I’m just wondering what the title asks: do you organize your groceries in the order you will check them out, if doing self-checkout, or arrange them on the belt/counter in a standard checkout line, in the hope that they’ll be bagged in a specific way?
I didn’t know there was any other way people do it, but just learned some people prefer to checkout/bag without pre-arranging things. I’m kind of curious to see what’s more common, or if there’s some other options I haven’t considered?
There is no such concept as “groceries getting bagged for you” in Germany. I have a backpack with me where I put my groceries.
Regarding your question, yes have a strategy.
The basic order on the belt is heavy to light items, so that the heavy things such cans or glas bottles go to the bottom, light stuff like yoghurt and eggs at the end of the belt so they come on top of the other groceries.
Of course this is not fixed, as light but bulky items may get a prioritized place on the belt. The worst thing that can happen is that you have to repack your backback.
However this is not all. As our cashiers are usually professionals, you will need to stategically slow them down, you want to avoid the shameful and pressuring looks of your successors. I do that by putting items inbetween the other stuff on the belt that have to be counted or weighed, such as pastry and vegetables. This gives you time to pack your stuff or rearrange in case you made mistake a step earlier.
As a European, I have never once had an extra person there whose sole purpose is putting your groceries into bags, what a strange concept.
Here in New Zealand, different supermarket chains do it different.
The third one seems most natural to me. Why not have them put your stuff in a bag since they are already holding it?
I can’t speak for the US, but in poorer countries (like my home country of South Africa), it’s common for someone to bag your groceries. The simple reason is because it provides extra jobs at the store. It’s the same for filling your car with petrol.
So is it customary to tip the person doing the bagging? Or maybe a designated bagger will do it faster, resulting in less wait times?
My favourite system is where I place my cart next to another one, and the cashier will scan everything while placing the item in the other cart, where I could have placed boxes if I wanted to.
But how does this person provide any value though? That person has to be paid as well, and doing something a customer can do well by themselves provides very little value. It used to be necessary, older petrol pumps had to be manually enabled or had no stop valve that person is required. With modern pumps having a person fill up your car is equally unnecessary.
When I was in South Africa, this wasn’t very common. I suppose you could tip them but there isn’t a very big tipping culture there.
Personally, I’ve never thought that having a designated bagger was that much faster (by themselves). Sometimes you’d see someone helping the bagger, this would be faster.
It’s not necessarily about the value they provide. Since unemployment is so high, if you can create extra jobs, the business will do it. When I left, unemployment in my province was at 50%.
It’s the same for self checkout. You could easily do it yourself but you’d lose out on potential jobs (bagger and cashier). This article is really good at showing why these systems are the way they are.
I always thought that such jobs would be best replaced with universal basic income. Maybe even not universal, and only for those who need it
There seems to be a recent initiative to introduce a universal income (read here & here) but it’s minimal.
This shows what you could get with the grant.
That’s how a business works though, people do work of value which the business provides to its customers. I know nothing of the situation is SA but ordering business to lose more money doesn’t seem like the way to go. I’ll agree with the other comment calling for UBI.
That article wasn’t helpful though, just a whole lot of people talking with too much conflict of interest.
In Australia the checkout person does the bagging themselves, no second person required.
It’s wild for me how different that peer pressure in the line is in different countries. In Spain people would even try to make you slow down and take your time when they notice how stressed you are with trying to pack everything fast 🥲 that’s very considerate of them
It’s true Germans are not known for being very patient and easily get annoyed when standing in line, but I may have exaggerated a bit ;)