When I’m checking out of the grocery store with my goods, I will sometimes be in a line that has a bagger, and sometimes my line does not. If it does not, after getting my data mining card scanned and swiping my credit card, I’ll usually pop over to the place where the bagger would be and bag my own groceries. My rationale is, the cashier is busy scanning my stuff, it’ll be faster both for me and the folks in line behind me if I help out a little, and it’s less work for the cashier. Besides, I’d just be standing around watching the prices scroll by otherwise.
However, it occurred to me today that it’s possible I’m doing the wrong thing—so my question for current and former cashiers is, which would you prefer the customer do in that situation? Do you appreciate customers bagging their own groceries when the store is short on baggers? Is it annoying? Does your manager think it’s a sign you’re slow or lazy? And my question for mere customers, how many of you bag your own when there isn’t a bagger around?
Poll on its way.
(By the way, this topic has been done before, but not recently, near as I can tell. Here’s an old IMHO thread, and an older Pit thread. Didn’t feel like dabbling in necromancy today, so a new thread.)
I was a cashier at Safeway for a few years and the way the checkstand was set up, customers never got the chance to bag their own. I had the bags right next to the scanner and items went right into the bag after scanning, or put to the side briefly if it was something I wanted to top off the bag with or put with some other similar items. It was just faster that way. I would have appreciated it if it were possible for the customers to have bagged their own, however.
In my personal life now I always go to the self-checkout when possible, and if not I take special care to put my items on the conveyor belt in the exact order I want them bagged, because most cashiers tend to just bag them up in the arbitrary order they’re given them, which I understand and can’t blame them for, even though I took special care to bag customers’ groceries in a neat and logical manner when it was my job (cleaning products together[and **never **with food!], cold items together, bread in a separate bag, etc.).
The majority of stores in my area are set up like the store DCnDC worked at. The ones that aren’t are stores like Aldi, where cashiers transfer your purchases from one cart, to another, and if you want bagged groceries, you have to purchase the bags, and fill them yourself.
So, I’ve never been a cashier, and don’t recall ever being in your scenario. I guess I’d help out if I were to find myself in that situation
I don’t think I’ve shopped anywhere recently where I’d be able to bag my own without going behind the counter with the cashier. They would think that was odd, at the least, and probably alarming.
I used to be a bagger, and a cashier, and I have no problems bagging my own. But I’m not going to cause a scene just to do so.
If there’s no bagger, I bag my own so I can get out of there faster. In fact, I usually prefer to bag my own, as it gives me something to do while the cashier is scanning my groceries; otherwise, I’m just standing around.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a cashier unhappy I bagged my own.
A fair amount of the time I go through checkouts that don’t have a bagger.
A good bagger is great, but a lousy one sucks and can damage fragile purchases. On two occasions in my life I dismissed and incompetent bagger and did my own (When the bagger is so busy watching the hind end of young women passing by he completely crushes a dozen eggs with a gallon of milk - I’m talking crushed, yolks dripping out of the box and bag - then keeps piling stuff on top of THAT you bet I’m not standing for it).
I don’t mind bagging my own, really. And I usually bring my own bags, too.
I shop at two different groceries: the little independent one down the street where I almost always bag my own stuff, as seems to be expected; and one regional chain store in the next town over where the checkout layout discourages it (but doesn’t entirely prevent it). The one time I bagged my own at the chain store it seemed to fluster the young clerk a bit. They usually have a bagger at every open lane, so it hasn’t come up frequently, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the managers get cranky with clerks about customers doing their own bagging – if the clerk is supposed to call for a bagger before it gets to that point, or something. But that store is in an affluent town and never seems to be short-staffed, even at very busy times.
When I’ve lived other places and shopped at less-fully-staffed stores, I’ve bagged my own and clerks have thanked me or not commented and seemed fine with it.
I very rarely start bagging my groceries, because like no one ever does here, regardless of whether or not there’s a bagger, and sometimes it’s not even possible (well, I mean, it’s POSSIBLE, but clearly not expected), depending on how the checkstand is set up. But I did used to date a guy from Ohio (the is Seattle) and he’d start bagging groceries automatically, despite being a self-centered, parasitic person overall. So maybe it’s different there.
My British friend also was taken aback when she was told that Americans commonly don’t bag their own groceries even if they’re just standing there doing nothing, so apparently it’s a regional thing. To her, you’d have to be lazy not to, but here, if you do it they look at you with mild surprise.
I do bring my reusable bags to the grocery store though, and surprisingly few people do that either. But I think it’s still more than the ones who bag their own groceries.
I bag my groceries if there isn’t a bagger… it’s faster that way.
I’d actually prefer to bag my groceries most of the time - I know how I like them packed, and the bagger doesn’t.
Also - I buy a lot of apples. I go through the selection of apples searching for unbruised ones. For some reason, the baggers at my local grocery stores like to just drop the whole bag of apples in my bag first, which inevitably bruises one or two. I need to have a talk with the management…
Since I go with my wife, she watches the register and I bag if there is no bagger there. In our Safeway the groceries go to the end of the checkout stand, where the bagger stands if present, so they are easily available to me.
