Why do you think it’s so weird that the cashier didnt want to give you credit just for carrying bags around? What would be the harm in scanning and bagging all your items then crediting you for the number of bags you used. I dont understand why anyone would do anything else, much less think it weird to do that.
I arrange them on the conveyor belt as I unload the cart so that the toxic things, boxed things, cold things are together. If there’s no bagger, I bag so the cashier can keep the line moving.
When my daughter was in school, she worked for a food chain that had to bus a dozen employees to their store in another town because the rich folks’ kids didn’t work after school jobs. (lowest income for that town $100,000 a yr.) She even had to lean over the belt to unload their carts. (Talk about the entitled)
It’s not just “carrying bags around.” Obviously I brought them to put my groceries in, which is the whole point of the thing.
First of all, it was the first time in the roughly two years that I’ve been bringing my own bags that anyone did this. And the fact that she specifically made a point of telling me that she was doing it, as if she thought I was trying to get away with something by handing over too many bags to get that extra nickel. Every other cashier I had encountered just took the bags (which I always put on the belt first, so the bagger can use them right away!), punched in the credit, and got on with their life.
Second, it’s not like I’m handing over five bags for two items. I’m usually pretty close; sometimes I have to ask for a paper bag for the overflow if I didn’t bring enough bags, or sometimes I do happen to have one more. Or sometimes I just end up with lightly packed bags. And as I recall, I actually almost came up short – because of the yogurt bag that she packed! If she’d put something else in first, that bag could have held a lot more.
Third, if they’re that concerned about the money, then why don’t they just cram as much as they can into each bag, to avoid paying that nickel? Why worry about customer satisfaction and packing the bags comfortably, when you can save five cents in the process? Maybe I gave them three bags because I want them each filled half full because that’s more comfortable for me to carry. It’s still paper or plastic bags that they didn’t have to use.
This store prides itself on customer service and satisfaction, and it shows. The cashiers are always genuinely pleasant, not on autopilot, always thank you for your custom, etc. Employees in the aisles are always friendly and helpful. So this cashier’s action kind of conflicted with that. It went against the norm and gave off a bad vibe – over a nickel. And she did it the “normal” way a few days later. So I can’t help thinking that either someone called her on it, or she decided it wasn’t worth the bother. I’m thinking the former.
As I said, sometimes I don’t get the credit because the cashier simply forgot. Sometimes they remember after they’ve finished the transaction and apologize, but I tell them not to worry about it, because (1) yes, sometimes I do get credited for an extra bag, and (2) I’m not concerned about the nickel. (Side question: Should I expect a credit when I don’t use a bag at all because I bought only one item?)
As far as I’m concerned, it’s on a level with change from the penny cup.
A little trick I learned from my wife is to place the items on the belt in the order you want them bagged (frozen items together, cans spread out, bread last, etc.). Makes it easier on the bagger, and this seems to be the way they bag them anyway.
How to pack any individual bag is obviously a matter of competency and skill – but the packer doesn’t know intuitively whether the customer would find it easier or more convenient to deal with one heavy bag or with two lighter, evenly balanced bags (if, for instance, he or she were walking or riding a bike home from the store). It should perhaps be an item in the training that the person ask – but if you have a preference and the bagger doesn’t ask, shouldn’t you say something, rather than just fuming about it?
I disagree as a walker and bike rider… Barring being a one-armed person, 2 half loads are easier to carry than 1 full. Case in point, it is much easier, imo, to carry 2 five gallon jerry cans of water than to carry one. Carrying one puts a real twist on the mid-section.
Yes, that was exactly my point – if you’re walking, you prefer two lighter bags, whereas if you’re just going to put the bag in the car, it may be more convenient to have one heavier bag. The issue was whether the bagger would know without being told which you prefer.
I previously worked in grocery stores. People… I’ve seen 'em all. I’ve shopped at quite a few too. As a shopper, I bag even if there is a bagger. I usually tell him to stand there and look busy while relaxing for a minute or two; but my wife tends to not bag. She watches the display. Every trip there’s something wrong. Every. Trip. It’s usually a pricing error in the store’s database. Other times, it’s the cashier not being familiar with the exotic* produce we buy.
- Different cashiers have different values of exotic.
At our Trader Joe’s there would be no way to get around the counter to help bag the groceries without standing right behind the register. They pull the cart up to them, and scan and bag in one movement…there usually is no scanned stuff sitting on the counter unless there is a huge quantity, and then someone else always comes over to help bag. I usually don’t buy more than two bags at a time there, anyhow.
In five minutes I’m taking my elderly mom to the grocery store…one that does not have a conveyor belt. I bag our stuff in our own bags there because they rarely have a bagger helping the cashier, and then I can put all the stuff going to the basement in one bag, cheeses in another, my stuff separate from mom’s…I much prefer doing it myself, but only because at that store, I’d have to wait too long for the cashier to do it.
