Grocery Sacker Bags Himself a Fast $1,000

In lane No. 2, lithe Sidney Brown wiped damp palms on his trousers as his fans followed every move.

In lane No. 3, burly Troy Spence loosened up with stretching exercises, while over in lane No. 1 Bryan Dessaure briefly closed his eyes to concentrate and block out the noise.

It was a moment full of the excitement associated with world-class competition, and the starter’s buzzer sent the three young men into a flurry of action.

Forty-five seconds later, Spence, 21, had won the first West Coast Paper Grocery Sack Pack-Off Tuesday by stashing 38 pounds of groceries into three paper bags in record time.

“Two years ago I was much faster. I was at my prime then and could have gone under 40 seconds,” said Spence, a four-year veteran of supermarket sacking, as he clutched a two-foot check for $1,000.

Spence, who sacks groceries for Vons in Costa Mesa, also received the Charles Stillwell Award, a statuette made of paper bags and named after the man who invented grocery bags 102 years ago.

The Pack-Off, staged at a Vons supermarket in the Cheviot Hills area of West Los Angeles, was sponsored by the American Paper Institute, which is fighting a desperate battle with the plastic bag industry for supermarket supremacy.

Vons became home for the West Coast competition after company executives heard of a similar contest in the New York area.

The crowd for Tuesday’s event numbered 200, including 10 television crews and an equal number of newspaper reporters. Spectators crowded around six check-out counters straining for a view of the three preliminary heats and the finals.

“We don’t get this type of media coverage at some of the ball games at Dodger Stadium,” said Dodger announcer Jerry Doggett, who called the play-by-play action.

Anyone who has had eggs broken, strawberries squashed or milk cartons ruptured by indifferent or brutal supermarket clerks would have looked on in amazement.

The event’s site resembled a supermarket on the day before Thanksgiving--made even more hectic by the addition of timers, scoreboards, balloons, a four-piece band and recorded Olympic theme music. The competition’s sporting nature was legitimized with the playing of the national anthem before the contest. Unfortunately, the organizers failed to have a flag on hand.

One of the store’s regular customers, Linda Ford, who was shopping with her 10-month-old son amid the excitement, said that she was surprised to hear of the competition.

“I never thought they trained them to put things correctly in bags, because they always put my avocados on the bottom,” Ford said.

Cans in the Corners

Actually, there is a correct way to pack groceries in paper bags: Cans go in the corners, boxes along the sides and lighter items on top.

Pack-Off contestants were judged on how well they bagged 36 items--including a dozen eggs, a quart of milk, a long loaf of French bread and a package of light bulbs--in three bags. They were awarded points for speed, bag-building techniques, weight distribution, efficient bag usage, style and attitude.

The field of 14 male and female baggers, once known collectively as box boys, was the best that Vons had to offer. They had been selected from 3,400 company employees who had entered a qualifying competition earlier this year.

The preliminaries narrowed the field to three on Tuesday morning, and Spence went on to win over Brown, the crowd’s favorite, and San Diego’s Dessaure.

Plagued by Overconfidence?

Overconfidence may have plagued Brown during the finals. He arrived from Camarillo in a limousine followed by a cheering caravan of about 25 co-workers and the four-piece band.

“I really don’t know what happened,” Brown, 20, said. “However, I did have problems opening the (paper) bags.”

The competition began last year when the first regional event was held in New York City, whose mayor, Ed Koch, claims to have once been a box boy. This year the contest has gone national. The Vons winner is scheduled to meet the East Coast champ, A & P’s Karen Cosentino of Lodi, N.J., for the national title next month.

Cosentino, whose recent victory was featured in Sports Illustrated, is in for tough competition. Spence beat her previous record by nearly six seconds.