veteran+ wrote: ↑October 2nd, 2020, 6:04 am
I have asked baggers to do certain things and TRAINED baggers to do certain things...............to no avail.
1. Don't mix refrigerated and frozen with dry goods. Keep produce separate. Don't mix non foods with food.
2. Fill bags proportionate to weight.
3. Frame bottom of bags to efficiently fill
4. Hard stuff on bottom, soft stuff on top.
They don't listen.............lol. Windex with frozen peas. Yogurt with heated deli item. Bread crushed.
That is all pretty bad. But when everything needs to be squeezed into a single 10 cent bag or a single reusable bag I see this stuff happen. The bagging for extremely sloppy with reusable bags squeezing anything and everything together into as few bags as possible.
The reality is when you have this transaction:
1. Hot food
2. Liquid or powder cleaning chemical
3. Frozen anything
4. Bananas (or any soft fruit like a nectarine, etc.)
5. Ground Beef (or any meat item in plastic/foam tray with plastic wrap on top)
It probably (absolutely...) should not all go into the same bag... but most people don't want 5 bags. Most people don't bring 5 reusable bags for this kind of small shop. You could isolate the hot food and cleaning into separate bags then for 3-4 put them into small bags then into a single bag...
Or I can take that above transaction and just carry it out of the store, no bag at all... or get a shallow flat box like what pet food cans show up in, certain bottled drinks, etc., and carry it out like it is all on a tray (which would work to get it out of the store, there would be space between the items- hopefully no moisture from the hot food or frozen food to make the box fall apart in transit)...
Briefly in the mid 90's some or all Raleys banned plastic bags and went back to 100% paper bags after not even having plastic bags long in the first place since they were kind of new back then- this was when they started to sell the canvas bags as well with a 5 cent use reward. That initial ban on plastic bags didn't last long. First the plastic bags with handles came back in limited supply but only for frozen foods, meat, etc. The plastic bags were on a hook under the cashier's scanner (not down where the bagger was) and only to be used for those items. Other orders and all other items were to be bagged in paper. But it wasn't long before the plastic bags were back again as an option for all bagging. However back then Raleys also did something else most others did not do: they had paper bags with handles on them (to offer the convenience in lifting that a plastic bag had). Customer preference, efficiency, and I am sure costs ultimately drove them to bring the plastic bags back.