Really? You really think the point of places like California banning plastic bags is because they want to get rid of store workers? You think the reason all of Europe uses reusable bags instead of those tiny plastic bags is because they want to get rid of store workers? Has nothing to do with the environment? Okay.
Yes. When I shop at the commissary, they still use plastic bags. My cart easily fills up a dozen or more plastic bags. When I shop on the German economy using a reusable bag (the kinds of bags made for this purpose), I can fit the same amount of stuff in a single bag.
No, I thought the point of places like this thread is talking about is to eliminate workers in stores. I wasn’t aware this thread was about California banning plastic bags.
Ok. Still not sure how you can carry around one bag that weighs 100 pounds, but you be you I guess. Tell you what, go buy 12 gallons of milk (that takes up 12 plastic bags), and see if you can fit all 12 gallons of milk into one reusable bag. If so, I will concede that you are correct, and the master of grocery store bagging theory.
I am certain that Meijers is willing to sell you more bags. Get another reusable bag, scan the price tag, and start loading - as long as you pay for it you’re good.
Speaking as a part-time cashier, IDGAF about your purchases, either - I’ve seen everything the store sells, no combination of those items will surprise me.
If I notice, say, one of your strawberries or zucchinis has a bad spot I will mention it to you/bring it to your attention, but other than something like that really, no, I’m not going to comment.
BTW - don’t know your exact location, but most Meijers also have a shopping app that let’s you order from home and someone else will go to the store and do all the work for you, bringing it to your home (or other designated location) which would save you even more time. If you’re interested.
Well… I dunno, you OK with people being on food stamps? Sure, some out of work folks displaced will find new jobs but not all will, and those folks will wind up on various government aid programs. If you’re OK with that, sure, don’t be concerned. Otherwise… well, I’m not saying don’t do this, but you might think about the long-term consequences of your choices.
It’s sort of like choosing to use either reusable or disposable shopping bags. You don’t have to give a shit about all the plastic piling up, but a lot of people seem to these days.
^ Oh, and this - we’re all replaceable, in the end.
“Good corporate citizen” is not the same as “your friend”. Meijers has cut back on the number of employees per store over the past couple decades due to automation. This has, in turn, been balanced by increasing numbers of stores in their chain, but other chains have completely gone out of business so I’m not sure about the overall number of cashiers… it could be going down.
Well, at the store I work in they took about a half dozen self-serve machines because the customers wanted more lines with people. We still have self-serve, just not as many. Some people can’t mange to use the self-serve machines, particularly those with certain types of disabilities. Of course, that’s why there is an attendant there, to help people.
So there is a demand for service with real humans, regardless of technology. And a smart company will find a way to accommodate that. However, not all companies are smart.
Again, speaking as a cashier who does a lot of bagging…
[ul]
[li]On average one paper bag replaces 2-3 plastic bags[/li][li]The Meijers/Whole Foods size reusable bag replaces 2-4 plastic bags[/li][li]Marianos, among others, sells “bag” that’s more of a fold-up box that typically replaces 3-6 plastic bags[/li][li]Aldi’s has really big reusable bag that’s worth about 6 plastic bags (or more) but I usually load them with lighter stuff like bread or chips because if you use heavier stuff people start having trouble lifting them unless they’re 20-something guys or clearly body/builder or work-out types.[/li][/ul]
Another advantage is that you can get “freezer” or thermal totes in all of the above sizes, which are insulated and keep your cold stuff cold and blazing hot summer days, or conversely, if you bought something hot at the deli, your hot stuff hot.
A reusable bag that holds two gallons will weigh about 16 pounds That would put your 12 gallons in 6 bags.
A reusable bag that hold four gallons will weight about 32 pounds. I don’t recommend larger numbers in a single bag. That puts your 12 gallons in 3 bags.
Yeah, how much you wanna bet the OP uses an alarm clock too, instead of a knocker-up.
I saw someone going down the road in one of them auto-mobeeles too. The menaces are becoming so common. My cousin, the farrier, says his clientele is down some percentage (He doesn’t know the exact figures because all the abaci got knocked over and reset) because of them.
