At my store all baggers are also cashiers and all cashiers are also baggers. Everyone is evaluated on their performance at both tasks and required to meet certain minimums.
This is certainly confusing to customers associating our current baggers with past, historical baggers. Confusing when they see me, usually cashiering, bagging instead. The upside is that there is not a two-tier system of either wages or status. Everyone on the front end makes comparable wages (a new hire does make less than a veteran such as myself, but comparable seniority and skill means the same wage).
People do have preferences - some prefer the register and some prefer bagging. That’s fine. Management will even take that into account when assigning roles for the day. But everyone still has to be able to do both tasks and will at some point be asked to do both tasks. The only time I’ve ever seen someone excused from that was one gal who would have literal panic attacks when confronted with a register, but since she’s usually stocking shelves that only comes up during rush periods. She is asked to bag occasionally if we’re short handed.
The store also absolutely DOES NOT ALLOW TIPPING. Period. This also confuses people. Our baggers do not work for just tips, or minimum wage. Tipping would cause all sorts of issues involving taxes and wage reporting. We’re not getting rich but we do make a living wage.
One of our competing stores down the street, which is a union shop, has had a similar policy for decades. No tipping of baggers allowed. Also, baggers are making more than minimum wages.
This may or may not apply to any other particular store or chain of stores. If the store says “no tipping” please respect that. Especially in these days of cameras everywhere. Forcing a tip on someone can get them in a lot of trouble, potentially even fired.
It was the capitalists who hired the bureaucrats, though, in hopes of maximizing profitability. And then didn’t fire them when they came up with an obviously flawed system. So it’s still on them.
'Zactly. The classic aphorism is “you get what you measure”. What the PHBs don’t quite get is that “you also get zero or highly negative amounts of what you actually want but don’t measure.”
Further thoughts about baggers…the nearest really large grocery store to me is Festival Foods in Green Bay, and besides the useless self-checkout aisles (stupid computers run those), they offer the option of different lines, all labeled in advance, with “you bag” and “we bag” lines. In any case, the checkers are not the baggers, other employees are. And both choices of aisle seem to have a similar number of customers.
My daughter just quit her job as a supermarket bagger two weeks ago. They are still hiring baggers. They also take your bags to the car if the place isn’t too busy, or if you ask.
They are employees, paid a bit more than minimum wage, and the store has a “no tipping” policy. I know people who say they tip anyway, so i don’t think enforcement is draconian. But tipping is uncommon.
For a full load I find it fastest, & best, one there’s one customer, almost done, in the cashier lane. This allows me to put items on the belt as I want them scanned/sent down to me to bag. I have a freezer in the basement, so cold stuff vs. frozen stuff in the two insulated bags. Next up is the heavy duty bag I brought gets the cans/jars on the bottom, etc. As I finish a bag it goes back into the cart & I usually finish bagging about 3 secs after the last item was scanned by the cashier. Just pay & go. When there is a bagger, I politely tell them, “I got it.” because there’s no way anyone else knows that part of how I’m packing based on where I’m unpacking
Some people are more fussy about bagging than others. Me, I am VERY fussy about how my bags are packed so if at all possible I will always opt to do my own. Other people are just as insistent about having it done for them.
Personally, I think options are good as a general rule.
My only problem with them is when I put my bag in the bagging area so I can put the items directly into it, and the machine complains that there is an unscanned item there.
Usually, I don’t use them, but I will if all of the other lanes - or, as is tending to be the case nowadays, lane - has a significant line and I only have a few items.
I am fussy and would love to bag my own, but that’s not usually an option where i shop. And it’s not worth disrupting the employees.
I used to shop at a place where they bagged stuff as it came down the belt, so if i unloaded carefully, it would all get bagged the way i wanted. Sadly, that place closed.
The trick is to scan your first item, put it in the bag, and set them down together onto the platform. Make sure it’s an item of measurable weight (so not a greeting card, say). Learned that here.
I always do that at my local chain; the problem is once I fill up that bag & put it in my cart I get an “Unexpected item removed from bagging area” message that I have to stand there & wait for about 20 sec for it to clear or call the one person, who’s typically either a lead or an ass mgr, which means they’re doing other things & not even in the self-checkout area to call them over.
How tough is it to program - “If x items have been scanned & put into bagging area & suddenly the weight goes to zero it probably means the bag was full & was removed so ignore that” logic into the program?
My apologies, I was talking about conventional supermarkets, not big box stores. Actually I just realized I haven’t been inside a Walmart for going on 10 years! And I’m a retail industry lifer.
In my many decades of supermarket shopping in the UK I can confidently state that I have never had a “bagger” perform that function for me at a checkout.
Never seen one, never used one, wouldn’t want one. That may be a reason why UK shoppers are more open to self-checkout. The lack of a bagger is not noticed so it is one less barrier for us.
I was going to say that. The USA seems to have gone in a different direction and it would be interesting to know why.
To use self-scan here it is always required to join the supermarket’s club card (or whatever they choose to call it). Originally, the card earned the holder points, and of course, gave the supermarket a lot of data about what you buy. That is still its primary function from their point of view, but on the customer side, it is the only way to access the discounts on offer all around the store. These may not be huge, but they are frequently 10% or more.
I do a major shop once a week. I have some insulated bags that fit neatly into a small trolley and as I walk I can pack what I buy neatly into the appropriate bag - one for cold stuff, one for veg and one for general goods. I also have some bags that hold six bottles. Milk and juice go in one, and wine in another (when it’s on offer).
At the checkout, I scan a barcode on the till, wait for someone to acknowledge that I am over 21 if I bought wine, shove my card in a slot, take the receipt and leave,
Occasionally, I get checked. This means that a member of staff scans a selection of my shopping. Unsurprisingly, they seem to pick the higher-value items.
I certainly would not want to go back to loading a trolley, unloading it onto a belt, and then loading it into bags under pressure because they can scan much faster than I can pack. Not to mention, losing out on the discounts.
This is variable, I would say. At our local grocery stores, baggers are uncommon except during pre-holiday rushes. Once in a great while, we’ll encounter fundraising baggers (like a local Scout troop or something).
What occasionally happens is that a just-clocked-in cashier might bag for someone else a little while if they’re not immediately assigned a drawer. As a customer, it’s not always clear to me exactly when the switch flips from “OK, just keep bagging for right now” to “Uh oh! Gotta open another lane - stat!”.
Maybe it’s easier to, say, keep Lane A open by waiting 30 minutes for Cashier 1 to end their shift … and so Cashier 2 bags for that half hour until taking over in Lane A. As opposed to having Cashier 1 finish their shift in Lane A and simultaneously having Cashier 2 start immediately by opening up Lane B.
My local grocer did a major remodel in the check out area. They reduced the cashier lines and expanded self checkout lanes and improved the shop and scan lane.
The cashier lanes no longer have bagging carousels where the cashier would bag your groceries using a carousel that held like 4-5 sacks. Now instead they have people (other cashiers?) bagging the groceries. It’s been years since I’ve seen dedicated baggers. Probably easier on the cashier.
When I’ve opened one, it’s all BS info, like the street # from one former address, the street name of another former one & the town of a third; they get info on a real customer but can’t associate that to me as a real person. However, I just usually enter either Jenny’s phone # (867-5309) or the time/temp lady’s (555-1212); they pretty much work with any local area code. I get the discounts, I just don’t get the free turkey/ham that they give away for Thanksgiving/Xmas/Easter, which I don’t really want anyway.