It’s happened more than once. At this one grocery store in the southern suburbs. They didn’t bag one of my groceries. Then it happened again. Anyway I now use self-checkout. So that matter has largely been resolved.
Now it happened two more times. Once in a Northern suburb, that I often go to. It’s worth pointing out that this is the first time it ever happened there. Then in I guess what you would call a western suburb. I don’t go there very often. And it was a dollar store too FWIW.
I guess my question is, are they doing it deliberately? Because there is an assortment of of obnoxious people in all the aforementioned places. Please include your own personal experiences, because that would help a lot too.
I’m sure they’re trying to cut down on contact/maintain social distancing between workers and customers. I shop at a bag-your-own place so that’s the norm. They have forbidden bringing your own bags, they have plastic bags for free (California).
Where I shop they won’t bag your groceries for you if you bring your own bags. They will let you bag your stuff yourself in your own bags or they will bag it for you in plastic bags.
Did they not bag anything at all or were they just leaving out an item here and there?
With the current pandemic if one brings their own bag that person bags, if you use the stores (now illegal but unenforced due to COVID19) disposable plastic they bag.
I take the OP to mean that this occurred in a full-service market, where you’d expect your things to be bagged for you (and not in a self checkout line).
I know what you’re talking about. There seems to be a lot of foot dragging these days. I was at Kroger a couple days ago. The woman in front of me had 3/4 of a cart of things and was bagging her own because nobody was there to do it. The young (about 25 years old) cashier didn’t seem to be in any hurry. After ringing up the last item, the cashier walked away while the customer was still bagging. She went to the right side of the checkout area for a couple minutes. Then she walked to the left side for a minute. The woman bagged her last, we waited a minute, and the cashier came back to complete the transaction.
There’s another cashier who’s probably in her 50s or 60s who is in no hurry at all. I’ve had the misfortune to choose her line and discovered she’s looking toward the door, not really focused on the task at hand. She likes to make idle chatter with customers. She does that mental hiccup between customers like, ‘La la la la…Now where was I?’ and needs a minute to reset, adjust her smock, whatever. She’d rather be home watching game shows. I just know it.
There’s also a guy in his 40s or 50s there who seems to take his sweet time. He doesn’t chat much but I think he’s watching the clock. He would rather let the baggers—or customers—bag, for sure.
All of them are old enough to know better but I’d say they see a chance to slack off and they’re taking it.
I’m in an area in which, pre-COVID, people either brought their own reusable bags or paid for the nicer, reusable ones the supermarket has available. Now the local government banned reusable bags so many supermarkets provide free bags, but they’re the cheapest, lightest t-shirt variety with generic labeling. At the beginning of this, I think the stores had difficulty securing enough bags, so they asked if we needed bags. A few times, I just dumped everything in the cart and then put them in the reusable bags in my car.
BTW, I think the no reusable bags thing is really stupid. I should be able to bring my own bags if I also bag stuff myself, so no one but me is touching my bags.
An ordinance was passed in my suburb last year banning plastic bags, and requiring retailers to charge 5 cents for each paper bag. The whole point being to encourage reusable bags.
After the pandemic started, my local Safeway proclaimed that they could not touch our reusable bags, but we were welcome to bag stuff ourselves. They also got rid of the rubber separator thingies for the conveyor belts. I don’t know if they are still charging for paper bags; I’ve never bothered to check my receipt. I mean, if I wind up with 4 or 5 bags, that’s 20 or 25 cents. I just don’t care.
I’ve gone to Fred Meyers a couple of times since this all started, most recently last week. It’s business as usual there. Bring your own bags, the rubber separators are still there, and so on.
COVID-19 doesn’t really spread this way per the CDC. It’s still theoretically possible, but the situations where touching things leads to COVID-19 transmission are pretty contrived.
It’s hard to answer your question without more details. Was it just one item each time? Did the bagger put it in your cart sans bag or just leave it sitting in the bagging area? What was the item?
I’ve seen larger items like gallons of milk or cases of soda go unbagged and I’m perfectly fine with that.
Anyway, I’ve been getting groceries delivered for a couple of years now and it’s great! Never liked grocery shopping anyway.
In Chicago, the City requires a 7 cent tax on all disposable bags provided by the grocer, to encourage the use of reusable bags. But the State has issued a ban on reusable bags! Classic case of governmental stupidity. So now I just dump all my groceries back in the cart, wheel the cart out to my car, and bag them in my cloth bags there.
As for the store bagger forgetting an item or two, that happens everywhere. You just have to watch them like a hawk.
I find astonishing that there are still workers bagging groceries at all since the pandemic started. It introduces an extra completely unnecessary person at a choke point in supermarkets. An unnecessary additional person is coming within less than six feet of every person who passes through the checkout, an unnecessary additional person is handling people’s groceries.
It’s idiotic that supermarkets see it as a priority to stop people using their own bags because of some unevidenced risk of spreading contamination via bags, but they are still posting unnecessary people at choke points in close proximity to every customer who passes through the checkouts.
Have you seen Broomstick’s thread ( So You Don’t Think Grocery Workers Deserve Protection….)? I wouldn’t be surprised if, because of Covid-19, grocery stores are short-staffed, and many of the people working there are either spread too thin, or new hires with lower experience or motivation to be professional than you’d find in normal times.
