I miss the baggers...

Grocery shopping is not an insubstantial part of my days here.  I call myself "the packhorse" sometimes:  feeding a family of four effectively-adult appetites means I'm grocery shopping every day, sometimes twice, and then usually get a good arm workout on my walk back home (since we go through the heavy things like milk and fruit the fastest, of course).

Now, living in a big city downtown area certainly has its advantages, but I'm going to complain, just briefly, about one of my pet peeves here:  there are no baggers in the (tight and busy) grocery stores!

Maybe it's the same in central New York or Boston, I don't know, but going to the in-town grocery stores can be somewhat stressful if you're getting more than a hand full of things (which I always am).

Our closest grocery store has very narrow, tightly packed aisles.  If I shop early in the day, I can avoid long lines at the cash, but then the aisles are full of people restocking from big cases...

The most nerve-wracking part is during check-out.  The cashier simply pushes your groceries down a small chute (which should be one of two, but the second is always full of things to return or shelve...) and then I'm fumbling with my wallet and my cloth bags as I try to pack and get out of the way as the groceries of the person behind me accumulate around mine.  *sigh*  Luckily, the people behind me usually don't have much, so they grab their few things and scoot around me as I'm bagging.

I now very much appreciate the baggers at home, whom I'd always taken for granted!  And, I must say, our North-American grocery personnel are usually much friendlier than the cashiers here (but then again, working in these tight and busy spaces all day would make me pretty grumpy too).

 OK, despite my complaints about the lack of baggers, and tight spaces, there are a couple good things here that we could learn from German grocery stores:  first, you have to pay for bags (only 10 cents or so for the plastic ones, but it's enough to deter) so almost everybody brings their own bags or baskets.  Secondly, the cashiers sit.  Why do we expect our poor cashiers to be on their feet for hours at a time?