I was at Walmart, scanning and bagging my almost $300 worth of groceries. An employee, who was overseeing the self-checkout area and advocating for a $15 hourly wage, decided to approach me. Here’s how the amusing interaction unfolded:

Her: Why are you double bagging all of your groceries?

Me: Excuse me?

Her: You are wasting our bags!

Me: If you don’t like the way I’m bagging the groceries, feel free to come on over here and bag them yourself.

Her: That’s not my job!

Me: Okay, then I will bag my groceries how I please if that’s all right with you.

Her: Why are you using two bags?!

Me: Because the bags are weak and I don’t want the handles to break or the bottoms to rip out.

Her: Well that’s because you are putting too much stuff in the bag. If you took half of that stuff out and put it in a different bag then you wouldn’t need to double bag.

After a brief moment of stunned silence, where I just stared at her:

Me: So you want me to split these items in half and put half of them in a different bag so that I don’t have to double bag.

Her: Exactly.

Me: So I would still be using two bags to hold the same number of items.

Her: No, because you wouldn’t be double bagging.

I tried to remain composed, pressing two fingers to my left eye in an attempt to make it stop twitching.

Me: Okay, so here I have a jug of milk and a bottle of juice double bagged. If I take the milk out, remove the double bagging and just put the milk in a single bag and the juice in that single bag, I’m still using two bags for these two items.

Her: No, because you are not double bagging them so it’s not the same number of bags.

At this point, I noticed about 10 other customers who were enjoying the show.

Me: Is this like that Common Core math stuff I keep hearing about?

Her: Never mind, you just don’t get it.

With that, she went back to her little podium to continue texting or playing games on her phone or whatever it was she was doing before she decided to come over and critique my bagging skills.