We had a tetris champion today. They managed to cram everything inside of two bags we had brought.....never mind we had a stack of about 10 bags to chose from.

The spuds did a great job on top of the bananas and pots of yoghurt, as did the tins of beans on top of the eggs.

Sodding bags weighed a ton too.

Consider yourself lucky - here they drive around neighborhoods stopping at most driveways. I regularly follow a school bus down one road that stops three times at three houses within a couple of hundred feet! ... That is stupid on the part of the bus service (rules), but can't the three kids/ families agree to wait together at the middle house?

The time it takes to get the kids to school is of course nuts too- some are picked up soon after 6am from our neighborhood to go to school about 5-6 miles away for an 8am start!

It is nuts. I suppose it's mainly due to the towns not having a decent network of commuter bus stops that can be used, like we had for our school buses back home.

I forgive you.

Just this once mind.

The complete inability for people to get our kids names right. The second one, I might give you, but the first...

We just came back from a kids ID thingy and she had a different spelling on each piece they did, the finger print, teeth mould/DNA and on the video/pic.

It's not even a weird name or anything.

So is it just me who arranges stuff on the conveyor according to weight and food type? And always put the fragile stuff last. That way the checkout person puts everything in the order I want it.

Yes I do that.

No, I try to do that as well when I'm not using the self checkout. I try to organise it in the trolley as best I can, to make it easier to naturally take it out in the right order at the conveyor.

Nope.. I do that too. Then I watch as the "bagger" carefully lets everything pile up so that s/he can be sure to evenly distribute packs of soda carefully across bread / eggs / etc.

There IS one nice checkout lady / bagging guy we get that are awesome though, and really friendly.

I take my own bags and while I unload the cart M packs the bags, usually to the annoyance of the checker and the bagger, but hey, we are paying so we can pack how we want. Works ok now in our usual grocery store but usually not so good if we go some where else

THIS!!

I do this too. Its an important skill to use at the self service type checkouts like the ones at Fresh and Easy. Once the item is scanned you put each item onto a conveyor belt that brings the item up to speed before launching it onto a set of downward sloping rollers, here the item gains yet more speed until it is projected at full speed into the items at the end waiting to be packed.

My Heinze baked beans have taken out my eggs on more than one occasion

Although I prefer self scan, if given a chance I just start bagging my own things while the checkout clerk is still scanning stuff. I can't remember the last time I saw a separate bagger - it must have been at least 3-4 years ago.

After reading about the incidents with eggs getting squished, I realise I have been rather spoiled with my checker-outers. The only thing I have ever had packed in with eggs are loaves of bread, on top of the egg carton and that's something I'd do myself to save on bags.

Conclusion: we should encourage grocery stores to employ more anally retentive checkout clerks.

I do the same and I always leave a gap before I put frozen items on.

Don't get me started about the bagging person putting my groceries on the kid's seat. You know the place where the kids with dirty nappies sit. Not complaining about the kids...just don't want my shopping in there.