I really don’t mean to complain.
Okay, maybe I do. I do mean to complain because, honestly, I don’t think grocery store baggers have any idea what they’re doing.
Not to mention I’m feeling a little snarky.
So I can vent here, right? This is my blog, after all.
Plus I’m currently on vacation, and silly, mindless sorts of posts are the easiest to write at times like this. 😉
Granted, a lot of bagging issues stem from the fact most grocery store baggers I see are of the teenage-boy type and have likely never grocery shopped in their lives beyond maybe bringing home a jug of milk or a loaf of bread at the request of their moms. That, or they’re cashiers who are also ringing up items as well as trying to bag them in a way that makes sense, which I will admit may be a lot to do at one time.
But I have to think there’s just not much attention being given to proper bagging of groceries. Sometimes I want to tell so-called grocery baggers to just step aside — let me do it myself — and of course more and more places are providing that option! For grocery bagging perfectionists like myself, that’s actually pretty wonderful.
I even try arranging my groceries on the belt in a particular order in hopes my organization will somehow help the poor bagger who I know has no idea what he’s doing while he carries on a loud conversation with another teenage employee about the upcoming UK game or the latest soap operas going on at the local high school. But if I can’t work fast enough and if my cashier is a good one and rings up my items too quickly, my system falls apart and I know my groceries will be bagged in a random, senseless way designed to make me crazy.
So did you know there was once a day when grocery store employees went through training to learn how to bag groceries properly?
Really. They did that.
Granted, that was in the old days of bottle returns, hand-punched cash registers, and paper bags, but it’s not been so long ago that I don’t remember it. In fact, my own brother went to school with a Kroger employee who was in a grocery bagging competition.
Seriously. They did stuff like that. Because good bagging mattered.
Paper bags have gone mostly by the wayside, though places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s have brought them back. (Yet another reason why I love both stores.) I derive a certain pleasure from the puzzle that paper bags provide. It’s fun to watch a cashier carefully and thoughtfully arrange and rearrange and re-rearrange boxes and cans and bottles in a paper bag in order to both use the space efficiently and not destroy any foods in the process.
Sometimes they get it right. Paper bags make it a little easier I think.
So is it the advent of the plastic bag that has turned grocery store baggers, (or maybe their supervisors/trainers,) into lazy, mindless dump-it-all-in-a-bag-so-we-can-get-rid-of-this-customer kind of people?
Hmm. I’m not sure.
Now I’m not anti-plastic bag. I actually find them quite useful, but I really, REALLY want grocery stores, ALL of them, to bring back proper “Bagger Training”.
And here are just a few things I think this training would need to emphasize.
- Fresh tomatoes do not go in a bag with canned foods. Touch a tomato. Pick it up, feel it in your hand, press it with your finger, and you’ll understand why we don’t do this.
- One-pound boxes of butter and 32-oz. containers of spaghetti sauce should not be tossed in a bag with fresh green leaf lettuce or spinach. Most people don’t want to find their lettuce partially pureed when they get home.
- Cans should never be bagged with fresh meats. Nobody likes finding they had exposed meat rolling around in the trunk of their car and nobody wants to have to disinfect 7 bloody cans before putting them away in the cupboard.
- Bread and heavy items should not be bagged together. Bread is soft and springy to the touch. Most customers want it to still have some form when they get it home. Bread can be bagged with eggs, by the way, but only with the eggs on the bottom, not the other way around.
- Frozen items should not be bagged with hot, fresh-from-the-deli foods. Nothing like getting your chicken home for a hot dinner only to find it was sitting on ice packs the entire drive.
- Sometimes a bag is pretty pointless, like in this case…
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| Umm….why? |
- Every individual avocado, apple, cheese block, or package of safety pins does not need it’s own bag. Some customers may be thankful for the 137 bags you sent home with them, but it is not our job to individually wrap everything our customers purchase.
- At the same time, every avocado, apple, cheese block, beet, cereal box, banana bunch, salad dressing, box of tea bags, and container of sour cream does not have to be put in the same bag. Twenty-three items per bag is probably a bit much. Unless we’re talking 23 jalapeno peppers, in which case it’s probably fine.
- Spring Breeze-scented dryer sheets should not be bagged with fresh breads. Love the way those baked goods absorb artificial floral scents!
- Half-gallon containers of buttermilk and bags of potato chips do not mix. Do I really need to explain this??
- Boxes go with boxes.
- Cans go with cans.
