Don't they teach them to bag groceries?!

The BBQ Pit
1

So I go food shopping, and once again I’m left to wonder if anyone bothers to teach the folks who work there how to bag the groceries.

They always lump all the cans into one bag, making it too heavy. Then they put things like single loaves of bread into another bag. So I end up with too many bags, some of which are way too heavy and tear, and some that barely have anything in them at all.

What happened to balancing heavy stuff with lighter stuff, and things like bread on top? I never even worked in a grocery store and I know that!

WTF?!

On the plus side, if this is all I have to rant about, my life is pretty good…

2

I’ve wondered the same thing. I got a salad at the salad bar once… in one of those compartmented containers with 3 bean salad in one, potato salad in another, and the regular salad in the main area. They put it ON ITS SIDE in a bag with other groceries. So it all ended up lumped together on the side and in the lid. Cretins.

3

I worked as a bagger in a commissary once. For a few weeks. Turns out that the tips aren’t really worth it (commissary baggers are not paid by the commissary, they depend on tips alone). But yeah, we were taught to bag.

You can put no more than TWO layers of canned goods on the bottom. And canned goods belong ONLY on the bottom. You can put more stuff on top of the canned goods, but only very lightweight stuff like toilet paper or chips.

Don’t bag nonfood/poisonous items with food, particularly produce. This means that you don’t put the dishwashing soap in with the grapes. MOST of the time the soap won’t leak…but there’s always that chance. It’s even worse if it’s furniture polish or something like that.

The only thing that goes on top of eggs is bread and potato chips, as they won’t crush the eggs. Don’t stand the eggs on end, as they might crack.

Bag the cold stuff together! If you have more than one bag, put all the frozen stuff in one bag, all the refrigerated stuff in another. Some of our customers drove quite a distance to get to the commissary, and this was in Las Vegas, so bagging the cold stuff together helped keep it cold longer. Plus, it was easier for the shopper to unload at home.

Light bulbs go on TOP of the bag, not the bottom.

As you can see, most of this is common sense if you stop to think about it.

When we shop at the “bag it yourself and save” stores, we generally follow these rules ourselves. Oh, and we bag all the bathroom items (toilet paper, soap, shampoo, female hygiene, etc.) together, which means that we can just take that bag or bags into the bathroom to unload it.

4

Yes, they are taught how to sack groceries. In the grocery store where I work, there’s also a “how-to” sign in the breakroom. Most sackers just don’t care. I insist on sacking my own groceries. I hate to see some jerkoff kid dropping my produce into a sack. HEY I picked out Fuji apples that ARE NOT bruised, ASSHOLE!

5

oh yeah-

Some of them think it’s funny to put a gallon of milk on top of your bread. They will even have “contests” with each other to see who can ruin the most groceries in an order.

They’re not all like this. It’s the “one bad apple” thing.

6

I don’t know. When I was a kid there seemed to be a specific system to bagging groceries, and our bags were always filled and neat, one bagger even conveniently seperated food items in such a way as to make them very fast to put away once they were taken home.

Now some kid will plop meat and ice cream next to a magazine. And they sometimes don’t even bother to put the cold items into their own bags before placing them in the main bag. Which results in a waterlogged magazine.

AND why did they start putting gallons of milk or economy sized orange juice bottles into their own bags? THEY HAVE HANDLES! They don’t need bags. And actually, the bags make them HARDER to carry. I always take them out, which for some reason occasionally pisses off the bagger or cashier.

7

Depends on the store. When I was a student, I was a stock boy, and I was occasionally called upon to bag groceries. My training consisted of “Hey Revtim, go bag groceries”. Common sense told me not to drop the watermelon onto the eggs.

8

From the Simpsons:

Homer wants his groceries bagged in the order that he is going to eat the items on the way home. That is, after changing his mind about having them bagged in alphabetical order, according to color, and so on and so forth.

Principal Skinner’s Mother wants all her groceries to fit in one bag… but she doesn’t want it to be heavy.

9

I swear half the time we go to the grocery store, we wind up with like 5 million plastic bags, each with one or two items of food inside. Really, my arms are in perfect working order, I can stand to lift a bag with more than two cans of soup inside it.

Either that, or they’ll just ram the stuff into the bags in the order it comes down the conveyor belt, so you wind up with fresh fruit mashed in with the canned food, bread stuffed down underneath raw meat, etc.

However, just yesterday we had the best grocery bagger of all time. Each bag was filled to a reasonable amount, not too light and not too heavy. And when we got home, we discovered that all the bread products (hamburger buns, loaf of bread, bagels) were in one bag, all the canned stuff was in another bag, the raw meats were in a bag of their own, the frozen stuff was in its own bag…it was beautiful to behold. I almost ran back to the store to thank the guy personally, and maybe give him a tip or something.

