Wholesale Club was out of ducks for weeks, and this morning they have them, beautiful, plumper than usual, and all the way from Hungary! This duck says, "I just flew in from Hungary, and boy are my wings tired!" One to thaw and one in the freezing compartment. Bought a cucumber and green onion in anticipation of Peking Duck.

One French, one English

Two Hungarian ducks, one label in English and French and one label in Italian.

Oh dear.

I just saw the other language and assumed French.

Until I looked twice I assumed it was Hungarian.

Anyone have any observations regarding checkout operators?

Why are male checkout staff in supermarkets generally so useless?

They're slow and can't pack sensibly if they even try it.

With one honourable exception - bloke at Sobeys where packing a bag seems to be an art form, so many there do it so well - I'll join the longer queue at a woman's checkout rather than take a place where a bloke is working.

Regardless of gender, I hate the ones who seem to have absolutely no idea what they are doing. When I put my groceries on the conveyer I'm a little anal about it and will place like with like so that all the dairy stuff is together, veg together, cans together, packets together (you get the picture I am sure). I always separate the meats and put any bakery items on last. You have no idea how many times I've had to ask, quite forcefully, that they don't put raw meat in with dairy items or cooked meats; had to request that they put the bread etc., in a separate bag and not in with tins; double bag glass jars (too many incidences of broken bags and smashed jars). Sigh.

Do they get training on basic food safety I wonder?



I'll go to an 'older' persons checkout rather than a youngsters, for this reason.

At least they do pack !

I must've spent 45 or 50 $, took a list but didn't get everything on it, got another Hungarian duck but this one is packaged different so may be from another farm, and it's a little longer so a bit more like the Canadian ones but still fairly heavy - under $13. Also got a bag of potstickers to replace the ones I'm going to finish today, more eggs and butter in case I want to try making Christmas cake and a family pack of lean ground beef from No Frills on sale, split in 4, wrapped and frozen.

I'd rather they didn't, regardless of gender.

I'm fairly anal about packing, using a similar system to Siouxsie's mentioned above.

My daughter worked P-t in couple of supermarkets here: she was trained in safe food handling by one because she worked both the deli/ready-to-eat counter & checkout. At the other, not at all.

Can she confirm whether the policy of leaving items at the front of the conveyor and picking up/scanning from behind so the the conveyor belt doesn't move until they want it to, thus making the next in line to wait for space to begin loading (takes breath) is an official policy or just the cashier's way of keeping the pressure off?

I'll ask. From what I remember, the cashiers are observed (via cctv), timed, asked/reprimanded about "delays".

I suspect it's the latter (cashier's trick to reduce pressure).

Thx, this has reminded me to put my order in for a couple of tubs of goose fat for the Christmas roasties.

Walmart are doing their silly price Turkeys again.

3-5kg = $10
5-7kg = $15
7+kg = $20

They didn't have many smaller ones (not unusual) so they priced up the 5-7s as $10 too and mother in law got two of those instead of the smaller ones.

Some cashiers also scan based based on type off food, I know at my local store they will try and do all the meat at the same time to pack it in the same bag, try to keep cans together and so on.

I find it I load the belt by food type, they don't pick and choose from the belt to try and keep similar items together.

We hardly ever buy a lot at once, so I just use self check out normally, easier as I don't like standing there waiting for the cashier, and the machine doesn't try to do small talk, I even have various codes for produce memorized so I don't have to even look them up anymore.....