, and I would saunter off to use the little boys’ room without so much as a word. With what little power I had, I considered it my contribution towards balancing the karmic scales of the universe.

It only took a few shifts to realize that as a bagger, you must always remain vigilant while watching your back. As bad as some customers were, there was always one group that consistently won the “Worst Customer” award and most days, I found myself face-to-face with every single one of them: an endless stream of velour tracksuit-clad suburbanites shrieking at me to hurry as I played Tetris with their cage-free eggs, soy milk, and fennel seeds. In a predominately white midwest suburb, these ath-sleeze-ure snotties happened to come in more than you could possibly imagine. Needless to say, it made for a rather hostile work environment.

I learned that you couldn’t trust anyone and quickly realized that not all threats come from rude customers. There were plenty of times when I became a casualty of not-so-friendly fire from cashiers who refused to help me bag groceries as they lived in a fantasy world, one in which bagging was a menial task well below their position at the helm. If you ask me, this is a lot like a mall cop refusing to pick up trash while puttering by on their Segway.

When I wasn’t busy dodging verbal abuse from a wide array of customers and coworkers alike, I snuck away to enjoy the only silver lining to the cloudy shitstorm that was my job: my daily perk of one “free” cookie from the bakery. Staleness aside, this fleeting moment was the saving grace I needed to survive each rocky shift with some shred of sanity still intact. Much to my chagrin, I later learned this wasn’t an actual perk–these cookies were not free, and I was, in fact, stealing from the grocery store during every single shift. This doesn’t sound like much, but over an entire summer, it added up to roughly $50, which I shrugged off, considering it hazard pay for being forced to dodge speeding cars as I wrangled carts from the farthest ends of the parking lot.

For those of you who have never worked in the feudal system that is a supermarket, baggers are the serfs of the grocery kingdom, sent to wherever they are needed most, including outside the protective four walls of the store. When I wasn’t frantically stuffing groceries into bags with zero structural integrity, you could find me pushing carts in sweltering 90-degree weather or hunting down every rickety shopping cart within a mile radius. (The loss prevention people were not joking around.) Back inside, I was sent to help out with countless odd jobs around the store, including, but certainly not limited to, stocking the shelves with generic knickknacks, mopping up spills caused by reckless toddlers, and cleaning bathroom stalls that made Saving Private Ryan look like a finger painting class.

This wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the tiny fact that this particular grocery store happened to be located mere blocks away from my high school, which inevitably led to some pretty awkward encounters with friends, parents of friends, and, by far the worst, teachers. Locking eyes with a teacher outside of school is a lot like catching a glimpse of a deer eating out of a dumpster–they just always seem surprised and out of place. When I did bump into teachers, they would make it a point to comment on how responsible I was and ask why I couldn’t apply the same work ethic to my homework. My response? If they paid me to do my homework, they would see a dramatic uptick in how often I chose to do it. My actual response? A smile so forced that I could hear my molars grinding against each other as I loaded their single-serving dinners into their carts.

After three of the most monotonous months of my life, summer faded into fall, and school finally started again. Like most overloaded teens, I became inundated with extracurricular activities while doing my best to balance sports (a lost cause), marching band (a slightly lesser lost cause), and plenty of other things that would look good on a college application. Eventually, it came time to turn in my apron, hang up my pleated khakis, and retire my branded denim shirt.

After counting down the remaining seconds of my final shift, I walked out the sliding doors one last time, convinced I would never have to step foot inside the store ever again. As I took my first footsteps of freedom across the parking lot, I felt a slight buzz in my pocket. Flipping open my phone, I read a text from my stepmom: “Plz pick up gallon of milk when u get off.” I groaned, begrudgingly turned around, and slunk back inside. Five minutes later, I reemerged with my last “free” cookie, complete with a freshly opened gallon of milk. Life was good.

While walking to my car, a pang of regret struck me in the stomach. Call it Stockholm syndrome, but for some indescribable reason, I suddenly missed my job. I would no longer have the sense of purpose that came with wearing a nametag and acting as a figurehead for the largest local grocery chain in the St. Louis metropolitan area. Come to think of it, I even enjoyed the flow-like state that came with the mindless stacking of groceries, almost as if I was playing a game of three-dimensional chess. Some might call it meditative or therapeutic. Hell, I even started to miss the slow-boiling hatred I felt for most of my coworkers.

I stood there reminiscing about a job I had left only seconds before when a car horn blared and snapped me out of my daze.

“Get the fuck out of the way!” a woman yelled out her Chevy Suburban window as she pounded her horn a second time. I scurried across the parking lot to my mom’s car and turned to identify the culprit. The SUV screeched into the first open handicap spot, and an able-bodied suburbanite covered head-to-toe in velour climbed down, throwing shade at me the entire time. Honestly, I couldn’t tell if she hated me or if she was just offended by the sight of my mom’s PT Cruiser, the futuristic hearse of her nightmares.

“Fuck you!” I said (to myself), relieved I would never have to serve her or any other member of her coven ever again. I got into the PT Loser and sat there for a few minutes, fantasizing about marching back inside one last time, finding the woman who had almost hit me, and suffocating her with her own grocery bag. There was only one question:

“Paper or plastic?”

—

Fumble(s):

I initially chose the convenience of goofing around with friends over the opportunity of finding the right job.
I didn’t try to meet or understand my co-workers, ultimately leading to a less-than-enjoyable experience.
I didn’t take my job seriously enough, which led to my stealing during every shift,

Lesson(s):

Every job offers valuable lessons: Even mundane, entry-level jobs can shape your worldview and teach empathy, patience, and resilience.
Invest in those around you, and they’ll (hopefully) invest in you: When you make an effort to get to know your coworkers, it will make almost any job more tolerable.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

Can I balance a (first) job with my other priorities?
What brought me to this job? Is it the same thing that attracted my co-workers?
What will this job give me that others can’t?
How can I introduce moments of delight into everyday conversations?
How can I make my co-workers/customers smile?