As one or two other posters have stated, at the Randalls and Krogers in Houston, it is strongly frowned upon to have a customer bag their own grocieries. More than a few times, I’ve started bagging my own, only to have either the cashier, a bagger from another line or even the manager come over very quickly to relieve me of my duties.
However, the mangers here aren’t rude about it towards their employees.
~J
My condolances. What’s that got to do with anything?
Whatever. It’s still not worth it for me spend that time to save $10.
God forbid you think I’m “uncool” for having a credit card. A credit card just makes me an ordinary person with enough sense to not carry around a stupid checkbook where ever I go.
Sorry. I did not mean to exclude the heterosexual men who carry purses around or lump transexuals with homosexuals.
Several people have posted to the effect that having the customer bag “helps” the cashier.
How so?
Around here, at least, cashier are paid an hourly wage. They get paid the exact same amount if an hour means 45 minutes scanning + 15 minutes bagging OR if they scan for a full 60 minutes because someone else did the bagging.
The slightly greater number of customers ‘processed’ through a line per hour might benefit other customers by moving the line faster, and it certainly benefits the manager & shareholders because more customers/hour/cashier means fewer hours cashiers have to be paid for, but it does zip for the cashier.
In fact, if the ‘efficiency’ of the cashiers went up, it could very well mean a cut back in how many hours they get scheduled and thus their pay drops. Great way to “help” them, eh?
Also – scanning is one of those repetitive motion things that is know to cause RSI in some cashiers. Instead of going “grab item and drag past the sensor” twenty times a minute for hours on end, I’m sure it’s a lot healthier to break up the scanning motion with some packing, moving bags and so forth.
Not that I’m claiming I don’t (generally) bag for the sake of the cashier’s wrist health.
The only point I’m making is, having the customer bag does absolutely NOTHING for the cashier.
Anyone ever tell you that you have a shitty customer service attitude? I don’t know where you work/ed, but the cashiers around here make DAMN good money (if they’re union, they get up to 20 something an hour) so it wouldn’t kill you to be at least civil to your customers.
I’m sure you’ve had bad experiences. So have I when I worked in customer service.
Every transaction comes with responsibilities? Take an active role in the transcations you initiate? Has the fact that you are the one being paid and I’m the one paying escaped your attention?
Do people actually watch you bag while smirking? I think you may be exaggerating a bit. I agree with whoever said it doesn’t sound like you’re cut out for customer service. Being resentful of customers for making you do your job and imagining some vindictive ulterior motives for a customers inaction (as posters have given various acceptable reasons for) is not a good recipie for a person who works with the public.
Seriously, how is doing your job “jumping through hoops”?
If people weren’t able to afford to pay people to do their dirty-or not so dirty work- you wouldn’t have a freakin’ job. Neither would any other customer service workers. It’s kinda the whole point of the customer service industry really. As far as your weird fantasy of people deriving some “sick pleasure” out of it, give me a fucking break. You seriously need to get out of customer service.
Yes, the whole reason I eat in resteraunts is to derive some sick pleasure out of watching the server deliver my food. “Dance server wench, dance!” Paranoid much? :rolleyes:
If I count as having a shitty customer service attitude, then you are a shitty customer. When a transaction goes bad, it isn’t automatically the cashiers fault. There are two people making this trasaction, and it’s perfectly possible that the customer is the one in the wrong. Don’t you understand that as a customer you have equal responsibility to make the whole thing work? No amount of money buys you the right to make life difficult for other people for no good reason. But a bad customer can ruin things for the cashier and the other customers around her. That doesn’t mean that I hate customers. It just means that I hate customers that think that buying a candy bar gives them some sort of entitlment to act like a complete asshole in public simply because the cashier can’t fight back without risking her job.
I don’t work as a cashier anymore ($20 an hour?!? I made $6.75- in a town where a studio apartment runs about $900 a month) but when I did I was very good at what I did and many customers would praise my service. It’s not like I go around scowling and yelling at people. But I do notice when people arn’t upholding their end of the bargain.
The general public is freaky. They tend to be on their worst behavoir in stores. I’ve had people steal from me. I’ve had people wave their dicks at me. I’ve had people start fistfights in line. I’ve had people hold up huge lines of customers for half an hour in order to save ten cents. When I say people get sick pleasure out of making people do crap, it’s because I’ve seen it done. I’m a 100 lb girl. I’ve had 250 lb mechanics ask me to get them cases of oil, and then watch as I carry 30 lb cases of oil from the other side of the store (which is a public area where they could just go and get it themselves) and make comments like “working hard, eh?” and other sarcastic crap that made it pretty clear they enjoyed watching me strain.
And you know what? Throughout all of that the cashier has to smile. And more importantly, throughout all that the cashier has to keep ringing people up. The word “cashier” means “one who does stuff with cash”, not “one who takes enourmous amounts of shit from strangers and smiles about it”. So while I’m willing to put forth effort to make things pleasent, if you hold up the line I’m not going to get on the SDMB and start a thread about how happy I am that some guy decided to hold up my line and keep me from doing my job.
