I was at a Subway yesterday and the guy working the counter was not brilliant, but a step or two above some of the people I’ve had to deal with when ordering a sandwich. So he get’s out a paper bag for my sandwiches and proceeds to try to open it. It wasn’t a fast-food bag but a heavy grocery one that has the dual-use of holding your groceries and assuming it didn’t tear, covering your textbooks. So Subway dude is trying to open it from the side, failing, and complaining how hard these types of bags are to open. I say, “Let me try.”, open it a bit and SNAP, it’s open and I’m putting my sandwiches in. He was utterly amazed I was able to open it so easily.
Paper Bags, that we grew up with, all but disappeared for 25 years or so. So I understand a 20 year old not being familiar with them.
I mean the grocery bags were ubiquitous for those of us born in the 50s, 60s & early 70s but then disappeared sometime in the 80s and some places late 70s.
They made great book covers too.
Not sure about you being old or him being dumb, but I was just thinking about paper bag textbook covers earlier this morning. Weird. These days, I think my kid’s books are literally disposable and meant to have pages removed, etc.
I’ve not opened a classic paper shopping bag in decades. I’m sure I’d fumble the first one now too.
So my (rhetorical) questions about the situation at Subway are: a) Is he new at the job? b) Are the bags new at that Subway? and c) What the heck are you doing at Subway, the absolute dregs of food providers, when even a week-old 7-11 sandwich is better? Subway. Shudder.
At the high school level, at least, these days most textbooks are online. We have hardcopies of the text that students could check out if they want, but typically only about 5-10% of students choose to do so.
“Not being familiar” is one thing. But not being able to figure out (out of a choice of four sides) which side a paper bag opens from? C’mon. 
Yeah, he’s still in middle school. Though even that has a hefty online component. Way back when I was in high school, we were no longer required to arts & crafts a textbook cover though and just expected to keep our books in reasonable shape for the next sap the year after.
I am both old and constructionally inept. I have been trying to put together boxes i.e. fold flap A then c g and z without bending . I fought every one of them like it was the first time I saw it.
Give the kid some time-he will catch on.
I don’t think they ever disappeared around here; they remained an option, though for a while probably the less commonly used option, at the checkout. IIRC it did depend a bit on the store; some places didn’t have them, but most standard groceries did. And do, though now they charge you for them.
I’ve had them at farmers’ market since the 90’s (when I started selling at such markets) and I’ve never had anybody seem puzzled by them; though admittedly I’m usually the one opening the bag.
a) He didn’t seem new, but don’t Subway clerks have a half-life of only 2 months?
b) Yes but it’s opening a bag. How hard is it to transfer knowledge of “open from the end that opens”?
c) Mrs. Cad. Obviously I didn’t get a sandwich. She seems to think it’s real food.
But everyone knew how to make that book cover. My older sister showed me how like passing on a secret only us students knew.
I wouldn’t have. Book covers weren’t a thing in the schools I attended from mid-70s to mid-80s.
So did I and they were a thing for us middle-school and high-schoolers. Maybe it was a west coast thing?
I grew up on the Oregon coast, so if it was a west coast thing, my small town hadn’t heard the news.
I made paper bag textbook covers in Quebec in the 90s. Learned it from my mom.
Everybody in my school made those covers; some better than others. My attempts only succeeded thanks to yards of masking tape.
We made those paper bag book covers in New York State.
Admittedly, it was the 1950’s. I don’t know how long people kept doing it. I remember seeing fancy pre-made covers advertised for sale, years later, but don’t remember when that was except that it was quite a while after I was in school. Everybody used the paper bags, when I remember doing it.
My mother taught me how to do it, IIRC, though I suppose it might have been an older sister; but I’m pretty sure it was my mother.
Grocery bags for covers and Pee-Chees and you were all set for the first day of school.
A frw times I used a glossy paper specifically made for covering books instead of paper bags. Covering the books was either required or strongly recommended- I assume so that they’d be in good shape when returned at the end of the year.
All this talk of re-purposing grocery bags for textbook covers, and so little about how opening one for use AS A BAG FOR CARRYING YOUR GROCERIES with just a flick of the wrist is LEARNED behavior that evidently doesn’t get passed down as much as it used to? It’s high time we boomers start passing down our lore to the next generation (or possibly to the generation after that).
OP, you’re not not stupid, you’re old.
Well, old enough to remember when paper bags were ubiquitous.
And being not “not stupid” doesn’t imply that you are stupid.
I remember that some paper grocery bags were pre-printed with markings to help to cut and fold them into book covers. I’m not positive,but I think that those bags were only distributed in August/September around the start of the school year.