Background
There is extremely large amount of grocery stores throughout United States; you name it – Food Lion, Walmart, Kmart, etc. There is only one chain of military grocery stores, and it’s called Commissary. Commissaries are located in every state and in many large cities, or on bases. In Virginia Beach, which is located on the south eastern shore of Virginia, there is only one Commissary. In that Commissary there are multiple jobs: cashiers, janitors, baggers, packers, cooks, managers, and customer service personnel. It is very similar to the other grocery stores, but the only difference is the customer base, all of whom are military related.
In Commissary the head bagger is in charge of all the baggers during the work shift. There are four head baggers – Linda, Sachi, Angie, and Virgil. They make sure that baggers get a line to bag groceries, since baggers get paid tips only. Many baggers in the commissary are either high school or college students. This is a very flexible job for students and has a decent income. Some other baggers are either retired military veterans, unemployed mid-age workers looking for a job, and elderly people who are in need of communication or additional cash. This is a very diverse community where most differentiate by age, gender, race, and background.
While many baggers are different, they still have to work similarly. They have to bag the groceries while assigned on one of the 20 lines. Then they have to carry the groceries out to the customer’s car and carefully place them inside the vehicle. Sometimes baggers have to seat in the break room for two hours in order to gain a line; this can be very frustrating for them. Once baggers finally get a line, they stay bagging on it until a break or until the line closes. This doesn’t require too much work, but can be tough during hot days. Baggers should also have common sense in order to understand all the rules and regulations that should be followed. Without common sense baggers seem to be unable to effectively communicate with others, follow specific procedure, and directly help out their community. It would also be hard to survive full work day without getting in trouble, since baggers have 6 to 8 hours shifts and get a 30 minute break after around 3 hours of work on line.
Purpose
Each job has a certain skill or education level required. Most skills are gained through practice. For example, nearly all cashiers are really slow at scanning groceries for the first few months, but then they get used to their job and increase their speed depending on their potential. Baggers also start off with poor judgement. Sometimes for the first week new baggers can make simple mistakes as putting meat and milk in the same bag or loading the bags that much that they eventually rip. Most baggers remember the guide lines and rules as time goes by, but not everyone does. Sometimes there are individuals that lack common sense and logic. They might have taken history, math, and English in high school, but they never learned how to use critical thinking and understand what is right and what is not. The purpose of this ethnography is to understand more about the role that common sense plays in the discourse community of Commissary baggers.
Methodology
Throughout 2014-2015 years I have worked in Commissary as a bagger. This significantly helped evaluating and collecting the data, since it is very familiar topic for me. More information could be gained as a bagger then as an outsider because other baggers would not share as much personal information to an unfamiliar person. All the evidence is based on my memories of events that occurred or confirmed stories that were told by fellow baggers. The stories had to be confirmed with my coworkers to make sure that they are accurate. Also this topic required no research because it was focused on a very small discourse community that is not listed in any of the databases. Without the experience as a bagger I would not be able to collect all of the information and would struggle even with something like the bagger lexis. Some examples of the lexis that only baggers and some cashiers would understand are: cut the light, on line, calendar, head bagger’s notebook, push, and burned. It would also be hard to understand how bagger system works as a whole.
Discourse Community at the Commissary
Commissary baggers are definitively a perfect example of a discourse community. They have common public goal – to earn money through tips. Also there are mechanisms of intercommunication that are present among baggers. Usually when baggers are bored they decide to snapchat each other while they are not paying attention. Baggers also use certain genre when communicating. Most of the time it is a casual talk with little or no filtering. Usually baggers share most of their personal news or experiences even with the baggers who they are not familiar with. Head bagger also uses specific genre when writing down names of baggers that come in for work. First, head bagger writes baggers name, and then she writes his bagger number and time when he/she came in. Also baggers use certain mechanisms to inform each other. Usually if a bagger gets sick and needs someone to cover their shift, snapchat, text message, or Instagram are used as a media to transfer information to others. Baggers also have certain lexis. For example, pushing means pushing carts from parking lot back inside for $7/hour. Light off means that a line is closed because the cashier went home or has a break. Getting burned means not getting tipped for complete work. Calendar is a schedule where head bagger writes the names of baggers who will be absent on certain days. There are multiple other examples of lexis that are known only to baggers and small amount of other commissary personnel. Also Commissary has two categories of baggers – experts and novices. All the head baggers and baggers that worked in there over a year are considered experts; they have more privileges such as more flexible schedule and being able to work on express line, which is a line that doesn’t require carrying the groceries to the car. All the rest of the baggers are considered novices. It was also noticed that work skills do not affect whether a bagger is a novice or an expert. Bagger community at the Commissary has all six characteristics of a discourse community that were stated by Ann M. Johns in Disource Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and Diversity.
Observations
Most of the time high school students are the ones who lack common sense. For example, bagger Ben decided for some reason to bag 4 one-gallon milks in one bag, which resulted in the customer complaining to the customer service. Another fellow bagger Kierra asked head bagger to leave early on Friday to finish the homework that is due tomorrow. One time bagger Matt even asked to leave early for a date with his girlfriend, and when head baggers reply was no, Matt was offended at his boss. It seemed like he was unable to understand what was an important reason to leave from the work early and what was just another excuse. Another time two brothers Josh and Noah left for a 30 minute lunch break at 6 pm and came back around 8.40 pm, while Commissary closes at 9 pm. Multiple baggers do not even realize that they have done something wrong subconsciously. Sometimes head bagger lets most of the baggers leave early, and when there are only couple baggers left she complains that there are not enough of workers. As noticed such common sense mistakes are mostly made by less intelligent baggers, but it is not always the case. Usually if a bagger lacked common sense once, they repeat various mistakes constantly and get in trouble as a result. Not only lack of common sense can get a bagger fired, but it could also decrease efficiency of the store and hurt reputation of Commissary customer service.
Conclusion
It very noticeable that lack of common sense affects the overall reputation of the Commissary. Common sense is something that is not taught throughout high school and college. Even though logic is not in the curriculum of high school, there are other ways to ensure that workers will be able to think logically. For example, job applicants could be required to take a test that will include logical, rather than academic questions, in order to ensure that potential worker has enough common sense to operate without much harm to the store. Another solution could be incorporating common sense as a part of enculturation when teaching novice baggers. Discourse community such as Virginia Beach Commissary can be easily affected by any flows of its workers. More experiments and researches could be conducted in order to fully understand how exactly workers lacking logic affect their workplace. These experiments could be done through observations at several discourse communities. They should include factual evidence, such as profit and spending of a store; they could also include evidence as a result of observation. This is a very interesting and important topic that needs further research since there is very little information on impact of lack of commons sense on discourse community.
Works Cited
Johns, Ann M. “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and Diversity.” Text, Role, and Context: Developing Academic Literacies. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. 51-70. Print