Meet Karen Aitchison, a 30-year Safeway veteran who’s become the MacGyver of grocery shopping. When her beloved Diamond Heights Boulevard store pulled a disappearing act with their handled paper bags last month, this savvy senior didn’t just roll over and accept her handleless fate. Oh no—she went full prepper mode, hoarding the precious handled specimens like they were made of gold and reinforcing them with strapping tape because apparently that’s what passes for grocery bag engineering in 2026.
Safeway’s explanation for this sudden bout of handle amnesia? A mysterious “wood pulp shortage” that has somehow specifically targeted the handle-making portion of trees while leaving the rest perfectly intact for bag production. It’s almost as if handles require some rare, exotic wood that only grows on the north side of mountains during leap years.
Now, we’re not saying Safeway is being less than transparent here, but when a company that sells everything from soup to nuts suddenly can’t source enough wood pulp for bag handles—while continuing to produce the actual bags—it does make one wonder if this shortage is more about cutting corners than cutting trees.
Poor Karen, living three flights up, has essentially become a bag whisperer, carefully nursing her dwindling supply of handled treasures while watching other shoppers struggle with armfuls of groceries like they’re playing some twisted version of grocery Jenga. Because nothing says “customer service” quite like making your loyal patrons perform circus acts just to get their milk and eggs home safely.
Safeway maintains the shortage is real, though they’ve been mysteriously silent about when this handle-specific wood crisis might resolve itself.
Original story via Boing Boing