Blood Test and Supermarket Incident

Rose very early to go down to our local hospital to get a blood test for a checkup. Seems that most of the people who draw blood in hospitals nowadays are foreign-born. Nothing the matter with that; they are all well qualified and efficient. But the question is obvious: where are the native-born in this segment of the labor market?

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At the checkout at the supermarket I stood in line behind a man aged around 65 or so, slim and tall, slight stoop, graying hair receding behind a high forehead. His grocery items on the conveyor belt told me that he was probably single: there was a variety of frozen or processed foods, a carton of low-fat milk, some cans of vegetables, a jar of marmelade, a loaf of bread, not the shopping list of a married man. He looked like he might have been a middle-level manager in some local government agency, or a school principal . In manner he was brusque and impatient, as demonstrated by the way he swiped his debit card through the card reader, his tongue clicking when the card did not work at the first attempt.

As the male checker began to scan the purchases, the customer asked for two packs of menthol cigarettes of a specific brand. Cigarettes at this supermarket are not stashed behind the checkout station (is that a law nowadays?) but in a cabinet some distance away, next to an ATM kiosk. The checker asked the grocery bagger, a boy of high-school age, to go over and get the cigarettes for the customer, which the bagger did at once, and then returned to continue bagging.

At this point the boy was about to place the two cigarette packs in one of the two shopping bags that had already been filled, each of the paper bags having been inserted in a plastic shopping bag at the customer's specific request, to make them easier to carry by the cut-out handles in the plastic. The impatient customer then told the boy to take out the contents of both bags, and to re-bag them, because he did not like the way the bagging had been done, in part by the checker while the boy had gone to get the cigarettes. He did not want new paper bags or plastic bags. He wanted the same ones emptied and then re-bagged, neatly, with the cans in the bottom, the bread on top, etc.

All this while the checker was holding out the transaction receipt and a ten-dollar cash-back bill to the customer, who watched the boy intently as he carefully refilled the contents of the two bags. Only when all had been completed to the customer's satisfaction did he acknowledge the proffered ten-dollar bill in the checker's hand. He took the money, and with a curt gesture waved away the grocery receipt, then he left the store without saying another word.