Getting to the car with groceries can feel like that awkward mathematical moment after the meal or when the haircut has been finished.  Unlike the courtesy clerks at Safeway and Albertsons off post, at the Commissary the person who has bagged your groceries and schlepped them out to your car works for tips.

Tipping the barber or the restaurant server is a sort of pat on the back for a job well done.  But it's not strictly protocol. The tips worth between 15 and 20 percent of the cost of the service help to enhance the relatively low wages paid to these professions.

But unlike a server, who may be paid minimum wage in addition to tips, the Commissary bagger is paid strictly in tips and rarely makes anywhere near 15 percent. But then, considering a meal or a haircut may take longer than the average time to bag a grocery order  and deliver it to the customer's car, tipping 15 to 20 percent of a grocery transaction makes no sense.

So what's a reasonable tip?

A blog conversation, poll, and article recently submitted on the Stars and Stripes blog spousecalls (http://blogs.stripes.com/blogs/spousecalls) suggested that the average tip is between $3 and $4. Several people commented that the service the baggers provide helps to speed up the shopping process, and so the tip is given happily.

Still, the author of the informal study, Terri Barnes, stated that 18 percent of the people answering the blog poll said they didn't want to tip, suggesting the commissary pay baggers outright just as off-post stores pay courtesy clerks.

On a site called amitymama.com, the following considerations on Commissary tipping were found: 

"I usually give them $2-5 depending on how much I buy. I figure it takes like 5-10 minutes to bag up my groceries so a slow estimate is they can do probably 5 orders an hour. That's $10-25 an hour...pretty good for bagging groceries IMHO," wrote twiceblessed.

"ha. I give them a dollar lol. I mean really. After you add on our surcharge and then tip the bagger, we would be better off just to go to walmart ... ," wrote Hannahsorchard.

The personal experience of a former well-paid Merrill Lynch professional who turned to bagging groceries shed more light on the subject with information that baggers themselves pay to work. All of them tip the head bagger. This individual not only stocks the registers with bags, but he or she also works the cart return as well as scheduling - tasks that do not receive tips.  This individual, like the baggers, is "not employed by the commissary at all," according to a DeCA spokesperson quoted in Barnes' article, who also said that the head bagger's fee is set and voted upon yearly by the baggers and so varies from commissary to commissary.

So you think you want to stand in line with those who prefer not to tip?

Consider a few things.

First, go off post and do all of your shopping - this includes meat, organic milk, cleaning and household items, and other nice to have items such as soda, potato chips, and cereal.  Watch how efficiently the 17-year-old bagger fills the bags as he or she makes cow eyes at the cute bagger in the next lane.  Time the transaction, and at the end of it all, compare your receipt against the commissary receipt. 

Got sticker shock?

Next, go to the commissary and watch the baggers as they work.  See how long it takes them to fulfill one order.  This includes waiting for the cashier to greet the customer, waiting for the customer to sort coupons, recheck pricing on the tomatoes - weren't they on sale? - waiting on the customer to sort out the children, waiting on the customer to remember where the car is parked, and then walking to the car on the far side of the lot either in the chill of the rain or the heat of the sun.  Don't forget to factor into the transaction time the search for lost keys, the panicked moment when a child is discovered lost - oh, no, here he is - and the loading of the groceries once the stroller, sports equipment, and dry-cleaning is shuffled around.

When the bagger returns from that jaunt, it's doubtful he or she will get directly back to bagging. He or she will have to wait until it's his or her turn again to bag..

Lastly, as you get home, unload, and then lug all of the groceries into the house, consider how long it might have taken you to bag your own groceries, carrying them out to the car on your own.  At places such as Trader Joe's and IKEA you can engage in this process just as a fun little test of your own bagging and carry-out abilities.

I suspect being mindful of such things may make you change your notions about reasonably tipping the people who make your commissary experience go more smoothly.