BX? Wait…isn’t that a Squid or Jarhead name for a PX?
What I remember most about the commissary the Coast Guard had on Governor’s Island in New York harbor was how much the E-6 and E-7s there would fight to work there as naggers for groceries for tips. Command had to settle several arguments over that. I once shopped at Chanute AFB in Illinois and when I went to check out, I got in line right in the aisle like you do in a civilain store and was politely told to wait in line in the aisles which have food. But I remember commissaries being cheaper.
No, that would be some weird underwater code name or something NEX.
Maybe this is a whoosh, but BX = Base Exchange; PX = Post Exchange. They are the same thing. In case someone doesn’t know that.
As you were.
Interesting discussion. I guess now, if you live in a community with a good selection of supermarkets, the commissary is nothing special (except several people said the meat is cheaper). If you’re overseas, the commissary is a good place to get goodies from home. Liquor is usually sold in a separate store nearby IME. GOOD prices.
NEX == Navy EXchange. (The jarheads have the MCX.)
I do most of my shopping at the commissary here, though it’s the least convenient of the supermarkets in the area. The meat and frozen foods are definitely cheaper there, even with the 5% surcharge added on. Milk is usually cheapest at one of the local mini-marts, of all places, or at Aldi. (Aldi has decent prices overall, but it’s less than half the size of the commissary.) Super WalMart is a bit cheaper on some stuff, more expensive on other things, but they carry stuff we like and the commissary doesn’t have, so I shop there weekly, too. The other two supermarkets here in town are definitely more expensive.
Hours are decent. Closed on Mondays, as mentioned above (the only commissaries I’ve seen open on Mondays were at the big bases like Norfolk and Pearl Harbor), but they’re open until eight on Thursdays and seven most other days.
Baggers here are mostly middle-aged adults and college-age (or even high school) kids. We have had a few retirees, though.
NEX definitely has the best alcohol prices in town, both at the package store and at the main store, which has a walk-in beer cooler.
I have many happy childhood memories living in base housing.
Base schools were very good. Very safe. We walked to school.
The best thing was the playground. It was directly behind the houses. The backyard fence had a gate. Biggest and sturdiest swing sets I ever played on. The slides were big too.
I lived on two Air bases. Otis (Mass) and England Air Force Base (Louisiana) both had the playground set up like that.
That’s pretty much how my kids all grew up. They were only in local schools twice, and both times hated it.
Eek! I lived at Otis, too, around 1957-1962. I sent you a PM. 
I was born at Otis in '60. Small base, small world. 
I briefly lived at Otis in temp quarters while waiting for my permanent quarters at South Weymouth. That was in 1984.
Who operates the PXs and commissaries? Are the store managers and the rest of the staff government employees? Because I could imagine they could instead contract with a grocery store company to manage them on behalf of the DoD.
Small world. 
Dad was a Tech Sergeant and a supervisor in the Instrument shop at Otis from 1959-65. The technicians disassembled and repaired instruments in a clean room.
Now they’ve re-branded them to just “X” as in “the Exchange.” Likely due to BRAC funding issues and having to maintain all those signs for the first superfluous word.
All of the exchanges are U.S. government operations and run either directly by the services (in the case of the Navy Exchange through the Navy Exchange Service Command) or slightly indirectly in the case of AAFES (the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which has a civilian CEO, military board of directors, and reports to the Army/Air Force Chiefs of Staff).
The commissaries are also U.S. government operations run by the Defense Commissary Agency. Prior to consolidating, commissaries were run by different organizations in the different services, similar to how the Exchanges are still run by separate organizations.
Around here, traditionally the Commissary had a better variety of stuff that would be found in various parts of the CONUS but did not use to be sold around here, until about the 1980s. Nowadays the big advantage is the tax exemption.
Ft. Buchanan, PR, has the most profitable Commissary AND Exchange in the whole system, to hear the Colonel tell it. Especially the liquor store where that tax exemption *really *adds up.
The commissary and exchange systems mostly self-finance and the profit goes into the budget for Morale, Welfare and Recreation of the troops and their families.
My dad ran an electronics calibration shop (551st EM Squadron) during that period. Our dads might very well have known each other.
There have been attempts to do that in the past, with companies like Safeway almost drooling over the prospect of shafting military people, because commissaries aren’t “fair” to for-profit companies. It has never gotten off the ground, probably because politicians have no interest in pissing off a huge bloc of potential voters.
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Are the store managers and the rest of the staff government employees?
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Part of your question was answered but not all if this. AAFES uses non appropriated fund workers paid for from their revenues. They get a small chunk of their budget appropriated by congress to serve overseas locations that would not make economic sense. 2/3 of their “profits” get funneled back into unit morale and welfare funds with the rest going to build/improve their infrastructure.
DECA on the other hand uses federal employees paid for with congressionally appropriated funds. It’s a totally different model that does not generate earnings to give back.
That’s what I remember from my days as a military kid. We loved shopping at The Exchange* because it was typically $0.60 = $1.00 for the same item and no tax. Our model cars and airplanes were cheap, and as teenagers we could buy quite a few albums for our money. But yeah, not that great a selection. Like the OP, I had almost never shopped “on the outside” as we called it until I was out of high school.
*Army calls it the PX, Navy calls it “The Exchange” (base, not post, so no “p” and no bothering with a “b”, for whatever reason).
The exchanges and commissaries in WDC are extremely well stocked, probably because of all the high brass in the area. At Henderson Hall, a Marine barracks in Arlington, the exchange carried very high end clothing, for example. I remember my wife being impressed with lines like Jones of New York at comparatively low prices. The one in Anchorage was a joint base operation, so was like a large and modern mall complex, with the big commissary at one end and the BX anchoring the other.
When we were at Gila Bend AFB in '68-'69 the entire complement of troops was only 200-250 at any given time. I think your average civilian convenience store has more stuff available in it than we had. Made my mom happy though, we got to go up to Luke in Phoenix fairly often as a result, their BX was like a Sears store, it was huge!