Well, we can start off with the fact that your first purse comment wasn’t about transexuals, it was about gay men.
Second, there’s also the comment about how shopping is ‘womans work’
:rolleyes:
I’m sure you could, however, standing there idly by, like the fella in the OP, isn’t the way to do it. Of course, considering that you consider yourself incapable of properly bagging groceries:
maybe we should cut you some slack. I mean, sure, stores can trust mentally retarded people to bag groceries properly, but that’s probably expecting too much from you.
I usually decline assistance with packing (it is only in the last few years that it has started to be offered here in the UK) - I’d much rather do it myself as I tend to have about four or five bags open at a time and I organise the items as I go (so all the stuff I know I’m putting in the deep-freezer in the garage will be in one bag, all the stuff for the ingredients cupboard will be in another and so on - makes it quicker for putting away when I get it home, plus I don’t really trust them not to pack raw meat with cakes and eggs underneath cans of beans etc.
In Australia, at Woolies, we theoretically have packers, but theres only about 4 for the whole supermarket, you count yourself lucky if you get one, but for the most part you pack as the CO scans your items, otherwise it takes too much time, and you piss everyone else of behind you. There are supermarkets where you have to pack your own, and they are cheaper, you gets what you pay for
I tried online shopping for a while, but it didn’t work for me - I had to keep nipping out for items that they couldn’t supply - they did have an ‘accept substitutes’ option, but it was only flexible to the extent that they sold you brand B canned tomatoes instead of brand A - If I’m shopping for a swiss roll and they have none, I still want a cake of some sort and I might get a battenburg or something else - I would find that up to about 10% of my order would be unfulfilled, even though I was accepting substitutes.
There doesn’t seem to be any way around this other than going to the store and doing it yourself
Sure – and it’s the most natural thing in the world. <shrug> It’s comparable to:
When you get the oil changed in your car, do you stand next to the mechanic, and replace his tools for him when he’s done with them? Do you open the oil cans for him?
When you have your house painted, do you clean the painter’s brushes for him?
When you go to a tailor, do you rummage through his spools to help the tailor select the right color of thread?
Do you sweep the floor at your barber shop after a haircut?
…
StarvingbutStrong, the grocery checkout set-ups in the New Orleans area and in central Mississippi are exactly like the ones you describe in New England.
I will say this: sometimes with novice cashiers, it does help to walk around to the far bagging station and bag groceries (though another employee or manager is likely to intervene). However, cashiers have a bagging station right next to them, with open bags mere inches from the scanner. Once cashiers gain a little experience, bagging after scanning (when no bagger is present) becomes a fundamental job requirement – not an extra.
Usually I’m helping the groceries along the rolly thingy, getting my card out, maybe chatting wth the CO, and keeping an eye on the running total of the bill
These are services. At the grocery store, you’re paying for product, not service. They provide bagging service for exactly one reason, to get your ass out of the way for the next person buying product.
Oh sweet jesus. Did you happen to notice the thread title, per chance? Bagging in grocery stores is the whole fucking point of this thread! :rolleyes:
I’ve never seen another type of store that has actual baggers. I take from your example that you work in a hardware store. No hardware stores around here have baggers, the cashiers are expected to bag. Unless of course, it’s some unspoken rule that I’ve never seen anyone follow in my entire life (in hardware stores). Have you seen people bag their own items in retail stores? Clothing stores? I sure as hell haven’t. Intentionally or not, you’ve just managed to weaken your own argument.
I suppose this is just another one of those Atlantic culture gulf things, but none of those analogies work very well for me; shopping is (in my mind and possibly nowhere else in the universe) an intrinsically self-service activity, so for me, the most natural thing in the world is that I have to put the goods (which I now own) in bags to take them home. As you rightly say, <shrug>.
Actually you are paying for the service, that’s the whole reason why some grocery stores are more expensive than others. Some have baggers, others don’t. You think grocery stores provide baggers just to be nice?
I think what it is Mangetout, is that in all the years I’ve been shopping theres never ever(without one exception noted below) been a bagger. I do my own bagging in the same way I tie my own shoelaces. I wouldn’t dream of not doing it myself. The one time I had a bagger there was a trrop of cub scouts in the supermarket bagging for donations to charity…
Ah, the technology has improved. Tesco, for example, lets you enter substitute preferences for each item as you go along. After the first few shops it works very well.
And there’s the sheer satisfaction of waking up on a sunday, leaning over to your laptop, recalling a previous order, hitting enter, and then going back to bed for the two hours you’ve saved.
That probably still wouldn’t work for me, Gary - no two shopping lists are ever the same - we buy almost no ready-prepared meals and the ingredients we buy almost never get used up in a week - recalling a previous order would either leave us short or overstocked on some items and editing it would be just as much work as starting from scratch.
I agree, it is what we’re used to, but I think there’s also the (probably entirely illusory) implication, when bag packing is offered, that they are really saying look, you’re obviously so stupid as to be incapable of packing your own bags, plus (and this again might be entirely personal to me) I’ve paid for this stuff now, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let someone else manhandle it.
The problem of clearing the customer out of the way is largely handled by the design of the pre-checkout conveyor - typically this is long enough that you can unload your entire trolley onto it, leaving them free to pack the items immediately as they are scanned.
Same here, but I tend to have a faily constant list of staples, which I’ll then add to with fresh produce as the week goes on. That tends to be at small butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers so the whole bagging issue is a bit redundant. The main goal for me is to avoid the hell that is shopping at a large supermarket.
Don’t tell that to our local Brookshire’s district management. They bought out all our Albertsons last summer. Weeks before they re-opened these stores as Brookshire’s, there were Brookshire’s billboards all over Jackson touting the excellent service their stores would offer.
And you know what – they delivered on their advertised promises. A year has passed, and their still delivering.
Unless a Brookshire’s cashier is completely new, they can easily multitask. Once they get the knack, bagging is only considered a mild hindrance to their speed in scanning.
In short: at our grocery stores (Brookshire’s, Kroger, Winn Dixie), service in an inseparable part of the product – and these companies are doing it by design. You may be accurately describing the business models of groceries in your area, but let me assure you that things are done much differently down here.
