Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I live in the UK, where you bag your own groceries. We use our own heavy bags rather than disposable ones. Why not pack your own? It's not like you have crucial work to perform while being checked out.

But when are they getting their much-deserved rub down? And tell me you insured that your rub was environmentally friendly, containing no fragments of plastic bags. Nothing disgusts me more...

She IS a nut Katie...but she's got a nice rack...of ribs.

Hey Katie!

"When it comes to bagging groceries, it's like fingerprints-everybody's different" Albert Einstein

(P.S. No, Einstein didn't really say that!!!!!!!!!)

I also think the common sense rule should apply to the customers. If you don't want you bread squished, don't put it up first followed by all your heavy items. Honestly, how hard is it to put like things up together. It makes everyone's lives easier.
As frustrating as it is for customers to have things bagged incorrectly, it's just as frustrating for us baggers to try to untangle your jumbled mess as you stare at us impatiently. If you're that OCD about it, do it yourself!

I'll eat American, but I prefer almost everything else. I like strong tasting cheese like extra sharp cheddar, bleu and gorgonzola and one of my faves is smoked mozzarella. Other smoked cheeses are also tasty on burgers.

I too hate it when they try to put cleaning, personal hygiene, household pet products in with my food. That is when I start taking out the items and bag the items myself. They are not to keen about me taking the items out but I have to let em' know that is soooooooo wrong in sooooo many ways. I do compliment the ones that do a good job So far and between though.

By the way I like the idea of having the plastic bags against the law. I think all states should start right along with the plastic water bottles eg :Aquafina, Dasani the list goes on and on.....

I'm assuming that no toy/lomo cameras are allowed to play.

I love soft blue cheese on burgers, but I've recently had really great mozzarella-topped burgers.

I had a frustrating experience at my local grocery store today (Wegman's) and remembered this thread on SE. My bagging rules are very simple and common sense: cold items together, heavier stuff on the bottom, lighter stuff on top, don't put all the heavy stuff in one bag. I don't eat meat so that's not an issue, and my favorite cleaning supplies are baking soda and vinegar so I don't care if those are together. I live a 5-10 min walk away from the store and I don't have a car, and I like being "green" so I always bring my own bags. It is much easier to carry 3 sturdy but heavier canvas bags than 12 flimsy plastic bags. Actually, they are the bags that the store sells, so you think the cashier would be used to them, but no.

The set up of the register is challenging if you have the reusable bags. Instead of having a belt that moves your items from the scanning area to the bagging area, there is an open space next to where the cashier stands that has the hooks with plastic baggies on them. That way, the cashier can scan the items and place them directly into the plastic bag. If you have reusable bags, which are a bit bigger, you have to loop the handles around the hooks. Some cashiers will just pick the items up and moved them to the bagging area, which involves *gasp* actually physically turning around! Now, today I was in a bad mood because the woman 2 people in front of me in line didn't have enough cash to pay for her groceries and had to get some items removed, which took a while. I only had $30 worth of groceries, about 1-2 bags worth. The cashier was a very pretty girl in her late teens/early 20s. First she asked me if I wanted her to "pass the items back" to me, and I had no idea what she meant, so I respectfully declined. Then she asked me to "hold the bag open" for her while she dropped the items in. I patiently explained how the other cashiers handled the reusable bags, and she whined, "But they fall off when I do that!" Honey, I am not your boyfriend, and batting your pretty little eyes at me is not going to get me to do your work for you. Funny how they don't fall off when the other cashiers do the same thing!

There is one very pleasant older woman who works there who actually thanks me for using reuseable bags. The rest are bored teenagers who seem pissed because they can't just use the plastic bags that are already there. I had one once who put the canvas bag I was buying INTO A SEPARATE PLASTIC BAG! I understand that earning $8/hr is not the pinnacle of your 16-year old life. But, please, exercise a little common sense and thought and you'll be much more prepared for whatever job the future holds, and you might even get a promotion, raise, or recommendation out of it!

I do my best to bag my own groceries in canvas bags. The closest supermarket to me has self-checkout so I always use it. The cashiers get too confused with I either a) tell them to use the bags that I brought, or b) tell them that I don't need a bag at all. The two of us went by the other day and bought 5 easily carryable things. When we told the cashier we didn't need a bag, it BLEW.HER.MIND. I will do self checkout from now on, thanks.

For large trips both of us always go, and one of us stands at the end of the lane and offers to bag everything ourselves. It makes the cashier very very happy. =)