- Bottles go with bottles and sometimes with boxes.
- Meats go with meats. Are you seeing a pattern here?
- Fruits and vegetables like being bagged with their own kind. They’re snobby that way. Though beware of trying to pack a bag of potatoes with fresh bok choy.
- If a bag feels heavy to you, double-bag it. It often makes customers unhappy when they go to load their groceries in their car and four cans fall out on their foot and a jar of pickles breaks on the asphalt right in line with their rear tire.
- If somebody buys a gift card, don’t throw it on top of the 4-lb. chuck roast. That was supposed to be a GIFT.
Please, grocery stores, for customer sanity and the good of fresh vegetables everywhere. I plead with you: Bring back real grocery bagger training.
Wow! Buttermilk and potato chips? That's pretty bad. You've definitely earned the right to complain.
Personally, I can't stand it when they toss cheese and yogurt in with my frozen stuff. It took me forever to figure out why my cheese was weirdly sweaty and my yogurt strangely textured. Soy pudding is also ruined that way… And, I once unpacked a big paper bag of groceries and found (what was supposed to be) a loaf of bread at the bottom. Also, stuff with pointy edges and delicate pears aren't friends!
I'm with you. Bring back the training!.Or at least give them a little color-coded chart.
I will admit to being a little OCD about the whole bagging process, but sometimes just training these guys and gals to SLOW DOWN and think could help out a lot. But I like your idea for a color-coded chart!
Thanks for reading! (And sharing in my gripe.) 😉
That made me laugh but here in England, we don't have baggers anymore. The best thing to do here is to train the children or have the groceries delivered, unbagged, in big crates.
I think grocery delivery is available in some areas here in the states, mainly in the bigger cities, but nowhere near me. I think I could get used to having my groceries delivered! My local store still has baggers, but more and more grocery stores here are going to these rotating bagging turntables so the cashier can bag as they scan the items. It may sometimes make things go faster, (maybe,) but I don't think it makes for better bagging!
While I'm very sorry for your bagging troubles, this post made me laugh out loud several times! 😉 I have to say that, in the area where I live, the bagger training must be a little better. I hardly ever have trouble with things being bagged in crazy ways like the ones you mentioned. I suppose it's one of those things I just took for granted and wasn't thankful for, so I promise to hereby be grateful for properly bagged groceries. 🙂
Fortunately it doesn't happen every time I go to the grocery, but near enough to it. And apparently I'm not alone! Count yourself blessed to be among good baggers! 😉
I like this post. And it's your blog, vent all you want! I understand the struggle. It doesn't seem like it is that difficult, but I also understand the need to quickly get the customers out of the door. Save-a-Lot down here tends to be the best at bagging, and the cashiers do it too! I don't know what they go through, but the cashiers there are fast and efficient.
Hey, that's awesome you have a place you can count on to do GOOD bagging! And I totally get the fact employees are trained to get customers moved along quickly. I'm thankful for prompt service. I just laugh (or grumble…whichever) at some of the particularly crazy bagging I find when I get home sometimes. Maybe the best solution would be to make employees grocery shop for themselves on a daily basis!
Anyway, thanks so much for reading, Jess!
I couldn't agree more! Really!
And – I like your new header and self-portrait photo. 🙂
Aww…thank you! I'm trying to improve things…slowly. I've been trying to get away from the winterish profile pic for months, but every time I look at a picture of me all I can see is how stringy my hair is. Finally it dawned on me I must actually LOOK like that! Oh, well. It is what it is… 😉
Thanks so much for dropping by, Carol!
Amen! And Amen! I went to WM Supercenter and through the events of the day did not get to put away all of my groceries before bed. Because I had so carefully, like you, arranged ALL of my refrigerated items together on the conveyor belt, I assumed that they were all bagged together. I put away all the refrg. items I located and left the rest until this morning. As I began this afternoon to put away all the remaining dry goods and six ears of corn I had purchased I found…once chilled tapioca pudding cups and rice pudding cups underneath four bags of chocolate chips!!!! Destroyed!
Then I found an entire block of Mozzarella Cheese and an entire block of Cheddar Cheese UNDER the prebagged six ears of in-the-husk corn I had purchased. Destroyed!! Aghh!!
Yes, I should have put all my groceries away last night, but with a newborn and four other sweet ones under 7, I just didn't. Could the lady have just bagged the pudding and the cheese together? Is that too much to ask?? I am so glad you understand!
