I do my weekly grocery shopping at a supermarket where prices are relatively stable and certainly lower than their rivals in the marketplace. I've shopped there for decades. It's a store where you have to pack your own purchases. Years ago I'd bought three large plastic bins from that same store and have used them consistently for the purpose of packing what I buy.

Since they employ no one to pack groceries as a customer courtesy, it is a convenience that is missed, but it does result in lower prices for comestibles. Invariably, the line-ups at the cashiers go smoothly and swiftly and would do so even more if more people simply paid in cash for what they buy.

Before setting out I always make certain that I've got an empty plastic bag or two, gleaned from elsewhere during shopping expeditions. You can obtain such bags from the place where I shop, but at a cost of five cents per bag. The purpose of the plastic bag I bring along is to fill it with non-perishable items that I buy and then deposit in the large container kept in the store foyer, meant to supply our local food bank.

Every neighbourhood has a segment of its population living in poverty and for whom forays on a regular basis to a food bank has become a necessity. I look for standard items on sale, and usually buy tuna or salmon tins, tins of processed meat, cans of baked beans, soups, macaroni and sauce, and Kraft dinner preparations. Sometimes tea, crackers, other items. I usually spend ten percent of my weekly food basket on items I place for food bank collection.

Yesterday, approaching one of the cashiers I've known for years, I responded to her cheery greeting by commenting that she must hate seeing me in her lineup. She laughed and said, not at all. There's such a profound difference between the attitude of a mature cashier and a young person employed as a cashier; the latter tend to be indifferent, remote, disinterested, while the former generally are personable and approachable. And willing to be accommodating.

While young people are efficient they won't put themselves out on anyone's account, it seems. Although I have found that not to be the case when I'm shopping in a large rural supermarket say in New Hampshire. Here, where I live and shop, young people seem to feel offended that they are asked to remove items from the bag which separates my home purchases from my food bank selections. Here, older cashiers swiftly and smilingly separate the two, repack the food bank items and infer that it's all in a day's work.

My acquaintance cashier yesterday said it's the least she could do, and in any event she isn't often called upon to do anything similar, since I'm the sole individual shopping at the store who weekly buys items for the food bank; for those others who buy items it's an intermittent thing. Which is doubly sad; sad that the need is there to begin with to support those who require it, sad that from among such a large population too few with the means to make a difference for those in need, make the effort to do so.