Ways to Annoy your Grocery Clerk #4 – Paper or Plastic?

Hey Fella,
Howdy…

Bukayasha!

Chuck

i had a guy do this to me one time and he literally said. “plastic?? what is this the 90′s? Jeez” and was really rude afterwards. SO SORRY TO OFFEND!

This happened to me the other day, but I was the customer. I had a lot of groceries and was frantically trying to load them onto the conveyor as the checker rang them up, because I like to see what I’m being charged (this particular grocery store has a habit of over-charging).

I hadn’t noticed that someone had come up and started bagging, and had 4 plastic bags filled by the time I got to the front. I stopped her immediately and asked for paper (and apologized for the inconvenience), and the bagger and checker just stopped and stared at me like I was an idiot.

The checker then said, “Can I just give you the bags?”

I paused for a second because I wasn’t sure what she meant. I finally realized that she just wanted to keep the stuff bagged in the plastic and hand me the paper bags to take with me. (!!!)

Because I didn’t respond immediately, she rolled her eyes and yanked out the (hidden) paper bags and then proceeded to (aggressively)plop the filled plastic bags into the paper bags (which completely defeats the purpose of requesting paper), and then the bagger literally dropped each bag into my cart (eggs and all). She even put the last bag on top of my purse so I had to re-arrange all the bags myself (while juggling my receipt, credit card and driver’s license) just to be able to get my car keys.

Neither one of them said anything else to me for the rest of the transaction. The checker just handed me the credit card receipt to sign and the bagger just pushed the cart out of the way for the next customer.

I cannot believe how ticked off these two got just because I wanted 4 bags of stuff re-bagged. I know it can be a thankless job, and I have seen them take a lot of abuse from rude/stupid customers, but come on.

Oh no the jerk checker! Personally that would have been an exception, we do just go by the default plastic but if you couldn’t have responded its not your fault. Its not like you were on the phone or anything Aly! Either way we get paid by the hour!

Rather than rebag everything I just transfer plastic bags with said items into paper. Quicker and easier.

I work as a checker at a grocery store, where I started out bagging when I was hired. In our training, it was ground into our brains to ask every single customer if they’d like paper or plastic. Obviously, we still have the really annoying customer that wants the last minute switch, but this small task takes care of most of these problems.

@Aly I’m sorry for that experience. Checkers and baggers who act that way are a shame to us who do our duty correctly. I personally don’t have a problem to exchange a few bags worth, but if it was a full cart (which I know you didn’t do), we just can’t. There’s not enough time. If that’s the case, the customer should have spoken up earlier.

Having the checker switch makes no good point. The now used plastic bags won’t get re-used as new …. so the process now gets worse by using BOTH paper AND plastic… and the “footprint” minded consumer errs with an overzealous switch. Common Sense and Common Courtesy are a great couple. While I try to always get “paper”… I cannot allow myself to become a public idiot when a plastic bag slips through…

The problem with plastic is that the items fall out all over the suv. Plus I don’t want to carry 10 bags. I always ask for paper but for some reason they never put the milk in the bag. I have hairy dogs, there is hair all over my suv, I dont want hairy milk, the milk must be in a bag!

You can’t bitch about not getting an answer to the question that you don’t ask. My default is paper. Always. As an ex-professional bagger (well, after school job) I took pride in how well I could bag groceries, and how fast. I even load the conveyor with boxes, bottles, meats and veg, and then bread, bananas, eggs, and chips, so that like can be bagged with like, and accommodating sizes and shapes can be bagged together. If you can’t be bothered to find out what I like them bagged in, then yeah, do it again.
If I see you starting before finding out, I’ll ask you to switch from that point forward, but I’ll kinda do it like you made a mistake. ‘Cause you did…