I have never worked in a grocery store, but I have shopped in them for over 30 years and I know what bagging issues cause problems by the time a shopper gets home. I know sometimes it’s busy and there is a long line at the check out and the mentality is “just get them bagged up and outta here asap.” That will usually make for problems. I have bagged my own groceries before when no one else was available and I know it doesn’t really take a lot of extra time to bag thoughtfully. So if I could teach Grocery Bagging 101, here would be some of my key points:

1. Do not put raw meat in the same bag with things that will not be cooked, like produce and lunch meat and cheese. Personally I prefer raw meat be put in its own bag all alone. I don’t know why, with all the warnings about raw meat right there on the label, it’s packaged in a way that blood leaks out. We don’t stand for leakage with any other product, why raw meat? Some companies are changing their packages, and I hope that trend spreads. But meanwhile, we don’t want to cross-contaminate bloody meat with fresh foods.

2. Don’t put soft things (like bananas and bread) in the same bag with hard things (cans). The soft things will get squished or bruised.

3. Not too many items are packaged in glass any more, but don’t put glass bottles in the same bag together. They clink together when the bags are picked up and can break. We had a glass bottle of apple juice break in the back of our car once. Not fun.

4. Don’t put a lot of heavy things (i.e., cans) into one bag, even if you double bag them. What a healthy 19-year-old guy can easily move from the check-out to the cart and the cart to my car takes more effort for me to move from my car through two rooms and up seven steps to the kitchen.

5. On the other hand, I’ve had multitudes of bags with just one or two items in them, and that’s a waste of resources.

6. Don’t put anything cold in the bag with anything that might be damaged by condensation (i.e., cardboard boxes). Condensation does occur even on a short drive home.

7. It helps to have frozen foods packaged together — they keep each other cold.

8. The same is true with refrigerated items.

9. I don’t necessarily want to trade life stories or become best friends over the canned green beans and paper towels, but I don’t want to be totally ignored, either. A friendly greeting or some kind of acknowledgment does wonders. (Incidentally, I feel the same holds true on the other side of the counter. I hate to see customers chatting on cell phones all through their checkout.)

10. On the job in front of customers is not the best time to gripe about your job, boss, coworkers, customers, etc. It’s not the best time to flirt with the cute cashier, either.

11. If you can’t talk and work at the same time — work. 🙂

12. If you are sent to retrieve something (say, a package of something was broken open and you are sent for a replacement), if you don’t know where the item is, ask someone right away rather than roaming around looking while the customer and checkout line is being held up waiting for you.

13. Smile! 🙂 Act like you enjoy your job, even if it is “just” a grocery store job, and it will do wonders for your customers, your coworkers, and yourself. And your boss will notice.

I hope this doesn’t sound like just the rantings of an grouchy customer. You may see hundreds of customers a day (and many of them can be less than fun, I know — I have worked in retail sales), but they only interact with a handful of workers. If they have a negative experience with any one of them it reflects on the individual and the business. Plus industriousness, attention to detail, and some amount of people skills will serve you well in any job.

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