So, so sorry. Believe me, I feel your pain! I seriously don't know if it just comes from being taught to hurry or from the fact a lot of these baggers are kids and don't know much about grocery shopping or food storage or cooking, but the crazy bagging can be SO frustrating! I mostly wrote this post for my own amusement, but, like you, I have had things ruined before because of the way they were bagged and that is NOT so amusing. Glad to know I have readers who understand! 🙂
I just started working as a bagger today, and I can already tell you that it is NOT as fun and simple as you make it out to be, and you should probably just bag your own stuff how you like it. I probably would have vented just like you before I tried the job. Every customer wants different things! Some people want everything in as few bags as possible. Some want more bags with less stuff so nothing is heavy. Most people insist that I bag gallon milk jugs, which have handles, but others gripe if I even suggest a bag. In our training, I was told NOT TO DOUBLE BAG UNLESS ASKED! This is stupid, because heavy or sharp stuff obviously needs an extra bag. I was also taught to lie bottles on their sides and put chips/bread at the top of a bag of heavy stuff. And "frame" the bag with boxes and put small stuff in the middle (which just results in ripping the bag). Anyway, when I have hundreds of products piling up in front of my face on a small counter space, I don't have time to look at every individual thing and think "I wonder where in the house the customer will put this away." I bag meat and eggs separately, household products or chemicals separately, and don't smash the bread or grapes. But someone always gripes about SOMETHING. I do not have time to sit there and organize and sort and think about individual products while items and lines pile up. *We are expected to have bagging done by the time the customer pays.* I'm aware that I'm working a crappy, no-education-needed job at the moment, and yes, anyone can do it. But my point is that we cannot take the time to arrange everything perfectly to every customer's preferences. I understand your frustration with obviously stupid things, like smashing eggs or meat with produce – I've experienced that frustration myself. We should all try to do the best job we can, but we're getting paid minimum wage to be treated like crap when our one goal is to checkout customers as quickly as possible. I think people should just bag their own if they're that picky. Keep in mind depending on the store, we're taught (or not taught) certain ways of bagging that not all customers prefer.
My post was written in humor and not intended to offend. Honestly, sounds to me like whatever grocery store you work for needs to rethink some of its training where bagging is concerned. Bottles on the bottom and bread and chips on top? In a paper bag, maybe, but in a plastic bag that DOES. NOT. WORK.
But just so you know, I DO bag my own groceries as often as I can, but not all the stores in my local area offer self-service lines if you have more than 20 items, so most of the time I don't have a choice but to let others bag my stuff. And while I don't expect perfection, I do appreciate not having cans thrown in with my vegetables, (which happens way too frequently,) or half-gallons of buttermilk thrown in with my potato chips, (which has actually happened before.) I don't apologize for being annoyed with that, though I in no way meant to paint all baggers with a broad brush as incompetent.
I really only meant to be funny. Sorry you didn't take it that way.
THIS. Yes Yes YES! And YES!! I’m one of those who was TRAINED how to bag back in the day (in the 1970s). My first job was at a local grocery store. I got soooooo frustrated with those teenage baggers that I was RELIEVED when they finally came out with the self-checkout areas. The (very) few times I’ve had to resort to going through a “regular” checkout I actually HAVE told the bagger to “step aside” and did it my way. Once a kid in the next aisle asked how in the world I could do that so fast.
Thanks for a timeless post to which many of us can still relate. Blessings to you and yours from Kansas. 🙂
Maybe I need you as my grocery shopping pal! Then you can bag all my groceries for me. 😉 Thanks so much for reading, Diana!
Love this! And thinking I should really say I want to bag my own groceries (BTW, I always take so much time putting them in the correct order on the conveyor belt, as well)! 🙁
I recently had a couple behind me in line start laughing at me because of my conveyor belt arranging! They admitted it was the smart thing to do, but I was still a little embarrassed for being caught in my OCD ways. 😉 Oh well. Glad to know I’m not alone is my craziness!
I do the same thing. Honestly, I don’t joke about; when I see someone put a package of raw chicken on top of my lettuce, it’s not funny! Or when I get home and start unloading, and see crushed containers of diced fruit with the juice soaked into the carpet of my new car with less than one hundred miles on it, it ______ me off!
Oh, yeah… raw meat with my veggies is a no-no. Fortunately I don’t see that often. But metal cans and big glass jars bagged with fresh fruit and vegetables is something that happens WAY too often…