This is going to be a short blog tonight, as I am wiped out. I spent the morning shoveling, and was the only cashier to show up for work for the closing shift.
Speaking of my job at the market, we don't have baggers, the cashiers both ring up the customer and bag the items. The town I live in has an ordinance banning plastic bags, so we use either heavy-duty paper bags with handles or people bring in their own reusable shopping bags. We also have to charge a fee (again, town mandated) for the paper bags. So a lot of people try very hard to cram as much into one paper bag as possible in order to save that extra nickel. Here is where my youth spent playing video games has come in very useful - successfully bagging as many groceries as possible into one bag is very much like playing Tetris, only the rows don't disappear when you've filled them. I actually have people come through my check-out lane specifically because I'm really good at bagging. Not only can I fit a lot in the bags but I don't put the eggs, the bread, or the bananas on the bottom.
I bagged groceries in high school and some of college. I learned to enjoy it because I made it into a game. It is very much like Tetris. 
Yeah, there's a certain amount of pride and accomplishment when you manage to get 'em all in the one bag the customer brought that they didn't think would be big enough.
There are actually 2 stores where I live that make the customer bag their own items. Its cool how tetris comes in handy like that.
Some of my customers do bag their own groceries. It makes me cringe because they usually don't do as good a job as I would have (egg carton packed in sideways! that one drives me nuts!)
See i am really good at Tetris because it's 2D, but my spatial awareness has never been great, so i still bag my own groceries like a caveman.
I first learned of that bagging rule in L.A. in 2014, and Dallas enacted the same thing shortly thereafter. I get it, and would likely support it, but it's annoying when you're not aware of that law or forget change. One reason i could never live in L.A. is everywhere requires cash and they don't believe in splitting checks for groups in restaurants.
Well that was a weird, unrelated rant. Anyway, congrats on being the responsible one! Tends to be a gamer ...
We just add the bag fee onto the grocery bill. It's not a separate charge. And we have a big sign at the entrance telling people about the fee, along with several signs in the parking lot reminding people to bring in their reusable bags. Most people are cool with it, but one woman freaked out on me and stated loudly that she would NEVER shop at our establishment again because we charged her for the bag and wouldn't give her the nickel back if she brought the bag back. The customer in line behind her told her not to let the door hit her in the butt on the way out. I almost lost it then and there.
I wouldn't flip out on the cashier, but it wasn't as well telegraphed in L.A., maybe because the locals were used to it. But then, really, how many "locals" are in L.A.?
I always go do my food shopping late at night and so there is always just one person at checkout. I often want to put my items on the conveyor in order of the way they are bagged but I'm not sure what the system is. Certain things aren't bagged together, that's about all I know.
There are no hard and fast rules for bagging. But start with the heavy stuff and put the eggs, bread, and chips on the belt last. Cleaning suppiles and other chemicals are usually bagged separate, if you have someone who knows what they're doing (or has taken a food safety course).
My cashier is good, but I always have to rearrange some things for my own reasons. It's fine.
I always do the heavy stuff last. Guess I'll switch it up.
there's a Simpsons episode where Homer fits all this crap in his car Tetris style. It's pretty funny.
I think Andrew tried to post that below.
All I get for this is that an error occured.
Most stores I've seen here, even big box stores like Target and Walmart, have the cashiers do the bagging. Come to think of it, the only place I've seen baggers in the past few years is at the base commissary at Tinker AFB when I went with my dad to fill his meds at the base hospital. I've never lived in an area that didn't allow paper bags, though. I have some of the reusable bags but never remember to bring them.
We allow paper, but not plastic. We charge for the paper bags, though.
Walmart now charges for plastic bags where I live. I see a lot of people bring in their own bags to save that nickel.
That's actually the general idea. A lot of communities here in Maine have banned the use of plastic bags and charge the five cents for paper to get more people to use reusable bags.
We almost always use re-usable bags and bag our own. I usually avoid bagging bananas. I bag everything else then look sheepishly at the wife while she finds a place for them. It avoids the inevitable clip round the ear 'ole for screwing up. :)
Bananas are tough. Placement is completely dependent on how ripe they are. If they're still green, you can pack lightweight stuff on top of them, but if they're ripe (or over-ripe), definitely on top of everything except the bread.
I hate those bag rules. I like to blame San Francisco for starting this, and it spread all the way down to my little area of Southern California. My mom and pop record shop held out for the longest time until they were forced to sell cloth bags. I like to fight the power and pay the .10 per bag.
We have a grocery store here where you bag your own stuff and I too turn it into a game of Tetris.
I'm all for the bag rules. It means keeping that much more plastic out of the ecosystem and the waste stream. Plastic doesn't decompose, and there's a floating mass of it out in the Pacific ocean that isn't going to go away. Thousands of baby albatross chicks die every year from being fed plastic, as do sea turtles that mistake the bags for jellyfish. Europe has been charging for bags fo a long time, we had to pay for our bags in 1980 when we lived in Norway. It's not that difficult to bring a reusable shopping bag or a backpack and it's better for the environment. Yeah, I just ranted at you. No, I'm not sorry I did. What did you expect a ranger to do?
That's fine, my whole thing against it is we were told paper is bad, here's plastic, and now plastic is bad here's paper. The local shops charge .10 for bags if they are plastic or paper which is the same stuff we had before. If these companies wanted to do something about it, don't offer the option. Go full on cloth bags and force people to adopt to it. Offer up some kind of deal where the cloth bags will be cheap for a month or so and then don't offer bags. I think its more of a cash grab than actually helping with the environment.
Our bag fee goes back into the community. The market takes the money and donates it to a community charity at the end of the month. Frequently, it goes to Freeport Community Services for the food pantry, summer day camp scholarships, the free lunch program during school vacations, the heating assistance program, etc. And we sell reusable cloth bags for two bucks.
I know the feeling. Pretty much most of the jobs I've had involved dealing with truck unloads, and freight. Loading up pallets, and carts as fast as possible is a lot like Tetris knowing how to stack all the boxes just right. In fact I used to tell people who couldn't stack that they should play some Tetris since it was a lot like stacking pallets.