Different stores have different aisle setups – as said above, in some arrangements it’s completely impractical to bag your own stuff; either you can’t get there without running an obstacle course, or the payment equipment is set up a long reach from where the eager bagger is already bagging away before you’ve decided whether you want cash back. And yes, in some areas it’s rude to try to take over the bagger’s task, and in others it’s rude not to do it yourself. Very generally speaking, “rude to do it yourself” places hire lots of young, unskilled labor specifically for bagging and helping people take stuff to their cars in large or busy parking lots. Their patrons are somewhat more likely to make one massive weekly shopping trip, and the store is more likely to be a full-service supermarket. Often they’re also located in areas where many patrons are elderly (or able-bodied but expect lots of service). “Rude *not *to do it yourself” places tend to be natural foods places, small independents, and neighborhood groceries without massive parking lots. Their patrons are somewhat more likely to shop as they go several times a week, European-style.
Surely this is the subject of somebody’s dissertation by now.
I suspect this is one of those situations where there are basically two options, and whichever one they choose someone will ask why they don’t choose the other.
Some stores would take the view that people want to carry as few bags as possible, so they put as much into one bag as they feel is practical. Others might take the view that people want a ‘balanced load’, so to speak, and use multiple bags, trying to optimise the ratio of bags to quantity of groceries. Whichever they choose, someone somewhere will prefer they did the other. I guess the only sure strategy is either to ask, or to allow/encourage people to bag their own stuff.
Incidentally, situations like this are sometimes referred to as a ‘two ties’ scenario, based on an old, unfunny and perhaps sexist joke. A woman buys her husband two ties for his birthday. He comes down to breakfast wearing one of the ties and she snaps at him saying, ‘What’s wrong with the other one?!’.
The only really weird thing I’ve ever had happen is the guy who put my eggs in the bottom of one bag (the cashier caught that) and my bread in the bottom of another bag (a passing worker caught that). I guess he was new and had never dealt with groceries in his life! Sheesh!
I do get upset because my elderly grandmother (and her elderly neighbor she shops with) often has trouble with this one – she always buys two half gallons of milk instead of one gallon, because she can’t lift the one gallon when she gets home to the fridge. The baggers ALWAYS put them in the same bag, which she then can’t lift. I mean, I know that’s a little side thing that wouldn’t affect a lot of people, but I wish it was more widely realized.
Be careful about that. When I worked as a bagger in a union shop about 24 years ago, accepting tips was expressly forbidden and we could get in trouble if caught doing so.
That said, I grasped the whole “how to properly load grocery bags” thing quickly and easily. But the chain I worked for actually provided training in how to do it and you had to show you could do it right before they put you on the floor to do it for real. Maybe some of these other chains don’t?
I only had that job for a short time, but the experience came in handy years later when I was without a driver’s license and used a bicycle to do my grocery shopping. I had to limit my shopping to what would fit in my backpack, and I became an expert at purchasing exactly enough to fill my pack. I’d be mentally arranging everything in pack as I was putting it in my basket, and then at the checkstand I’d “bag” everything myself. And one particular checker always gave me a 5-cent credit for every grocery bag I would have otherwise used (I didn’t use any).
That may be true if you’re worried about how your stuff gets bagged. Personally, I find the lane with a) a hottie cashier or b) a hottie customer I can wait behind. Unless I’m with my wife in which case we find the lane with the fat middle aged cashier.
My experience with cloth bags is that it may be great for the Earth, but doggone it slows the checkout to a crawl. For some reason it takes the bagger much longer to bag the cloth.
I have the opposite complaint. I want as much as possible into fewer bags to carry them more easily. I don’t want them to put 3 items in each bag so that I have to navigate 4,377 bags for an order. That’s why I like the self-checkout; I can bag myself.
When I worked at a grocery store in high school, we actually had a training video on how to do it. An hour (if I remember correctly) of “this goes on the bottom. This goes on the top.” etc. Jolly good fun.
I think the answer to the OP is that the baggers never imagine that you might actually walk home. Those of us that walk to the store are so outnumbered by those that drive that it never occurs to them to load them for easy carrying. They assume you only need to transfer them quickly to your car, and then quickly into your house.
I often try to break them out of this habit when they ask (as they are apparently required to do for every customer at this store) if I need help loading my groceries. I say, “No, not unless you’re willing to walk all the way home with me.”
Only a week? When I was a youngun, you whippersnappers, we had a whole year’s worth of training. And we liked it!
Well, sometimes, like when I drive to the store, fewer bags would be preferable. But sometimes, like when I walk to the store (and therefore have to walk home), lighter bags would be preferable.
It is my practice to use the self-checkout, so I have absolute control. If the self-checkout is closed, I try to let the bagger know how I want it bagged.
If I get distracted (by any number of things. . .oh look, a kitty!), it drives me nuts when I go to put my bags in my cart and realize the bagger has put my hot soup (from the lunch bar) in its very own bag, and my air-freshener candle in its very own bag (even if I had something like dish detergent or wasp spray it could easily have gone in with).
Yep, definitely prefer to bag my own.
Even asking doesn’t work. Then they just annoy the people who don’t really give a rat’s ass how the groceries are bagged, and now have to answer “I don’t care - do it any way you like.”.