In fact it bugs me when hale and hearty people see a long line and just stand there while there groceries are being scanned, so everyone else has to wait longer while the checker does the bagging. (These people often don’t take out their check or credit card until after the checkout is done.)
I’m tempted to bag even when the bagger is there, but I’ve found I just get in his way so I’ve stopped.
I’ve often been thanked, especially when the lines are long. But the checkers at our Safeway are nice people.
Until recently, I never did my own bagging. But lately it seems my local Jewel supermarket has had to make some staffing cutbacks, so now when I go (late afternoon on Friday or Saturday), there are only two cashiers and maybe one bagger. The lines wind up 5 long or more. Therefore most of the time I’ve been doing my own bagging.
Pretty much this, exactly. I’m pretty obsessive about putting my groceries on the conveyor in the order I want them packed - to the point that I will gladly let the next person in line go ahead of me so that I can group my purchases - but not all cashiers or baggers appreciate the thought process behind my habit. Therefore, I’d really rather do it myself, for several reasons:
I don’t want my items damaged by piss-poor bagging.
I can kind of mentally “check off” what’s going into the bags, and make sure that I haven’t forgotten something (either “forgot to pick up milk,” or “oops, I left the milk under the cart and don’t want to accidentally shoplift.”)
I don’t want uncooked meat in the same bag as fruit, or bleach in the same bag as any food.
And if I get home and need to tend to something else ASAP, I like to know that all of my perishables are bagged together, so that I can throw those in the fridge/freezer and worry about putting everything else later. Don’t want a raw chicken lurking in the bag with the canned tomato sauce or something.
I worked in a smaller supermarket in high school. We didn’t usually let customers back their own groceries unless they insisted. We only had five checkout stands and the cashiers were electronically scored on scanning times so they moved really quickly. We also got trained on speed bagging and doing it well. It seems like a stupid skill but some cashiers could scan 30 - 60 items a minute and we were expected to bag that quickly and be done almost as soon as they were. It took a while to get up to that speed and hardly any customers could do it so it slowed down the lines if they tried. We didn’t just didn’t just throw things in bags. It had to be sorted among multiple open bags according to category, size, and weight, like a Tetris game with nothing being damaged.
It was hardly ever a problem for the customers. We carried their bags to their car as well as long as we bagged them with no tip expected. Some of the grocery stores around here are hit or miss. You might get a bagger or you might not but they aren’t usually that fast. If the cashier is going to end up doing it anyway, I will do it myself to save time. The main thing I care about is not waiting in line any longer than necessary or forcing those behind me to wait.
Usually I have too much stuff for the self-checkout, or if I don’t have too much stuff, I always have produce or booze, both of which make self-checkout not feasible (i.e., slower than waiting in line). So I don’t often have the opportunity to bag myself. Where I mostly shop (a local chain called Meijer), they don’t have those archaic accumulators past the scanner. The checkout clerk has no place to put the groceries except in bags, which are on a carousel. With this system, there’s no bagger to place my bags into the cart, and so I guess I’m stuck doing that duty, i.e., as the bags arrive on the carousel, I have to remove them and put them into the cart myself.
I actually prefer this system. Baggers suck, and some states have baggers unions that go on strike! I recently spent a year and a half in Mexico, and you can’t avoid baggers. There, they have the accumulator at the end, and the baggers bag your stuff and load your cart, but they literally work for tips only, and I never have change (consider that the smallest Mexican bill is $20 pesos, and usually the smallest bill you have is $50 pesos, and usually I used a credit card at that). God, I hated shopping for groceries in Mexico.
The other issue I have with baggers sometimes is that they seem to love to separate things into different bags, when I don’t want to. I go grocery shopping 4 or 5 days a week - always getting fresh veggies and such. It tends to be small orders. I take one reusable cloth bag with me, and use that as I’m shopping. No cart, no basket.
At the cashier, I empty the bag out onto the counter. The cashier scans the items, and passes them to the bagger. The bagger puts some in my bag, and then starts getting plastic bags out for the stuff that “doesn’t fit”. Except everything clearly fits into my one bag, since I just took it all out of it.
Not only do I bag my own groceries, I send them through the checker in the order and in groups that I want to bag together. The store I shop at is a spin off of a major chain and it doesn’t have baggers but does offer somewhat lower prices.
When we shopped for all our groceries at grocery stores, we’d bag our own because our store didn’t have baggers. Whenever we’d go to a “fancier” place where they do, I always saw baggers as this new, novel service, and while I appreciated it, it was strange to be standing there not doing anything.
Now we order the bulk of our groceries online, so they get packed for us and delivered right to our door. And when we do have to pop on down to the grocery store, it’s usually only for a few items, so we skip the cashier altogether and do self-checkout.