Two, probably three, of the groceries I use will call a bagger if requested and one isn’t already there. I prefer to bag my own, though.
What a waste of a job. I hate other people bagging my items except at Trader Joe’s where they have it down to a science and are super fast. Really I don’t know how they are so much better there then at every other grocery store.
Last week I bought two items from a local grocery, the cashier bags the items. Even though it was only two things, she still put the lighter delicate item on the bottom and then a pound of chicken on top. 
I had to then remove the items in front of her and repack them myself. Yeah that really saved time.
This. Self checkout is nearly always faster for me. The checker is faster than me, but I have to wait for her to check out x number of others before they get to me.
This drives my sister insane because she always puts items on the conveyer belt in the order or grouping she wants them bagged in. Once recently a bagger put a package of some baked goods in the same bag as some super stinky detergent.
One of my local grocery stores has baggers. Yes, that’s faster, and they do fine. I take stuff out of my cart and put it on the conveyor belt in the order I want them bagged.
A different local grocery store has an app to ring up your groceries as you shop. I need to try that, as it sounds great. Except… I mostly go to that store for the produce, and produce mostly needs to be weighed, so I don’t know if it will work.
The other way around would be awesome.
And it would be easy for me to bag as I shop. I know what lives close to what else and home, and that’s how I’d sort them.
My regional chain (Publix) has baggers, though often not one for every register. They float between lines and help keep the longer ones moving at a reasonable pace.
If there’s no bagger handy, the cashier does it. It’s also totally acceptable to step into the bagger’s area and do it yourself, though I rarely see people do it. If I’m in a hurry or if the cashier looks tired or harried, I’ll often do my own bagging - otherwise I’m content to wait.
At my local store that has the app, there are weigh stations in the produce area, where it will print a label for the item.
The self-checkout designers thought about that long ago. Much produce has a barcode on it (bananas, apples, bunches of parsley, etc.) and you just have to put it on the scanner scale and wait a few seconds for it to settle. If it doesn’t have a bc attached, you still have several options, such as selecting the item on a picture menu. If you buy the same kind of produce frequently, you get familiar with this procedure just like the clerks do.
Of all the learning curves I have seen, this is one of the easiest.
Just don’t try to put your thumb on the scales, unless your thumb has a barcode on it.
No, I think it has something to do with, when someone rolls up with 48 cans of the same dog or cat food I can scan 1 can then hit the “quantity” button and type “48”. There is no way for you to scan a can 48 times over in that short amount of time.
Also, I can tell you NOT to unload heavy/bulky items, just leave them in the cart, then use the wireless handscanner which is faster and less effort for BOTH of us.
Also, I have a LOT more produce codes memorized than the general public - that’s not down to my machine, that’s me. So I’m going to go a lot faster with those than if you tried to look up each individual code on your own.
So yes, the customer unloading does help the cashier… but that’s not the only reason the cashier rings up faster than the non-cashier.
It’s also why I can’t ring myself up in self-serve as fast as I can ring people up at my register. The self-serve doesn’t have a “quantity” button. Have 48 of something? You have to scan 48 times.
Training and use of brain.
There are rules to bagging that, if followed, yield better results. But no one is trained in bagging anymore it seems.
And that’s why I tell people if you only have one or two items go to self-checkout. There are people who MAKE A POINT about going to a line with a human being no matter what. Well, OK, fine, if you want to wait in line to get to me. Your choice. But for just one or two things the self-serve is going to be faster (absent something like a need for an ID and removal of security devices, in which case it’s a toss-up).
The self-serve have essentially replaced “express lanes”. Large orders should go to the human run lanes. Small stuff to the self-serve. IMHO.
When I really started using self checkout 15+ years ago, the trick was to understand how the machine worked. It worked when things were done a certain way, I learned to checkout that way, and wound up generally pleased with the result. Today they seem to be more forgiving, but I still don’t like doing a big shop through self checkout. Mrs Cheesesteak would take 2 full carts through one if you let her.
RE: Aldi barcodes. Pretty much every Aldi house brand product is festooned with barcodes. Since the cashiers don’t do any bagging, they just have to bring the item in front of the scanner, in any orientation, and it will scan, then they drop it in the empty cart. They’ll scan through a cart full of groceries faster than any other store. It’s one of my favorite things about the store, they increased the efficiency of their staff, didn’t cost themselves a penny, and didn’t make their employees “do more”, they just made the job easier.
Actually, with the app, you can. Scan one and hit quantity. At Home Depot, it also gives you that ability at the self check out line. I don’t know why grocery stores don’t.
Once again, with the app, you can do this. Also, some places do have handheld scanners at the self check out.
I don’t have all the codes memorized, but I do have the codes of the produce that I buy regularly memorized.
Quick pop quiz:
Bananas?
Green onions?
I don’t know either. I do know that the app for the store I work at does not do this.
Again, the app at my store does NOT do this at the self-checkout. You can do it for the shop and scan app. The self-checkouts do have hand scanners, but you have to ask an attendant to do it for you. Why? I don’t know why they set it up that way.
When I worked for Safeway they disabled our “quantity” button at some point, and told us we had to scan every single item. I guess too many checkers were abusing the quantity function apparently, and corporate had legit concerns about inventory and price accuracy. I was very upset because I was using it correctly. Another instance of a few inconpetent idiots fuckin’ it up for everyone.
4011 and 4068.
Ask me a hard one, like dragonfruit or eggplant. 
3040 and 4082
Serious question: are those jobs, or are they gigs?
C’mon, you can’t pretend you’re not worth the wait.
At the supermarket, I only ever buy as much as I can carry home myself. I prefer self-checkout because it’s easier to monitor whether the prices of everything are ringing up properly.
As I said, the baggers at the store I go to would have trouble finding other jobs, but they do a fine job bagging. I prefer to do it myself, but I’m glad they have jobs. And I never wait for the cashier to bag since that just slows up the line.
Our self checkouts don’t have them either. Maybe because the customers would drop them on the floor?
We have had people accidentally go home with a scanner (once in awhile we even get them back). I suspect this would be more common if the store issued hand scanners to customers. Perhaps that is why our scan-while-you-shop app uses the customer’s own phone?
I haven’t bought bananas in decades, but green onions are 4068.
My understanding on that would be that they were not really creating a matter of shrinkage, but skewing inventory. Someone comes up with 48 cans of soup, and you scan one and type in 48, even though there were 8 varieties of soup.