Bag Lady

It's time for another edition of, "Things at Hannaford that bug me" Today's topic was suggested by a coworker and I'm surprised I hadn't thought of it before....let's talk bags. For now I won't even get into those canvas "save the environment" bags or even our Paper bags. Right now let's just focus on the plastic bags.

Now the bags we use at the store are nothing special. Just your average run-of-the-mill plastic bags. Aside from what we put into the bags our customers don't think much of them, but for us Cashiers and Baggers it's a different story. These bags can be the bane of our existences, or ok the bane of our shifts at the store.

At times you cannot get them to separate or open so that you can put items into them. Of course this always happens when you're in a hurry, you have no bagger and it's a big order, or it's nearly time for your break/lunch/end of shift. We've struggled to get these bags open to the point where we need to do the ole lick the finger trick to get the darn thing open. Not what some of our customers like to see but hey I don't see them running down and helping me out.

Other times you go to take the bag you've just filled with merchandise off the rack and one, or more bags come with it. This is obviously a defect in production, but still annoying none-the-less. Now we have to tear off the extra bags, no sense giving the customer empty bags, which sometimes takes a little pulling. Now we have these loose bags to deal with which are such a pain. They just don't work right unless they are on the lil holders we have, but we can't just throw them out. It's a perfectly good bag, just loose from the group. These we try and save for small orders where one bag is all we need. No sense fighting with a loose bag for a big order.

Our bags like most nowadays are thinner to cut down on the amount of plastic used to make them. This is all well and good, eco friendly and all that, but the down side to that is they rip and tear easier. To be fair to the bags though there are some products out there that seem to be packaged in such a way to create bagging trouble. It seems as if the corners of all boxed items have gotten sharper. I swear some of these packages rip through a bag like it was nothing. All the cashier or bagger can do is groan inwardly and re-bag or double bag the ripped one and move on.

Some nights it seems as if the bags have conspired against us. I only work 4-5 hour shifts but when the entire time you're fighting with just about every bag it can be a very long shift indeed. On those nights I adore the customers who say, "I don't need a bag" My heroes!