Heavy stuff first, cold things together, fragile stuff last.
Asklemmy
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
This is the way
This is the way
Basically this, but with cleaning products/ chemicals last.
Last? I want those first, they are usually in very sturdy containers so putting some stuff on top is fine. They are also usually heavy and heavy stuff goes first. Also if they leak, I want them to leak out of the bottom of the bag and not over all the groceries and then out of the bottom of the bag
I see. I always put them on a separate bag so they're always dead last. If they're on the same bag, then it makes sense to be at the bottom.
And for me, it's the snack I just bought to eat now that's last.
Yeah I'm trying to remember how we used to do it (the last time I went through a normal checkout with a full shop was probably 10 years ago) and this seems right.
Gotta have the heavy stuff handy so you can put it straight into the bottom of the bags. Anything else is wasting time!
Do you have conveyor belts going straight to your fridge now?
Not OP but home delivery got very common since covid lockdowns in my country.
It's been common for a lot longer than that in the UK, we're very lazy :D
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.
- One is literally called Pak n Save, you pack your own bags.
- One very often has a second person packing bags. This is a pricier store.
- And one just has the cashier drop your things into the bag after they have scanned them.
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 canβt speak for the US, but in poorer countries (like my home country of South Africa), itβs common for someone to bag your groceries. The simple reason is because it provides extra jobs at the store. Itβs 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.
Itβs the same for filling your car with petrol.
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.
So is it customary to tip the person doing the bagging?
When I was in South Africa, this wasnβt very common. I suppose you could tip them but there isnβt a very big tipping culture there.
Or maybe a designated bagger will do it faster, resulting in less wait times?
Personally, Iβve never thought that having a designated bagger was that much faster (by themselves). Sometimes youβd see someone helping the bagger, this would be faster.
But how does this person provide any value though?
Itβs 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%.
Itβs the same for self checkout. You could easily do it yourself but youβd 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
In Australia the checkout person does the bagging themselves, no second person required.
There was this one time when I got that service at an Asian store (in Europe). I guess the Asian workers just imported the practices of their home country, which is nice.
I think people are being lazy, in a selfish, tragedy of the commons sort of way.
When standing in line, they all watch the customer stand there doing nothing as the cashier checks out items. If only they'd bag their own things, we'd all be able to get on with our lives that much sooner. Instead, they continue standing there doing nothing, as the cashier now bags their items.
Then the next person in line moves up and also just stands there, also unwilling to do anything to help speed things along.
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 π₯² 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 ;)
Yep. Heavy and dense first, all refrigerated together, etc. I shop at WinCo mostly so I bag my own. It's very satisfying making it a super efficient process up front.
I used to work at a checkout operator, long ago.
I ALWAYS order the belt, cans and heavy stuff goes first, then usually cold/frozen stuff, veg and fruit, baking products (flour, sugar etc), then finally the light/soft stuff.
Never worked as a checkout person but that's how I do it too. Seems just common sense to me. But of course there are some baggers who don't have a clue and will put the soft stuff in one bag but then place it in the cart with something heavy on top of it.
Oh absolutely. They are arranged in the trolly before even getting to checkout too but you are querying a crowd on Lemmy that is going to be biased towards programmer / engineer types that tend to function well in their world due to compulsive features often considered pathologic by others.
You reminded me of when a partner and I entered a grocery store to buy sun screen lotion. I narrated my thoughts figuring out where it would be and found it immediately. She commented on how she'd never have found it that quickly. All I did was make logical deductions based on my knowledge of grocery stores.
Truly, people think differently. What is natural to me might be alien to another.
First heavy and non breakables or non crushables. Then crushables the veggies then fruits.
Heavy items such as milk goes in first, so that they will also be at the bottom of my backpack. Light and fragile things, such as salad goes last.
My recommendation is to wait until you get home to make the salad. That way youβre not eating a big salad out of a backpack in the park like a crazy person.
Definitely drink milk from the bottom of your bag though, that's fine and normal.
One trick I've learned over the years is that it doesn't matter what order you pour your milk into your backpack in. It will always end up at the bottom.
Of course I do, is there another way? How else would one determine packing order and avoid crushing the more delicate stuff like tomatoes and eggs under the weight of the heavier items.
Same with stuff that needs to be frozen or refrigerated. Makes it that much easier to put things away when you're back home.
I put the heaviest and least breakable things first in line so they end up at the bottom of the bag(s). Canned food, stuff in plastic bottles, then all the cold/ frozen stuff altogether, light and delicate things like bread, chips etc last
I'm a car-free city dweller, so I always put heavy stuff first so I can pack it in my backpack, lighter stuff next to fill my reusable bags, with fragile stuff last so it's packed on top.
Makes it easy to walk or bus home with everything.
My only hard rule is refrigerated/frozen items together so I can handle that bag first when I put groceries up.
We have hand scanners you can take with you through the store. I pack everything into collapsible crates as I go, so at the checkout it's just putting the scanner back and paying.
Heavy first, light last. This way the light stuff won't get squished. And we bag stuff ourselves here, we aren't that lazy.
I keep cold things or products that are identical or related together most of the time. So all the bags of chips, or all the cans, all the meats, all the frozen stuff, etc.
And I guess like the other guy, I usually stick fragile stuff on one end or the other.
The stuff at the top of the basket goes first so I can reach the stuff at the bottom?
Soft and fragile things on top, heavy things on the bottom, square things in the middle, circular things on the outside, cold things in one bag, non-cold-things in another bag, and anything that can't be organized in this way in a third bag.
I just scan and bag as I go in the supermarket and pay at the end. Much easier than staying in line and bagging everything at the end.
Self bagging only pretty much where i live.
The cashiers at lidl are so fast it's hard to keep up.
I just stuff everything in fast as possible trying to maximise damage; this can also save on chewing time later.
But I only have to carry it as far as my bicycle - and I do sometimes need to fish out and reorganize heavy stuff at that point to keep the pain-ears vaguely balanced.
Though it is quite fun to try with 6-7 litres of liquids on one side and 2 carrots and a lettuce on the other.
If it's not too windy I'd just do that - shopping is boring.
If I was walking farther I'd take a big rucksack and yeah I'd probably pack it more systematically.
I can understand car users not bothering to organise though.
Unless you're driving 100km through the desert and think anything frozen wil melt.
I go to scan-while-you-shop places then strategically bag as I walk around the store. 30 seconds to pay and then leave.
Well at the Prisma I go to we just scan products into bags in the store (you have your bags open the shopping cart)
I generally go to self-scan line, so it's the order in which I bought these. When I go to a more classical line, Heavy, then cold, then light so the heavy stuff goes on the bottom of the bag, the cool stuff in the middle (where they are a bit protected) and the light things on top