Sorry for the very late reply to a post from October, but I’m just now slowly working my way through the thread. Baggers definitely still exist, but it depends on the store. An upscale grocery around here that I often mention has baggers on most of the checkout lanes, and they also have so many checkout lanes that they’re arranged in a zig-zag formation to optimize floor space, and the majority of them are always open. All their products are consistently top quality, and are often unavailable at all elsewhere. How do they manage to do this? Simple: you may have to take out a second mortgage to shop there.
For more typical supermarkets, you’re quite right, baggers are rare to non-existent. Occasionally a store employee will stop by and help bag, but it seems more of a “I just happened to be here and thought I would help” sort of thing rather than an assigned job. In fact, the more likely scenario is that you can’t even get to a cashier without standing in line because so few checkout lanes are open. Knowing that this is an insidious plot to drive me to self-checkout makes me even more reluctant to do so.
I went to the grocery store today, the one that still offers car loading service. Usually I go after work, and this is not my preferred store, but we needed things for a birthday party tomorrow.
Apparently, around 2pm on a Saturday, all check out lanes are open with a cashier. They all have an assigned bagger as well, and the car loading service is obviously offered.
The average age of customers at that time was probably upwards of 80 (and for a few, it’s a social event, it seems!), but damn, did I ever get good service. I had a choice of open check outs. While I had to be a little more patient getting through the aisles, the process to pay and leave was quick, pain free, and I didn’t even have to carry my bags.
Regarding baggers…our local grocery stores (only 2, excluding Wal-Mart) have baggers. These do not cover ALL checkout lanes at ALL times, but sometimes they are manned by local high school students working for tips, and claim to be saving up for a trip to Washington (or someplace important). They have 2 baggers for each lane, plus a booth near the exit with a tip jar and a small sign. I don’t know how much they get, but I always contribute something. It’s similar to the bell-ringing Santa Clauses around Christmas; i.e., a charity donation.
Other times, one grocery has occasional baggers, which I think are part-timers, and they cover some lanes, but not all, not all the time.
I could expound about my experience decades ago as a commissary bagger, but that’s a subject for another thread.
I try to avoid the supermarket during peak hours, but our two leading stores here both have a system where two checkout lanes share a single bagger, with the cashier also bagging if things get backed up. Surprisingly, it seems to work out okay.
The other thing one of them has going is a single queue for all customers who don’t use self checkout. Everyone in line gets the next available checker, whether it’s aisle 1 or aisle 11. It was originally a social distancing thing during Covid, but the supermarket CEO says it’s worked so well they continued with it. It also spaces out the checkout lane traffic making it easier for one bagger to split time between two lanes.
In our area the TJX brands (TJ Maxx, Marshalls and Homegoods) have a single queue for all the checkouts. As does Michaels, the craft store.
It apparently can be shown that this definitely leads to higher “utilization” of cashiers and lower average wait times. But in grocery stores the customer reaction is very negative. Customers like to have a choice about which lane to join.
Regarding baggers: The Harris Teeter where I do most of my shopping doesn’t have regular baggers, but sometimes one of the cashiers who doesn’t have anyone in their lane or an employee who is between their regular duties will come by and start bagging. I bring my own bags, and sometimes the cashiers will use them to bag the groceries as they ring them up. I’ve never seen any indication that the store has any sort of bring-your-bags-to-your-car service,
Thursday night I created a pick up order for the next day available starting at 2pm. I loaded up my virtual cart! Deli dairy bread dry goods produce freezer and cleaning aisle plus cat fud! Total $275
I start checking the app Friday at 1, often the order is ready early. By 1:45 I clock out of work and head to the store. In the car my phone rings unknown caller but I decide to answer. It’s Meijer telling me my pickup order is delayed by at least 90 minutes. Come later they say or better yet schedule it for Saturday pick up. Yes, the order has been started. Yes I can cancel it. Cancel it!
In I go to shop the damn list. What’s this out of Vermont creamery out of DKB, out of banana mocha protein drink, no meaty bits cat fud? No Boulder canyon chips. No Bells Amber Ale! WTH the app indicates all is in stock. No matter I still fill my cart in record time. No time to shop and scan Iphone is critically low. I head to self checkout, the line moves fast and soon I’ve scanned and bagged and out the door. $255 poorer.
I have relatively little experience with pre-ordering groceries for pickup or delivery. in my case it was using a third party app, Shipt, not the store’s dedicated app.
But IME, the connection between what was shown as available in the app, what the store had on the shelf, what I ordered, and what the picker decided to actually pick were nearly random. They substituted things they claimed were stock-out where a couple hours later I went to the same store and they had piles of the stuff . etc.
I love me some e-commerce, but for groceries it seemed like all pain and no gain.
Probably. Which did not exist at the time I tried it for the brand of store I frequented. I just checked and the current version of their app (Winn-Dixie) does not offer e-shopping at all. They still use only a third party app (Shipt) for that.
For unrelated reasons I’ve since switched to shopping mostly at Publix. I just checked their app and they do offer e-shopping for pickup and for delivery, but it’s actually provided by a separate app and is just rebranded Instacart.
I’ll probably give their e-shopping a try at some point, but not today.
went to the groc with the low self-checkout shelves that I refuse to use to pick up something for dinner. Waited only for one customer, who didn’t have a lot, to finish at a real cashier before we were being checked out.
Curiously, there was a woman using their scan-&-go scanner who was scanning items & putting them into her cart. I thought the whole benefit of them was you could put it right in your bag & not touch it again until you were home.
Once in a while, I forget to bring my reusable bags with me into the store, but I’m not going to pay for store bags. So I have to take the cart out to the car to unload /bag. That’s probably what happened to her.
Many grocery stores have barriers just outside the exit - preventing you from taking (and leaving) your cart in the parking lot. You have to carry your groceries to your car, or get someone with you to move your car to somewhere near you (unless the store offers a car-order pickup service). Larger ones may allow carts in the parking lot and a drop-off point for the carts (which a lot of people don’t bother using - some may require a coin to get a cart, which is refunded when you leave the cart at the drop-off point).