When you have a family of three and you’re shopping for them by yourself and have to put them on the conveyor belt without help, it’s a big time saver.
The people i see who have loaded carts, usually just pop everything back into the cart and repack either when they offload into the car or before they exit the store
That sounds like a great way to piss off other shoppers considering the lack of space for everyone to take the time for either of those activities in many supermarkets.
I guess we must accept that things work differently in different parts of the world. It works fine here and no one gets either pissed off or is in the way.
How much space is there inside the store for people to do that past the registers? Because here, there’s room for about two carts and no table to do it on. Then in the parking lot, if the weather isn’t terrible (it can get down to arctic temperatures and blizzarding here in the winter), you have to hope you leave enough room, if there is enough room to leave, for other cars to get by you.
The only place I have ever been to in the U.S. where bagging your own groceries was feasible was Aldi.
It’s simply a different system. The markets are adjusted to it. There is enough room and sometimes even tables for this purpose.
The markets are simply using different mechanisms to speed up the process so that they can have more customers per minute. Aldi is a big player here. The cashiers are trained and drilled to be super fast. There are no baggers, but enough room to pack your stuff yourself later.
Recently they added a new kind of “double line”. Now there is enough space for two trolleys right behind the cashier. Each line has their own card reader. The cashier has minimum waiting time for the next customer. Also almost zero time for customer interaction or any talk.
Probably effective, but it really feels rushed out.
This doesn’t pose a big problem for a company like Aldi. They are in the process of updating their older stores here so lots of things (big coolers, checkout lanes and baking stations included) get moved around.
Or the whole building is designed to accommodate the different customer expectations in the first place.
Globally operating companies can’t just build one blueprint for every market, with few exceptions.
See also (for a negative example): Why Walmart failed in Germany.
From the grocery store’s perspective, at least in the US, it keeps the checkout lines moving way faster when some kid who is trained to bag groceries does it, rather than waiting for the customer to figure out how to pack it.
And yet somehow this isn’t a problem at all in countries where we don’t have people bagging our groceries. Checkouts very rarely have any downtime where we need to wait on people to finish bagging. Even with old people.
Big difference between being walking distance from groceries and needing to drive there. Bagging a few days worth of groceries is a lot faster than 2 weeks worth
A lot of people here go shopping by car for a whole week as well and we also have people living in areas where the next shopping isn’t in walking distance. And it still works just fine. It’s really easy because of course you don’t have to stand in front of the checkout the whole time but can already bag stuff while the rest is being scanned. As long as you can bag your groceries as fast as they are being scanned it’s really no big problem. And if you’re a 90 year old granny who isn’t as fast, they still can bag their groceries while the next costumer is being processed since the packaging area is usually divided into two sections.
I’m really sorry, but the US didn’t invent some special kind of super grocery shopping which no other country can understand. You just like the convenience of not bagging your stuff yourself. It’s really not some top secret technique to make shopping 150% more efficient or something.
Never understood (or experienced) having my purchases bagged for me when I do groceries
When you have a family of three and you’re shopping for them by yourself and have to put them on the conveyor belt without help, it’s a big time saver.
The people i see who have loaded carts, usually just pop everything back into the cart and repack either when they offload into the car or before they exit the store
That sounds like a great way to piss off other shoppers considering the lack of space for everyone to take the time for either of those activities in many supermarkets.
I guess we must accept that things work differently in different parts of the world. It works fine here and no one gets either pissed off or is in the way.
How much space is there inside the store for people to do that past the registers? Because here, there’s room for about two carts and no table to do it on. Then in the parking lot, if the weather isn’t terrible (it can get down to arctic temperatures and blizzarding here in the winter), you have to hope you leave enough room, if there is enough room to leave, for other cars to get by you.
The only place I have ever been to in the U.S. where bagging your own groceries was feasible was Aldi.
It’s simply a different system. The markets are adjusted to it. There is enough room and sometimes even tables for this purpose. The markets are simply using different mechanisms to speed up the process so that they can have more customers per minute. Aldi is a big player here. The cashiers are trained and drilled to be super fast. There are no baggers, but enough room to pack your stuff yourself later. Recently they added a new kind of “double line”. Now there is enough space for two trolleys right behind the cashier. Each line has their own card reader. The cashier has minimum waiting time for the next customer. Also almost zero time for customer interaction or any talk. Probably effective, but it really feels rushed out.
The only way you could add space would be to take out and move all the checkout lanes.
This doesn’t pose a big problem for a company like Aldi. They are in the process of updating their older stores here so lots of things (big coolers, checkout lanes and baking stations included) get moved around.
Or the whole building is designed to accommodate the different customer expectations in the first place.
Globally operating companies can’t just build one blueprint for every market, with few exceptions.
See also (for a negative example): Why Walmart failed in Germany.
From the grocery store’s perspective, at least in the US, it keeps the checkout lines moving way faster when some kid who is trained to bag groceries does it, rather than waiting for the customer to figure out how to pack it.
And yet somehow this isn’t a problem at all in countries where we don’t have people bagging our groceries. Checkouts very rarely have any downtime where we need to wait on people to finish bagging. Even with old people.
Big difference between being walking distance from groceries and needing to drive there. Bagging a few days worth of groceries is a lot faster than 2 weeks worth
A lot of people here go shopping by car for a whole week as well and we also have people living in areas where the next shopping isn’t in walking distance. And it still works just fine. It’s really easy because of course you don’t have to stand in front of the checkout the whole time but can already bag stuff while the rest is being scanned. As long as you can bag your groceries as fast as they are being scanned it’s really no big problem. And if you’re a 90 year old granny who isn’t as fast, they still can bag their groceries while the next costumer is being processed since the packaging area is usually divided into two sections.
I’m really sorry, but the US didn’t invent some special kind of super grocery shopping which no other country can understand. You just like the convenience of not bagging your stuff yourself. It’s really not some top secret technique to make shopping 150% more efficient or something.