Here, I’ll walk you through it. I’m not holding your hand though.
You said you didn’t want to bring bags from home.
So I said that it’s actually not that big of a deal, and you will easily get used to bringing bags from home. It’s common practice in Europe, and is growing in popularity in the states as more communities start banning plastic bags, or charging for their use.
Then you said that you think bringing 100 plastic bags from home could never be convenient.
So I said that the whole point of bringing bags from home is to stop using those tiny plastic bags. And then pointed out that with the reusable shopping bags, you can actually hold a ton more stuff in them, so you don’t need many.
Then you forgot that we were talking about grocery bags at all and thought we discussing scanners.
So, to be clear, I’m not advocating that you actually bring your own scanner to the store. But, I am saying that if you had to bring your own bag, it won’t be as bad as you think. You’d get used to it pretty quick. Just make sure you’re bringing 2-3 proper reusable grocery bags, and not those flimsy one-time-use plastic ones.
Maybe more like 2 bags weighing 40 pounds, but that’s no difference than a person who puts all 100 plastic grocery bags on their arm because “no way am I making a second trip”!! You’re right that putting too much in the bag will make it heavy. Unlike those plastic bags, these bags wont rip open. The bags can take the weight. And while it is too heavy for my wife to carry when it is that full, and you might have to struggle, but I don’t find it that difficult.
Buddy, does this seriously make sense to you!?!? You’re saying that all of those jugs in a single bag is too much. So you have to carry them one at a time. So you put them each in their own bag. But the gallon of milk has a handle! Why are you putting it in a bag at all? You don’t need a bag to carry something with a handle. The only time a bag becomes convenient for a gallon of milk is if you put more than one in the bag. The number of milks you can carry in a reusable bag is the same number of single bags with 1 gallon each that you can carry. Your argument makes no sense at all.
Just concede that you don’t carry 12 gallons of milk into the house in one trip. And that if you *could/i] carry all 12 gallons, each in its own individual plastic bag despite having a handle, then you could also carry them all in one trip by placing them six each in a reusable grocery bag. So, it’s still one trip.
No. I’m not. And nobody else should be either. They should be paying attention to their surroundings and stop getting in people’s way because they are oblivious to what’s going on around them.
Now put your f’ing phone down and look where you’re going.
Of course not. Who would carry 12 gallons of milk in one trip? I also put them in a bag, even though they have a handle. Because it’s easier to carry other stuff in the same hand as a plastic bag, and it’s not so easy when that hand is holding a gallon of milk by the built-in handle.
Your reusable grocery bag holds 6 gallons of milk? Big bag. But, I’m also not carrying a bag holding 48 pounds of milk from my car to my second story kitchen.
So, I’ll stick with 1 gallon of milk in 1 plastic bag. Then I can decide what weight increments I would like to carry into my house.
I don’t grocery shop enough to force “Take my own bags to the grocery store” into my conscious thought. I’ve only been NOT doing that for 40 years. But to be fair, the bags at my local store and the commissary are free. I might change my mind if they started charging 5 cents for them, but I doubt it. Maybe $1 a bag might force me to do it.
Inversely, regarding the stores that allow you to shop from home on the internet, then you get to the store and someone is waiting curbside with all your items picked and bagged, for free- how? That adds employees to the store payroll (doing the picking of the items the shopper usually does), but doesn’t increase the price any? And why are stores encouraging people to NOT come inside to shop? Aren’t impulse purchases a decent portion of total sales?
Or just use the handle that’s on the milk. There are also handles on other heavy liquids, a case of beer or a case of soda. You don’t need bags for those at all. Then you have the bagger that places 2-3 packages of meat in a single plastic bag. And that’s how you end up with 100 bags. And if anyone tried to put more into one of those tiny, weak bags, even if it’s still only a couple pounds, the bags rip at the handles. I’ve easily filled up a cartful of food into a single Aldi’s bag. That’s personal experience not Broomstick’s “recommendations”. If it doesn’t need to go in the bag–like a case of Coke–then it gets carried using the handle that it comes with. I don’t buy milk, but I think if I ever needed to buy 12 gallons–jesus that’s a lot of milk, you must own a million cats–if I ever needed to buy that many, I would just carry them into the house four at a time, two in each hand using the handles they came with. If I had 6 gallons, I’d probably try for all 6 so that I don’t have to make another trip. How many are you carrying in one trip using those plastic bags, anyway?
