Most Surreal

Today at work I lived through a most surreal experience.
Since I couldn't just go home when I ran out of work halfway into the afternoon, and after I had busied myself with retrieving shopping carts from the parking lot, restocking showcases, tidying up shelves and repricing long forgotten items that had no price tags anymore I ended up working at the checkouts.
Not as the actual checkout guy, but as the bag-guy.
Here's how it works: The checkout guy moves the stuff across the scanner, I put it in plastic bags* and hand it back to the costumer.
Let me first say that this job is harder than it looks like. You have to be pretty fast, and you have to follow certain rules: No food together with cleaning products, meat goes by itself et cetera.
People from here may find it easier, because they are used to wasting a ridiculous amount of plastic bags. One pound of pork gets its own bag. A 4 litre jug of milk that has a handle and doesn't need to be in a bag at all gets its own bag anyway. Sometimes two, because 4 litres are pretty heavy, and we wouldn't want the bag to break, now would we? Someone buys a snickers. The one snickers goes into a bag.
You get the picture.
Where I come from you have to pay about 25 cents for one plastic bag. Where I come from people try to bring their own re-usable bags. That makes them want to pack efficently: Heavy stuff on the bottom, lightweight and squish-able stuff on top. Other people, especially those who come to the supermarket by car, often bring their own collapsible plastic boxes to put their stuff into. All the groceries go in the box, the box goes in the trunk. Very simple.
Basically:
USE AND WASTE AS MANY BAGS POSSIBLE! versus USE THE LEAST NUMBER OF RE-USABLE BAGS POSSIBLE.
JUST DROP IT ALL IN THERE! versus PACK SYSTEMATICALLY.
BAG HALF-FULL? START A NEW ONE! versus PACK SYSTEMATICALLY.
... In my head between these positions a kind of epic battle started:
There I was, being the bag-guy, weirdly conscious of myself and watching myself as if I also was a spectator while in my mind trying to ignore my European shopping bag ideas and in reality trying to keep up with the stuff going across the scanner. I could only keep starting one new bag after another, the groceries came at me fast and in no order at all, which made efficient packing impossible, but every now and then my bag-saving-mind interfered, and wanted to put that late bottle of household cleaner with all the other cleaning products from two bags earlier instead of giving it its own new bag, which delayed the whole process and earned me raised eyebrows from the costumers. I just tried to keep up my stupid smile constantly. I also repeatedly made the mistake of asking people the question: "Do you want a bag for this?", and they usually responded with an as astonished as unbelieving stare probably expressing a message close to: "Who is this guy? Is he kidding me?"
I felt completely out of place in that job position. It was most surreal. I will never voluntarily do that again.
(I also had to restrain myself all the time from saying things like: "Nah, you don't need a bag for that." or "Man, you can carry that bag of apples to your car as it is, can't you?" or "Are you sure you want a bag?" or "You know what? I REFUSE TO GIVE YOU A BAG FOR YOUR ONE BAG OF CHIPS OR YOUR THREE KINDER EGGS! BRING YOUR OWN FUCKING RE-USABLE BAG NEXT TIME!")

I will now go and rub my wife's feet to regain good Karma.

*On the plastic at the bottom it says something like: HELP THE ENVIRONMENT. RE-USE THIS BAG! In my opinion it should say: HELP THE ENVIRONMENT. DON'T USE THIS BAG.

**Man, it's fun to rant about things which seem so Stone Age compared to GOLDEN Europe.