The bagger, a man in his 20s who didn’t appear disabled, asked me if he’d done it correctly. 
He then explained that he’d put my potato chips on the bottom because they were biggest.
I said, “Um, no, you didn’t” and rebagged them. Good thing I only had a single bag, I guess.
FWIW, his name was even Sheldon.
Well, at least he asked. Maybe he was new and it didn’t occur to him the chips could get crushed.
I bring my own re-usable bag to the store and always tell the bagger that I have my own bag since they usually automatically start getting out the plastic ones as soon as the cashier starts ringing stuff up. The last time I went to the store and told the bagger I have my own bag she said, “Well, SORRY!”, tossed the empty plastic bag onto the bagging area, and stomped off. That was weird.
I’ve seen people with reusable bags, and the bagger was putting everything in plastic bags, and then placing those in the reusable bags. And I’m talking about canned foods, paper products, etc., things that weren’t going to melt or leak.
There was a woman who worked at the main grocery store in the small town where I used to live who WAS mentally disabled, and unfortunately, I would avoid her lane if I went there and saw her because she really wasn’t capable of doing that job. 
I find it helps to put the reusable bags on the conveyor belt first, in front of my groceries. The checker generally hands them directly to the bagger.
Many mentally disabled people don’t appear to be so. It’s only when they put the potato chips on the bottom of the bag that you realize they’re mentally disabled.
That’s a good idea. I usually like to pack my own anyway though because I know that I can really stuff the bag without things falling out whereas a the person at the store is normally more cautious.
Interesting factoid: potato chip bags here are pumped full of air, which makes it all but impossible to crush the chips during transport. I had a hard time adjusting to this because I’m used to a swollen package being a sign of rotten food.
I was at Mt. Rainier once and had brought along some stuff to eat, including an un-opened bag of potato chips. With the low air pressure, it had puffed up almost full. It probably would have made a good pillow.
I guess my grocery has a better class of disabled bagger than some. Never had a problem, and they are all great guys.
And in my town, and most of the Bay Area, plastic bags are banned. You bring your own or you pay 10 cents a bag for paper ones. Never had a problem with that also.
I hate almost all baggers these days, because they’ve forgotten how to bag things. I always get paper bags, and they treat them just like plastic - three things in each bag, leading to 900 bags of groceries. It makes me crazy.
I learned the old school way - cans on the bottom, then boxes or meats, then bread, chips, etc. Each of those brown bags can hold 10+ things of average size, paring my load down to four or five bags.
That’s one huge reason why I love Aldi. I get everything organized and pack the hell out of those items. I love bagging groceries, but only in paper bags. I might be interested in reusables if they made them paper bag sized, but probably not, since I reuse the paper ones all the time at home.
The ones that make me stabby are one-item-per-bag baggers. Especially when they put a bag in a bag - seriously, do my bagged onions need their own bag?
Last time I shopped, it was really weird - I got one bag with half a dozen cans and a few boxes in it, then a bag with just bananas, and a bag with just eggs (I’m pretty sure the bananas wouldn’t have crushed the eggs) and another bag crammed with cereal boxes till it was impossible to use both handles. What’s really aggravating is that I keep forgetting to take my own bags. I have 4 really nice ones that never seem to leave the back of my car. :smack:
What are these “baggers” of which you speak? I always have to bag my own.
I worked at Safeway for many years and I had dozens of customers who would specifically come through my line, even if there were other lines empty, because I bagged items in a logical, practical manner that had apparently escaped the other checkers.
I never understood what was so hard about bagging cleaning products separately from food, putting cold items together, “building” a bag from heavy items to light, and just as importantly, put the bags back into the cart the same way. Was I the only one paying attention in checker training (not to mention it’s patently obvious)?
Locally, occasionally there’ll be staff to bag, usually when it is close to closing time and they want us to get the hell out but if there is a dedicated bagger it’s usually for some bullshit charity thing like “Send my spoiled kid to Africa to find him/herself because I don’t want to fork out €5000 for his/her holiday”.
The bagger is a unit of measurement. It measures ugliness. I.E., a two bagger is uglier than a one bagger.
I make their life simpler by grouping items together when I load them on the conveyer. Juices milk and cream, together. Eggs, meats and cheeses, together. Fruits and vegetables, together. Dry goods, together. Cleaners and paper products, together. Bread and chips, together. Etc…
My wife and kids think I’m OCD for doing it but they just stand back and let me have my little moment of personal insanity.
Same thing happens with chips, juice pouches, etc. on planes once you reach altitude. My kids found it neat, but their eyes glazed over when I started the SCIENCE! explanation.
I hate opening yogurt containers in an airplane. It’s impossible to open it without the damn yogurt exploding all over the place.
Those big brown paper bags are perfectly reusable at the store too. I keep a collection of about half-a-dozen around. I keep them in the trunk of the car so I always have them when I go shopping.
Stores don’t like you to double their paper bags. But once I get home with them, I double them. I haven’t made a scientific study, but I’m pretty sure that by doubling them, I get more than double the uses out of them before they fall apart. I can reuse a doubled brown paper bag about 20 times.
They’re also easy to pack, because they will stand upright and open all by themselves, so you only need two hands to pack, and not two additional hands to hold the bags up.
Occasionally I get the plastic bags. This happens when I buy more stuff than I can fit in the paper bags that I brought (then I get either plastic bags or more paper bags), or if I didn’t happen to bring any paper bags with me. I reuse those as wastebasket liners.
I do this to, it makes it so, so much easier to put the groceries away at home. If I’m in a rush going home to drop the groceries off before heading somewhere else, it makes it really easy to just put the whole bag of perishables in the fridge/freezer and dash back out the door.