I get it. I’m just saying it’s not that bad. When the day comes, you’ll be fine. I thought bringing bags from home was just something that environmentalists, vegans, and Californians do. Seemed to me like it would be a bit of an inconvenience. I’ve found that it’s not. And the reusable bags are far superior than the plastic ones. It only takes having a half-filled plastic bag rip open as I’m walking up the stairs to every now and then remind me how much better my Aldi bag is. It’s to the point now where, even if my wife shopped at the commissary and has a trunk full of plastic grocery bags, I walk out to the car with my Aldi bag and put all of the grocery-filled plastic bags into that one bag to carry into the house.
I’ve never said I carry them in one trip. And I am extrapolating the quantities of milk based on plastic bag replacement by equivalent reusable bags. Plus I wouldn’t carry two gallons of milk in one hand. I’d just make two trips. My point being, if you replace 6 plastic bags that each hold 1 gallon of milk with one reusable bag that holds 6 gallons of milk, you are sort of forced into one trip. One trip where you are lugging 48 pounds of milk. I’m not doing that. I wouldn’t do that. So, individual bags for me. A reusable bag wouldn’t help me, because I’m not carrying all that weight in one trip.
Plus, we seem to be using different definitions of “cartful of groceries”
Here’s what I mean. You can fit all that into one Aldi’s bag? And carry that bag in one trip into your house? If so, good for you, but I’m not struggling with that.
My point–though I probably didn’t make it well–was that I wouldn’t put the milk in the bag at all. So right away, I’ve eliminated 6 bags, and still have a completely empty reusable bag. Case of soda? 6 pack of beer? Both have handles. Neither goes in the bag.
My god do you really buy that much milk?
Yes, it’s not just about weight or volume either. Packaging has much to do with it as well.
If I ended up with a cart like that at a local store, it would probably go straight back into the cart just like that as it scanned. Because the local stores–the ones that don’t have plastic bags–don’t have baggers either. You have to pack your own shit into your own bag as the cashier rings it up. So if I had that much stuff, I’d just toss it back in the cart just like that. Then I’d unload it all into the trunk. Not bagged; just unloaded straight into the trunk. Once I got home, I’d make multiple trips into the house (2, maybe 3), but I’d use the same Aldi bag each time. I’d load as much into the bag, carry it to the kitchen, then go back for another load. That’s probably how it’d go down. I do have more than one bag. But I probably wouldn’t even bother. I think I’d just use the one bag.
There actually is a service charge added for that service. Depending on who you’re dealing with, that might be a flat fee per delivery (either to curbside or to home), based on the overall price, or a slight increase in the price of everything. Rest assured, everyone involved is getting a paycheck.
My store does not use store employees for this - we outsource to another company that is sort of like Uber for groceries and their shoppers go to several different store chains to fill orders.
While we do not get the impulse purchases anymore (nor can we sell alcohol, ammunition, or a number of items through this service) the service does appeal to some people and we get their business on a regular basis. Also have a couple of businesses that make purchases in this manner (one large daycare center has an regular order that starts with 30 gallons of milk and goes on from there - that order it usually filled by a team and not just one person) so we get their business on large orders.
It apparently works out.
Another thing to consider: the pro-shoppers are NOT bringing 2-5 kids with them, spouses, or other warm bodies so there are fewer folks in the store generating wear and tear, and the pro-shoppers are VERY efficient, often managing multiple orders at once and some very large orders. So one of these people can do the shopping of several regular customers in the same amount of time. They also need less help in finding stuff - in fact, sometimes our employees ask them where stuff is. (One of our employees might work mostly in one corner of this mammoth place - the pro-shoppers cover the whole store so they often will have a better general knowledge of where stuff is). Selling via them is more efficient regarding our time than regular folks are (but regular folks please do keep coming in!)
