THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 21, 1995 TAG: 9505180086
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MY JOB
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
JOHN JACKSON cringes when he sees a tub of feta cheese inching down the conveyor belt.
``Feta cheese,'' he says, ``That can be tricky. If it spills, it has a pretty strong smell to it.''
So it gets special attention. When a clear plastic box of smelly feta comes his way, he pops it into a plastic bag, ties a knot in the top and, then and only then, hands it over to his customer.
For the past three and a half years, Jackson, 29, has been a grocery store bagger. He never puts eggs on the bottom of a bag, never gives an elderly customer a heavy sackful of big cans to carry and never, ever squashes the bread.
``People remember if you smash their eggs or bread. I've heard of customers coming back and complaining to baggers,'' he says, dark eyebrows shooting skyward.
But they don't come back to John Jackson. Jackson's perfected his job until he's found just the right way to pack anything sold at the Farm Fresh grocery in Virginia Beach's Great Neck area. Since his high school graduation in 1984, Jackson's worked in the grocery or food business, restocking perishables or mixing mustard and barbecue sauce at a local food processing plant.
But he's a bagging standout.
About a year ago, he even won the first round of a national competition for grocery store baggers, placing first among Farm Fresh's Virginia Beach stores. He didn't do quite as well in the next level of the contest, placing only third.
``It's still too painful to talk about,'' he says, cracking just the smallest smile.
Jackson knows his customers.
Black apron tied around his waist, white shirt crisp, tie neatly knotted at his neck, he stacks cans of Whiskas cat food into brown paper sacks with barely a glance at Nancy Gallagher, next in line. No need to ask. He knows which regular customers prefer paper or plastic.
``Have a nice day,'' he says, his hands still for just a second before he smiles, turns, shakes out another sack and starts loading up the next set of groceries.
Reach, load. Reach, load. He puts eggs in a separate bag, fits boxes into sacks like puzzle pieces, packs perishables together and double-bags gallon jugs of milk. Sometimes he builds a wall of boxes around the edge of a sack and fills the middle with jars and cans. It gives the bag more strength, he says.
One of his regulars, Yvonne Boyd, benefits from his bagging artistry at least twice a week.
``He's one of the better baggers,'' Boyd says. ``For ladies in particular, he doesn't overstuff the bags. He's conscious that when you get home you have to unload everything by yourself.''
Jackson says his widowed mother is the reason for that. He lives with her and sees first-hand what trouble a badly packed bag of groceries can be.
And Jackson is tactful. When customers tell him exactly how they want things bagged, he just nods and does it their way. Most of the time they're asking for exactly what he would have given them.
He says he has to keep a positive attitude. The job can be stressful, especially around lunchtime, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. That's when regular customers are loading up their carts just as the lunch shoppers scramble through the doors and back out with grapes or bagels or deli salads.
Military paydays are busy, and big eating holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and the Fourth of July can create an in-store traffic jam at the checkout aisle. Then his hands fly in and out of sacks, the serrated paper edges shredding his forearms.
Jackson carries with him a mental picture of the store's layout and where items are shelved. He never knows when a customer might turn up completely stumped, searching for succotash.
No matter how busy it gets, he provides special customer services like taking carts out to the parking lot for moms with children or shoppers with dozens of bags. Tips are a nice surprise for courtesies like that, but not something he expects.
A year ago, Jackson trained to be a cashier. He's also planning to start college, maybe this fall. Psychology sounds like a good major to him. He's always been a people person.
``I take the time to talk to people,'' he says. ``I like treating them as a person and not just another body.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
JIM WALKER/Staff
``People remember you if you smash their eggs or bread,'' says star
grocery bagger John Jackson.
by CNB