The question that sometimes keeps me awake at night is: what on earth do people do with all those plastic bags?

I seem to be the only person who brings her own

We do our big food shop on Base, always two trolley's, of course there are packer's but really they piss fart about so slow I end up packing most of it my self, they take it out to the car and pop it in the boot and in exchange you are expected to give a tipp so I feel $2 is enough.

In my case ... they come in very handy for collecting all the doggie deposits in the garden each day!

Saves buying poop collecting bags!

I do try to reuse my bag's, but sometime's the cuboard explode's

I stood waiting my turn at Pick n save the other day and the couple infront of me were soooo slow it was driving me mad. No packers that day unfortunately. The lady then wrote the slowest check for the shopping while her husband packed. She then proceeded to fill out her entire check book...I was getting really frustrated as by then the assistant started ringing up my goods and putting everything on the rear area, I asked the lady if she could move so that I could get around the back to pack my goods and she looked at me as if I was really rude. She didnt move so I asked again if she could let me pass and she tutted and moved out the way. I then packed my goods at a rate of knots to prove a point. I paid and left while her husband was still packing their stuff.

Only yesterday my hubby went ape shit to a checkout women who was very rude to him by saying "cant you read" when he was inquireing about a price, well he through more than a few F**k's at her, then she had the cheek to say "have a nice day" his words were "well I was till now"

Customer Service Representative. That was my official title when I worked at Sainsbury's in the UK. And yes we did have the cushy chairs to sit on (can't imagine how they do it here...yikes!) but when I worked there, right before we moved back over here, they had just instigated packing for their customers. What a pain in the royal bum that was!! Most people were so accustomed to packing for themselves that you had to literally pry the shopping out of their hands. Other people were quite defensive/independent whatever and absolutely wanted to do it themselves. I don't blame them, I always preferred to do it myself as well. It took some getting used to when we moved over here, I wanted to wrestle my groceries out of the check out clerk's hands as well.

depends on the state......but it's not like walmart have a great rep for being good employers anyway...

Errr...I use them as bin bags mostly...but did wish they would have those 10p bags for life thingy like they had at tesco's and sainsburys...you do get a discount of 5c if you bring your own cotton bags though...

I'd love to reuse the grocery store bags but they're so thin that some of them don't make it home with a tear in them and I've lost very small items of shopping that way.

I do recycle my carrier bags and there's bins at the entrance of grocery stores where you can drop them off.

I do like the idea of Waitrose, back in the UK, where you pay 15p (?) for a very strong grocery store bag, and it's replaced when it wears out free of charge.




NC Penguin

Sainsbury's (and maybe ASDA) is like that as well. In fact Sainsbury's would give you 2p a bag back in cash if you brought your own bags. Most people put their refund back into a charity box at the front of the store. A great idea in my opinion.

There seems to be a big difference in the attitude of checkout staff between the UK and the US. My (US) fiancee loves going to the supermarket in England mainly because they have plenty of checkouts and the staff work quickly and are helpful. Here in the US you usually have to wait in line for 15 minutes before being served.

You have to be joking me!! You tip the bag-packers?

I would never tip a person who was doing something that I felt more than happy to do myself for free.

I have to agree that the store checkout staff are not the most customer focused bunch of people... I went into a store (Wegmans) a couple of weeks ago and picked up a four pack of beer (I didn't notice that it was before 8am).

I went up to the counter and I got a dirty look from the lady behind the counter... My purchase disappeared under the counter very quickly and she proceeded to rant at me about how you can't buy alcohol before 8am. When I said that I hadn't seen the sign (I hadn't) she started the whole "can't you read?" speech.

I was f***ing fuming! All it would have taken was for her to simply say "I'm sorry, but you can't buy alcoholic beverages before 8am!".

Wierd thing is that my wife is always going on about how America is sooooo much more into customer service than England.

My husband was the same, when he came to England he said he thought everyone was rude in the shops. This only being because when you enter a store in the UK you don't have 'greeters' and the check out assistants don't have parrot lines to recite to every customer with a huge smile thrown in!

My take on it all is that in the UK if you get good service it's because the assistant actually wants to help you ... in the US they all have lines which give the impression that they want to help you ... but if you actually need help it can result in total confusion, maybe because the training didn't include anything beyond how to smile, etc?

I tend to prefer the UK version where a smile is genuine, rather than the false version dished out here. But then again, when you go into a UK store and the assistant behaves like you are really inconveniencing him/her by buying something you can't help but be annoyed ... they are paid to do a job and if they can't be bothered to do it well they should get the push.

"Hi there, how are you today?"

Are you supposed to answer this question or not? I always answer with "fine, how are you?" and am usually ignored but on the odd occasion I don't reply they repeat the question until I do answer. Then I'll get a checkout operator who gives me her life story which pisses off the person behind me.

"Thanks, Amanda and have a great day/afternoon/evening". What's all that about, they don't need to say my name, in fact a simple "bye" would be OK.
I then find myself saying "You too" in a cheery voice. If my friends could hear me they'd wet themselves I think.