10

Isn’t this an example of the Peter Principle at work?

If you learn to successfully bag groceries, you are destined for bigger and better things…

11

Just a pointles question, out of curiosity. Aren’t eggs sold in a special protective case, in the US, as they are here?

12

They always give me a dirty look when I tell them not to put it in there. I don’t care, I just sneer right back at them. :wink:

13

I take my own canvas grocery bags, and I have to make a point of telling the baggers not to put all the heavy stuff in one bag. The canvas may be capable of withstanding more weight than paper or plastic, but I don’t want to carry too much extra weight in one hand. They frequently do a little heft check on the bag, to show me they’re not overloading the bag, but I still have found it’s better just to watch and tell them when to stop. Sure, they may be able to lift the bag from the counter to put it into the cart, but I’m the one who’ll have to carry it in from my car to my house.

The worst example of this was a couple of years ago when I had a broken wrist. This was rather obvious, since my arm was in a sling. I asked the bagger not to put too much heavy stuff in any one bag, since I was one-handed. He smiled and nodded at me.

I didn’t pay any attention to him bagging, since it took all my concentration to try to write my check with my left hand. When I got out to my car, I found one bag with a gallon of milk, three two-liter bottles of soft drinks, and various canned goods. He also graciously stuffed my extra unused canvas bag into another one of the grocery bags.

I took my cart back into the store, and the manager re-bagged my groceries for me. (It turned out the bagger couldn’t speak a word of English.)

14

Since it is time for the inevitable Labor Day charity drives, perhaps this is a good time for a minor rant.

A while ago, I went to the local bag-it-yourself grocery story. As I unloaded my groceries at the cashier, I noticed some fundamentalist church family was “volunteering” to bag my groceries. Donations for this service were “voluntary.” I chased them away. They protested that the service was free, contributions were voluntary, they’d do it even if they weren’t paid.

Excuse me Mr. Fundie. I do not wish to contribute to your idiotic church. I do not wish to be put in a position where others might look at me askance for refusing to contribute to your charity. And most of all, I do not wish to have my groceries touched by your unwashed 8 year old kids, and I do not wish your little kiddies to bag up my groceries with the eggs on the bottom and the soda on the top.

15

The baggers around here are mostly mainstreamed mentally handicapped folks. I cut 'em some slack when they put the bread on top because they were told to, although it crushes the chips below. I rebag by the car so they don’t get embarassed.

16

I put my stuff out of my cart on the conveyor belt in the most logical way to bag it (cold stuff together, cans together, etc.), and I still repack my bags every visit. I don’t really mind too much, actually, because if I do it myself, it gets done right. Now, if I can just get them to stop trying to read through the coverings I’ve put on my name on my bank card and air miles card to call me by name…

17

I do the same thing you do, featherlou. Moreover, since I work evenings, I go shopping at the ungodly hour of 2 a.m. or so, so I don’t have to argue about sacking my own darn groceries because the lone cashier is always more than happy to let me do it.

I’ve got it down to a science by now – put all the canned goods down first, then all the other heavier things and wet things, saving the produce, eggs and bread for last. Swipe card fast, get it ready to go, and run to the end of the counter to sack madly so I have all the heavy things in the cart by the time she gets to the produce and crushable stuff. That way, I can catch the produce in midair when she slings it at full velocity down to the end of the counter. :rolleyes:

And no, I’m really not that anal…I just hate paying that much money for stuff that gets bruised and crushed and hate having stuff rot in my refrigerator a day after I buy it because it got bruised in transit. (Which means I have to go back to the grocery store to replace what I lost, usually during a crowded time of day, and I’d just about rather have teeth pulled without anesthesia.) And dangit, one of my first jobs was as a cashier in a grocery store. I’d’ve been fired if I was as slipshod as some people are now. <insert illtempered mutter here>

18

Most of the baggers here ask if you want your milk in a bag, tho I usually try to beat them to the punch. I get aggravated about the one-item-to-a-bag, tho, or the unnecessary double bagging.

I do so hate grocery shopping…

19

Mr. L. often rants about this very thing. It usually begins “when I was a kid we learned how to bag groceries yada yada yada.” Once he raised a ruckus and had the manager called over. Now, he just pushes the bagger out of the way and does it himself.

20

<Cackle> That’s what you get for living in the freaking boonies, Grok :smiley: Down HERE, they know how to bag. Of course, you can get land REALLY cheap up there, huh?

:smiley: