When I lived in CA, the stores hired baggers and, if there were no baggers available (generally because they were busy with other customers, not because there was no one scheduled), the checker bagged. (PA announcement: all baggers and bagettes to the front, please!)
When I lived in IL, Cub Foods was about the only place you bagged yourself – and it was clear when you walked into the store that They Did It Differently Here.
Now that I’m in NY, people look at you oddly if you don’t bag your groceries. Which makes my brain hurt when a CA retailer – like Trader Joe’s – comes to NY. Do I follow the CA rule, or the NY rule?
I usually end up bagging my own groceries because I always bring my own bags, and for some perverted reason, the baggers will NEVER help me with them. EVER. They could have helped six clients before me, but they vanish when I plunk down my canvas sacks. What is that?!
It’s a family owned business, apparently, and the guy who called us is one of the owners. The place is always so clean and neat. You eat off the floors.
And those talkative cart boys…
It could be coming down in sheets, or in the midst of a blizzard and they’ll still greet you with warmth and courtesy. One of them took pains to point out a place off in the woods where some small animals (muskrats?) had nested, and when my wife complimented him for his obvious love of animals he smiled and said, “All creatures great and small, maam.”
Antiochus, great story. I want to shop at Shoprite. And how wonderful that your wife wrote a “praise” letter. People don’t take time to do that nowadays. On topic, I don’t bag and I won’t bag. I pay high prices at the large chain grocery store (and the only store in my area) and they employ baggers. And I won’t use self-checkout either. Unless the store gives me a lower price on my items, which isn’t going to happen. If I want to bag my own, I’ll waddle on over to Aldi.
I always request paper inside of plastic, so I know the bagger will open the paper bag inside the plastic bag quicker and more efficiently than if I tried (I never have more than two bags worth anyway, so it never takes him/her long), especially since, at Safeway, they usually keep the paper tucked away.
At Whole Foods they double bag, and I know the one-bag-inside-the-other scenario would be more than this klutz could handle.
Having lived in England for a year, I bagged all my groceries then, so I’m fine not having to do it anymore.
I’m suprised that nobody has pointed out that you can’t see the prices come up on the scanner if you are bagging your own groceries. I will reluctantly bag my own if that is store policy, but otherwise I’m watching that scanner. If I’m with Ms. Doubt, she bags and I watch the scanner. We rarely buy items that are not on sale, and there is at least one error per shopping trip.
Yep, all the time. It’s pretty much standard in Japan that you bag your own. The check-out clerk hands you a few bags, and you take your basket over to a small counter and get to work.
The grocery stores around here (Seattle) are well-supplied with bagging staff, so I rarely get the chance. However, very occasionally, when the cashier starts sliding scanned items down to the end of the counter, and there’s no bagger available, I’ll step around, grab a bag, and get started. And it seems like mere seconds before the designated
sprints up behind me, tasers me, shoves my crumpling body out of the way, and takes over the task. It’s like I’ve offended them somehow.
I’ll still do it, because I feel like a schmuck standing there doing nothing when I could be helping out and being productive while the purchases pile up, but man, you’d think I was pissing on somebody’s grave.
I’m in the Los Angeles area and I always just let the bagger or checker do it (usually Ralph’s). I’d be perfectly fine with bagging them myself but I suppose I’d feel awkward doing it myself, like I’m getting in their way or something along those lines.