Fuck off again, you ignorant fuckface.
Esprix
Even sven
I worked in customer service for 8 years, I’m well aware of how crappy customers can be. My beef is with all of the hostility you’re showing towards people who don’t bag their own groceries in a grocery store with baggers.
It has nothing to do with cases of oil or any of the random shit you’re posting about. I’m very familiar with Santa Cruz and go there occasionally (I used to quite often) and you’ve definately got some strange ducks over there. But IMHO if you’re working in a store that has baggers, for the specific purpose of bagging groceries, you really don’t have grounds for a full blown foot stompin’ temper tantrum about how horrible customers are that don’t jump over and immediately start bagging their own groceries. In a store with baggers. For the specific purpose of bagging groceries.
But I digress.
I used to know a few cashiers at Safeway who were making between 17 and 20 bucks an hour, union. So pardon me if I don’t cry them a river when they throw a hissy about having to put a can of corn in a plastic bag.
And I am not a shitty customer, thankyouverymuch. I am the customer who will hike across the entire parking lot in order to return my cart to the store, not leave it propped on a curb. I am the customer who will refuse help out to the car in order to conserve baggers in the store. I am the customer who will wait paitently while the little old lady digs for the nickel on the bottom of her purse and then smile brightly and say hi to the cashier when it’s my turn. I don’t bag because I don’t want to get in anyones way, as I’ve posted before.
In other words, fuck you.
And while we’re at it, fuck you some more, you sexist fuck. Glad to know the basic act of procuring food still carries that much of a gender stigma in your world.
Fucker.
I just want to clarify that I have never worked as a cashier at a grocery store, but I have worked as one in various other retail establishments. I do not expect everyone to bag their own groceries, and I did not expect people to do their own bagging when I was a cashier. It only makes me upset when people refuse to lend any sort of hand (like when the guy that bought two hundred small packs of screws didn’t even think about helping me scoop them off the counter he was standing right in front of and put them in the wide open bag sitting on that same counter into which I was furiously shoveling his items so that I could get to the huge line piling up behind him) because they think that being a “customer” gives them the right to be a jerk if they feel like it.
And while we’re at it, fuck you some more, you sexist fuck. Glad to know the basic act of procuring food still carries that much of a gender stigma in your world.
Fucker. **
[/QUOTE]
A little touchy are we, egads woman/man/transvestite/flavor of the day for PC…whatever flavor you happen to be given this thread.
Good Word, that’s just giving me even more giggles…people getting pissed off and whining about fucking GROCERY BAGGING…I must save this thread for prosterity.
It’s like a train wreck with all the circus characters from “Ringling Barley” or whatever the fuck it is…I have been literally laughing about this thread since I saw it earlier today and I have to save it to my hard drive for a laugh when my world is not so well. I sure as hell hope you all aren’t serious about this…GOD it’s just a bitch about grocery stores…but fucking funny as hell!
< giggling furiously >
Yeah, I know techchick. I got carried away there. It just really pushes my buttons that people still deliniate between “women’s work” and “manly” chores. I mean, it’s just a trip to the store. A statement that boils down to, “I can see why you might have thought I was a woman; we’re talking about grocery shopping and that’s really girly.” is stupid and reflects poorly on the (presumed) adult who said it.
But, yeah, I could have left out a few iterations of “fuck.” Mea maxima culpa.
If after I swipe my debit card or tender my cash to the checker there is no one bagging my groceries, I will start to do it myself. Not because I want to make somebody’s day easier, and not because I care how many people are in line behind me. Grocery stores are like Disneyland: lines are normal… get used to it.
I bag my own groceries because I want to get back home to the fun things I was doing before I had to go shopping.
So, what…are single heterosexual men looked down upon for needing to consume non-fast food on occasion? Is there some sort of law requiring them to get their sisters or mothers to do their grocery shopping for them, in case they get called a "fag"by their non-grocery shopping buddies?
What if the wife runs out of tampons and sends the husband to the store? Do they revoke his penis? I’m confused… being a woman and all, we’re not very smart, you know. Enlighten me please, you Statue of Manliness! Please bestow upon my lowly inferior womanly self your testosterone-driven wit and intelligence! :rolleyes:
Btw, you spelled understandable wrong. Fuckwit.
Nobody said that the cashier will make more money, just that bagging yourself helps the cashier out. It helps to shorten the amount of time that you’re in their lane, so if there IS a lull in action, they can take a breath and have a minute or so of peace.
If everyone refused to bag under the ‘it’s your job’ theory, lines would get longer and the cashier would be less likely to get that 1min or 30sec break, because it would have been spent bagging your groceries.
