You take them for granted until they bruise your bananas, crush your chips, squeeze the Charmin.
Grocery store sackers. High school kids. With fast hands and a stock supermarket slogan slipping from their lips: paper or plastic?
A good one can guarantee a balanced bag, a plump loaf of Wonder, a dozen unblemished eggs safely home from market.
Meet Matt Roy -Super Sacker.
Earlier this week the Lincoln Northeast High School junior, sacker and produce stocker extraordinaire at Russ's Market, 6300 Havelock Ave., was close -- thisclose -- to a spot on the "Late Show with David Letterman" as a result of his sensational sacking skills.
Imagine the high anxiety that Monday afternoon in the ballroom of the Ramada Plaza Hotel, 141 N. Ninth St.
People are also reading…
Fourteen of the state's best baggers. Sweaty palms and fast beating hearts. Waiting for the results of the first round of the Nebraska Retail Grocers Association Best Bagger competition. The stakes were high, with the winner heading for Las Vegas, a national sacking competition and a chance to toss green beans and paper towels with Letterman himself. And a $2,000 top prize to boot.
Standards were stringent: style, attitude and appearance, weight distribution between bags, speed, number of bags used and proper bag-building techniques.
And Matt thought he had sacked the competition.
But alas, only the top three qualified. He finished fourth.
It was worse than paper towels buried beneath a bloody pot roast, because the sacker who eventually ended up on top -- Paul Wathen Jr. of Russ's Market in Hastings -was the guy Matt beat in the chain's statewide competition earlier this winter. Large chains, like Russ's, were eligible to send two contestants to the Ramada. In that initial competition Matt placed first, Paul second, propelling both boys to the finals.
Ouch. OK, so he didn't win state.
After Paul, runners-up were Corey Ohnmacht from Norman's Food Stores, Nebraska City, and Danielle Whorlow, Baker's Supermarkets, Omaha.
But Matt can still lay claim to one title: Lincoln's Best Bagger.
After all, he beat out the five city finalists in the bunch.
Sacking just comes naturally. It's a talent. Matt works 30 hours a week in this north Lincoln market, has for 18 months.
Before that he slung newspapers for three years.
Industrious, friendly, polite are the words his boss, Sheila Glen, uses to describe him. Wonderful, respectful and honest, adds his mother Michele.
He's the kind of guy girls call cute and old ladies like.
He's got a sweet crooked grin, a close-shorn swatch of dark hair and cheeks that flush red when he's embarrassed or mad.
And, boy oh boy, can he bag.
"When we get really busy something happens and he goes really fast," said Russ's checker Amber Heninger. "Faster than anyone I've even seen. It's scary."
Matt grins.
By Tuesday the flush he sported after Monday's disappointing announcement has faded.
He's back at the store stocking ruby red grapefruit and filling sacks, his hands flying as he flips a couple cans of Campbell's end over end, surrounds them with a trio of TV dinners, tops it all with a bag of carrots and a loaf of bread.
There's an art to good sacking -- cans on the bottom, boxes around the sides and fragile fare in the middle, Matt says as he works.
There are cardinal sins too: hot food next to frozen, meat next to produce, too many milk cartons in one bag.
And little tricks, making nooks and crannies for candy bars and toothpaste, double bagging Pepsi bottles, wrapping the chicken legs in plastic.
Matt snaps open sack after sack.
He prefers paper because it holds more and is less apt to break. "Plastic kind of sucks," he says.
He likes working at the store, hopes to someday get into business management, maybe open a grocery of his own.
But, this week, the lure of Vegas and Letterman are still on his mind.
"I'm still kind of depressed," he admits.
He pauses and with a shrug of his slight shoulders looks on the bright side:
"There's always next year."
And then he turns his attention to the cheddar cheese, kitty litter and frozen orange juice heading down the conveyor belt.
"Paper or plastic?"