Check-out Misadventure

In many cities, Kosher consumers preferentially to their main shopping at the supermarket that has an agreement with the regional Kosher certifying agency to provide meat, deli, and baked goods under their supervision.  In my town, that's Shop-Rite, which also seems to have the lowest prices on perishables and house brands.  Being retired, I do not have to shop there on Sundays, but with yontif beginning Sunday night and needing a few urgencies, I made a regrettable exception.

Rising food prices have set in, though we generally take our vengeance at the voting booth, not the retailer who we know has to purchase the things we buy before we do.  Profit margins in the grocery industry have always been meager, competition from other grocers keen, investing in technology expensive, and customer loyalty often fragile.  Limiting overhead has high priority.  Shop-Rite did this but largely eliminating check-out cashiers in favor of self-checkout.  While there is some controversy to this from orderliness of the checkout to displacing workers whose wages are often meager, I prefer to scan and bag myself.  Today, those of us with full carts did not have that option.  All registers for more than 25 items had cashiers.

It did not go well.  When I do it myself, I place as much as I can on the conveyor, scan like items such as frozen, work two or three of my reusable bags at a time, then either add to the conveyor or just scan from the cart, as I place full bags into the cart.  The person ahead of me filled the conveyor, but as it moved forward I put as much as I could onto it with the order separator.  About a third fit on the conveyor.  She scanned my card, waved me to the bagging area, and I worked my three bags.  However, while the conveyor moved forward, she didn't stop.  The person behind me started filling up the conveyor, leaving me very little room to add more items.  Rather than pull items from the cart like I do, she stopped and waved me back to add more items to what was left of the conveyor, about a third of its length, while she resumed scanning, letting the items fall to the end table unbagged.  Thus I shuttled, while the customer behind me continued to make my share of the conveyor ever smaller.  Scrambled with my bagging, moved another full bag to my cart, leaving the bag for frozens on the end table as there were still frozens not yet scanned.  Eventually got done, but understand why I prefer to do it myself.  At one time the checkers did the bagging as they go, knew to group cold stuff and limit how many heavy bottles go in one bag, while the customer kept feeding the conveyor as the scan proceeded.  They were pros and much appreciated for what they did and more often than not how well they did it.  In many fields, proficiency as been devalued.  Or maybe they are following protocols that are not as well thought-out as they could have been.  But for whatever reason, checkout to the tune of $145 was an ordeal that I don't want to repeat.

Solutions are several.  Never shop there of Sunday.  Never buy more than 25 things at a time even if I have to shop there on consecutive days.  Maybe divide my shopping between Shop-Rite and someplace else, since Trader Joe's only has cashiers and take items out of the cart while I bag.  But I cannot load the conveyor and bag at the same time.  I can scan either from conveyor or cart, then stop to bag and scan some more.  Or maybe SR left this inept process in place as an inducement for their customers to do it themselves and thereby do it better.