Village Market employee could go to Las Vegas

How much gro­ceries can a good bag­ger bag when a good bag­ger needs to bag really fast?

Accord­ing to the East Cen­tral Ohio Food Deal­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, a bag­ger should be able to prop­erly stow 24 items in 35 sec­onds or less.

That means 19-year-old Whit­ney Tucker — a two-year employee of Vil­lage Mar­ket of Welling­ton — is going to have to shave sig­nif­i­cant time off her 47.97-second run, which won her first place in the Food Deal­ers cham­pi­onship round con­test held in Can­ton on April 18.

There, she won first place after com­pet­ing at the pre­lim­i­nary bag­ging com­pe­ti­tion at Buehler’s Mar­ket in Jack­son Town­ship, Ohio, on March 29.

Tucker com­peted with two other Vil­lage Mar­ket employ­ees, 18-year-old Caitie Brasee, and Cody Mob­ley, also 18.

They were accom­pa­nied by store super­vi­sor Mark Wright who, for the last three years, has taken local bag­gers to the competition.

“It’s a vol­un­tary thing,” Wright said.

Tucker won $500, a plaque, and a chance to com­pete in the state con­test in Lima, Ohio, on Aug. 8. There, she could win $1,000 and a chance to com­pete in the nation­wide con­test which will be held in Las Vegas.

The prize money in Las Vegas is $10,000. And the win­ner will get to appear on the David Let­ter­man show. Let­ter­man started his own work­ing career as a gro­cery store bag­ger and invites the win­ner to a friendly com­pe­ti­tion on the show.

Out of a pos­si­ble 29 points, Tucker earned the fist-place fin­ish with 22.32 points. In the con­test, each bag­ger is given the same items to bag in a reusable cloth bag.

They are then judged on speed (10 points), dis­tri­b­u­tion of weight (five points), tech­nique (eight points), and attitude/appearance (five points).

Both Tucker and Brasee said speed is an issue. It is nearly impos­si­ble to open the cloth bags, fill them prop­erly, and get them into a shop­ping cart in 35 seconds.

Wright said good bag­gers are friendly, fast, and don’t gen­er­ate cus­tomer complaints.

“I think we have a pretty good crew here,” he said.

There are tech­niques to use, depend­ing on the items used in the contest.

“You don’t put glass against glass,” Tucker said.

“And don’t break the eggs,” Brasee added. A roll of candy or a pack of gum left on the counter is also unthink­able in bag­ging com­pe­ti­tion, and judges some­times throw those in just to see who checks the entire counter before plac­ing the bags in the cart.

“Go for the heavy things first,” Tucker said, “and dis­trib­ute them evenly.”

The Vil­lage Mar­ket bag­gers did prac­tice before the con­test, tim­ing each other, and coach­ing each other on tech­niques. They admit­ted they were nervous.

Now Tucker has until August to shave time off her tech­nique. But with a trip to Las Vegas, $10,000 and a chance to meet David Let­ter­man on the line, she is will­ing to put in the time.

Posted by Jason Hawk on May 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.