grocery stores in america bag your stuff for you????

@ShadowJonathan don't they on nl?

@passocacornio no????

like idk if you've been to an aldi, but you bag your own groceries (so you can also sort and stack by weight and such), and thats just... normal here

@ShadowJonathan My anecdotal experience is that someone who spends their whole shift putting things into bags day after day can do it a lot faster than customers can... The store near me regularly has pile-ups at the end of the belt whenever the 'bagger' goes to do something else, because most customers can't bag as fast as the cashier scans.

But it's also very dependent on the store. The asian grocery I buy snacks from doesn't bag things for you.

@ShadowJonathan it creates jobs

@ShadowJonathan @passocacornio Yeah, Aldi in the US works the same way: They usually have a second cart that they pile things in as they're scanned, then once everything's scanned and paid for, you swap carts and move over to a separate bagging area to bag everything yourself. (And IIRC they even have chairs for the cashiers, unlike most US stores? Haven't been to one in years though, so I may be wrong about that)

@ShadowJonathan here is left for the counter discretion... actually some places have someone assigned just to help you bag the stuff (i think is because some people has zero social awareness, like they just make the payment after they have bagged everything, so sometimes you're there for 10 min waiting for the person to allow the line to move)

@becomethewaifu i feel like this is just an indication of culture

here in europe we usually have 2 output lanes on the cashier thingie, who then speeds through it, and 2 customers can bag their stuff at the same time

and ofc the stares and looks you get when you bag slowly is going to add some pressure to learn how to bag quickly lmao

@ShadowJonathan oh wait... you're talking about stores... I'm thinking in supermarkets... sorry :3

@passocacornio i mean supermarkets tbh

stores bagging stuff is usual for like... luxury items, where it is part of the service (and they give you a branded bag for further advertisement), but supermarkets is where i'd expect to do my own stuff

@ShadowJonathan @passocacornio pretty much the only time i encounter bagging being performed for you is with food vendors that don’t sell pre packaged food

@ShadowJonathan my mom just informed me that they faded out the bagger people on the big supermarkets

@ShadowJonathan @becomethewaifu Especially the people who stare into the void until the cashier to be finished before starting to bag (in such a way that you can barely squeeze past them to get to the less practical second lane), come on babe I've got more interesting places to be than the super market

@ShadowJonathan @becomethewaifu Most people don't get a lot of items, and if they do they can use the trolley to get the items to their car. Grocery stores here are plentiful, such that for many people they are withing walking distance and definitely cycling distance so you don't often see people having cartloads. This makes the people bagging for you-thing also a little superfluous.

@h5e @becomethewaifu this reminded me of another culture difference; here in europe we dont do groceries for 2 weeks, we do it for a half-week usually, because if we forget anything we can just go down to the store again and buy 1 or 2 things and go back home, all within an hour or so

@ShadowJonathan @becomethewaifu Yeah, I think I hit the grocery store 3-4 times a week usually 😅

Sometimes twice in a day, like, I get something for lunch and then pop in later for dinner. My apple watch approves 😂

@ShadowJonathan @h5e Same here in my corner of the US, at least for those of us without cars, given that it's about the closest to "european city" you can get on this side of the atlantic. (Boston is one of the oldest cities in the country, and it shows) but at the stores that have parking lots, you still have to put up with people buying a month's worth of food at once...

I usually shop for 3-4 days at a time, with a few 'extra' trips for bulky things like TP and paper towels.

@MiaWinter @ShadowJonathan I feel like this is one of those things that count as a “bullshit job” in the words of anthropologist David Graeber

@yassie_j @MiaWinter @ShadowJonathan

Not in the slightest! You have to remember that the typical American shops for groceries once in two weeks, and buys a whole carload at a time. Having someone to assist you in getting them into bags means that you're not slowing up the checkout line, and then that person typically helps you get the bagged groceries out to the car and load them into the car.

@tsukkitsune @yassie_j @ShadowJonathan honestly, as a German, skill issue

We bag like 5x the speed of the people of NA, not cashier and customer

Also you have a cart with you where you can just put your bags and take that out to the car

@MiaWinter @tsukkitsune @yassie_j this tbh