Not to mention, it’s just NICE to get a helping hand from someone. A little speck of humanity, it’s like a smile, or saying ‘thank you’, or just flat out being polite during the transaction. None of those things earn the cashier more money, none of them are required, but we should do them anyway. If you have the opportunity to bag a few of your items to speed things along, you should, it’s a nice thing to do.
No wonder retail sucks, when so many people refuse to be nice because they’re THE CUSTOMER and don’t have to be nice.
Juniper, msmith deserved every single ‘fuck’ he gets during this thread, what rock did HE crawl out from under?
Cheesesteak – I am always nice to the cashiers. I load my stuff on the the counter in the correct orientation, I have my customer card ready in hand, I put my coupons onto the little shelf the store provides for them. I smile at them when it’s my turn to be served, I say ‘good morning’ or whatever is appropriate, I commiserate if they look fazzled or tired. I have my check ‘prepared’: signed, the ‘to’ line filled out, the date filled in, ripped out of my checkbook – ready for writing in the amount once she gives me the total.
I do point out to them each time the scanner is giving the wrong price, but I do it politely and we both know I don’t mean it is the cashier’s faults.
What I don’t do is start bagging before I’ve paid for the groceries. Help after that, fine. Until then, I stay near the cashier, watch the register, and prepare to hand over the money.
I’m starting to think this reflects regional patterns. I’m in New England – Vermont now, Massachusetts when I was growing up. The stores I frequent are NOT set up to encourage customers to bag. The plastic bags are hung on racks beside the cashier down at shelf level AND at the far end of the collecting area, also down at shelf level. Clearly they do not expect/want the customer to pick up those not-at-all easily reachable bags.
If there isn’t a bagger at that register the cashier scans then deposits in a bag in a single motion. Otherwise the stuff slides down to the bagger to deal with. I don’t see why this is considered a problem.
BTW, if the customers were to start bagging their own as a matter of course, wouldn’t that simply mean the store would fire the baggers? And it seems to me that that would be a bad thing. At my local store, a good proportion of the baggers are ‘mentally challenged’ young adults from a nearby residence. They are clearly happy to have the dignity of ‘ordinary’ paying jobs they can do and do well. A lot of the other baggers are retirees – presumably they need the extra money the job brings in.
And, btw, I’ve been a cashier myself – did it for several years through high school and have taken cashiering as a holiday seasonal second job many, many years. I know how irritating the customers can be, but I’ve never considered that having a customer expect me to actually do my own job is offensive in the least.
I don’t think that anyone here is saying we all have to be busy little beavers and bag the whole order. Nobody expects you to bag when the layout doesn’t allow, or expects you to not watch the screen for errors. If circumstances allow, though, one should bag some of the stuff.
The problem is that some people stand there like the Lord of the Fucking Manor watching over their servant. As if they’re too good to touch unbagged cans and boxes, leave that work to the little people. The guy in the OP acted that way, I think that’s pretty rude.
callin’ foul on this one, msmith:
just how in the fuck, since there’s no spacing and you don’t capitalize any of the letters, do you get off suggesting that some one is illiterate if they don’t realize it’s ‘m smith’ vs. ‘ms mith’?
my user name doesn’t indicate gender, and I’ve often gotten mistaken for the opposite gender. Snarkiness about it is really uncalled for. the rest of your snarkiness has been dealt w/by others, but you really need to back off of this one, or change your user name to include a space or something.
wring -
I think you need to lighten up, Cheesedick. What comment did I make that was so horrible? That the only people who carry a purse are females or a transexual males? Oooooo!! That’s sooo awful.
And you know what? I can go to a store and expect them to do their job without acting like “Lord of the Fucking Manner”. The problem is that too many people in retail and grocery stores think that they are doing the customers a favor by working there. What happened to service with a smile? What about actually getting an order correct? Maybe the line would go faster if the cashier didn’t go through the motions all half-asses. Maybe the customers would be less pissed off if the register clerk wouldn’t treat the customer as if they were bothering them.
so? do you really expect that everyone memorize every line in a thread and refer back to single references? besides, this assumes that Cheesesteak was right about your gender.
I still think you were being a jerk about it. I’ve been around for years, and lots of folks still get my gender wrong. Even in threads where I posted stuff about being a mom. Getting snarky about gender misidentification (unless you have a user name like “miss Big Boobies” or something like that), is unnecessarily rude, IMHO.
$20/hour to ring people out?! Cashiers here make something like $7-$10 an hour here, which is pretty good. I must say, I wish I was making $20/hour. If cashiers were making that much, I’d quit my job and go work at the HEB. My knees and ankles would hurt like hell at the end of the day, but I’d be able to afford doctor bills. 
As for the manly art of grocery shopping, does that carry over to cooking as well? One of my housemates occasionally gets these cooking fits – runs to the grocery store, ends up spending roughly $40 for the six of us to eat, makes a beautiful mess in the kitchen…We eat great for about three days after one of HIS cooking fits.
That guy makes the best chicken fried rice I’ve ever had. 