This answer came bob, bob, bobbing along

Life’s little mysteries bother me, so I’m happy to report that reader Thomas Willingham has solved one.

He read an item here about Suzanne Moore of Long Beach, who had found a top-secret set of directions for clerks at a local supermarket.

Moore couldn’t figure out what the “Yes Bob/No Bob” portion meant (see accompanying).

Wrote Willingham: “For months I pondered over who this Bob guy was. The bag boy would call the checker ‘Bob’ even though his (or her) name tag said otherwise. After finally asking about it, the answer seemed so obvious. . . . “

“Bob,” it turned out, was an abbreviation of “Bottom of Basket.”

In other words, it was used when the bag boy wanted to let the cashier know whether there were any sizable items, such as cases of water, in the bottom rack of the shopping cart.

Now, did you say paper or plastic?

Weighty proposition

Steve Urbanovich of Burbank was reminded how much he is annoyed by supermarket bag boys “who make me feel 100 years old, when I have a quart of milk, and they say, ‘Would you like help out to your car?’ ”

Urbanovich wants to start a national “Yes, you can help me out to my car” campaign that would put so many baggers out in the parking lots that market operations would collapse around the country and the bosses would stop telling the poor kids to ask that question.

More food for thought

Judy Griswold of Rowland Heights pointed out that one menu writer had put his (or someone’s) foot in his mouth (see accompanying).

Thanks for the warning

Ray Wikes of Newhall, meanwhile, spotted a notation on another menu that seemed to imply that its Szechwan dishes were not for human consumption (see accompanying).

Noir or never

A company called Esotouric, which shows folks various sights in L.A., is offering “Raymond Chandler’s Bus Tour” on July 1. “Join us as we go down the mean streets that shaped his fiction,” Esotouric says of the four-hour expedition (cost: $55).

In case you need a preview, I consulted “Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles” and put this mini-tour together, as narrated by Chandler’s private op, Philip Marlowe:

“The muzzle of the Luger looked like the mouth of the Second Street tunnel. . . .” (“The Big Sleep”)

“Beverly Hills . . . the best policed four square miles in California” (“Farewell, My Lovely”)

“Back in my dog house on the sixth floor of the Cahuenga Building I went through my regular double play with the morning mail. Mail slot to desk wastebasket. . . .” (“The Long Goodbye”)

“The smell of sage drifted up from a canyon and made me think of a dead man and a moonless sky.” (“Farewell, My Lovely”)

L.A. -- we love it!

MiscelLAny: Looks like it was another wild week in Laguna Beach. Two of the incidents on the crime blotter of the town’s Coast Pilot were spine-tinglers involving citizens caught attempting to take home “undersized fish.”

Not exactly Raymond Chandler territory.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.