3 Steps to Make Grocery Trips a Breeze
The habit most shoppers don’t even think about
As a former cashier and current shopper, I notice that some customers make their lives far more difficult than necessary at the grocery store.
Apparently, some people were never taught how to unload a shopping cart. Then they get upset when their groceries aren’t bagged to their liking.
But proper cart unloading is the secret sauce to ensuring your items are bagged properly and you make it home without broken eggs or bruised tomatoes.
Here are three steps to make your life easier and make cashiers and baggers very happy.
Unload Bottom Up
When you unload your cart, consider that items will get placed back into the cart in essentially the same order that they are unloaded.
So, think about the stuff that you want on the bottom of the cart — cases of water, two-liter bottles — and put those items up first. Then they will go back into the cart first and make a nice base for your other groceries.
Like Items Attract
As you set items on the belt to be scanned, keep similar items grouped together.
When unloading, put up all the canned goods together, frozen items, etc. Essentially, grouping the items together on the belt makes it more likely they will go home together.
Think Heavy to Light
Within each group of items (cold, meat, produce, etc.), load up the heaviest and least squishable items first, with the lighter and squishier items behind it.
For example, if you are unloading produce, put the non-fragile things like potatoes and onions up first, with fragile items like grapes and tomatoes at the end.
The Ideal Order
As a former cashier, this would be the item order that would make me the happiest to bag:
- Big heavy items (cases of water, kitty litter)
- Dry goods (canned goods, boxes- heaviest first)
- Cold items- excluding produce (frozen foods, dairy)
- Raw meat (let the cashier know if you want them bagged together or divided by type)
- Produce (heavy to light, with cold produce items together)
- Fragile stuff (eggs, bread)
- Any little items you want the cashier to hand to you (gum, candy bars)
It may take a little time to transition from just tossing whatever your hand hits onto the belt. Still, if you have ever complained about unrelated items getting bagged together, it is definitely a worthwhile adjustment to make.
It’s a lot harder to mess up bagging when groceries are set out this way (though I am sure some will still manage it).
