Well, if my bread’s smashed, it’s my own damned fault, because the grocery stores I go to most often don’t even have baggers any more (to keep proces down, they claim - they ARE about 20% cheaper than the competition).
But yeah, it sucks.
Here’s a useful trick to avoid squashed groceries: while shopping or unloading your cart, organize your groceries.
Put all the frozen stuff together. All the cans & heavy stuff together. Fruits and vegetables together. Paper products & bread together.
That way, as your groceries get to the bagger, (s)he has an easier time organizing the bags. Yeah, you have to do a little more work, but it’ll save you stress and frustration, not to mention flattened bread and broken eggs.
Ironically, I only learned this trick when I moved to Europe and had to bag my own groceries. When you have 25 items and approximately 32 seconds to bag them all, you learn to sort them for easy bagging.
Just my .02 cents.
Why almost? Why not do it? If a special trip is too much trouble, do it the next time you are there.
Even better than a tip, let the store manager know what a great job the person did.
You know what I wish? That Webvan hadn’t bought out Home Grocer. No sooner did they do that than they discontinued service by Home Grocer in our area (after swearing two weeks before that there would be no interruption in service, damn their eyes). THEN Webvan proceeded to go belly-up in bankruptcy court. Double-damn them.
In any event, it left me with GroceryWorks, which in our area, completely sucks as far as home delivery of groceries go. They’ve yet to get a single order right and you have to wait on hold for fifteen hours to tell them about foulups to your order.
But while it lasted, Home Grocer was wonderful. <sigh> I used to order my groceries on my lunch break at work and bingo, there the next day or when I wanted them delivered.