The Wal-mart Experience, other stores are available

This is probably the most ridiculous post I'll ever make, but its stooges so why not.

You open your fridge, no beer and no food. You go to the freezer, you ate your last pizza last night. You open the cupboard, and all thats there is half a pack of cream crackers and the dregs of a bottle of salad cream. You've delayed it as long as you reasonably can, you've got to go shopping.

You go round, fill your trolley with the various items you need, realise you need another bottle of wine or 4 then head to the check outs. This is where my question arrives. You've unloaded the contents of said trolley onto the conveyor and the person behind the till, usually either a middle aged woman or a student, starts scanning barcodes and throwing cans of beans and lumps of cheese at you.

At this point I spend a few seconds, and bag things up to go to their final destination at home, a bag or 2 for the freezer, one for the fridge, a couple of bags of canned goods etc, so that when I get home I just open the necessary doors and deposit the contents, giving the flexibility to pack the fridge and freezer stuff away, then have a coffee. Seems logical to me, but then I hear the girls in the office talking about shopping for food.

They both seem to think that the best thing to do is to load everything into whatever bags and get the hell out of there as fast as you can and separate it all at home, carrying all the bags to the different locations, or even sorting the goods into separate piles on the dining table.

Like I said, this is probably the wierdest, and more than likely the gheyest thing I'll ever post, but which pattern of shopping do you subscribe to?

Throw everything in the bags, then upon returning home, replace items in the proper receptacle. Usually baggers at the grocery store put like things together, so I've never had much trouble with the this method, and I find it much easier. And at supermarkets here or what have you, the customer doesn't usually have to bag their own items.

Only at insanely cheap discount markets do you have to bag your own stuff. Either way, you have to make sure stuff is at least sorted by refridgerated/frozen/neither, and make fragile/lightweight stuff be at the top of the bags.

Of course, this is only if you're going to make a longish trip. If the stuff will be home within a few minutes, I suppose it's ok to not sort...if you can handle things being so horribly disorganized. Usually when I get stuck doing the grocery shopping at home, it's done at the next town over, so everything will have to sit in the car for a good half an hour for the drive.

I really cant tell you the last time I had to bag my own stuffbut the person that does the bagging usually sorts it decently. Frozen stuff, baked good, cans and glass, etc. Seems the logical way of doing it.

Interesting. Looks like the Americans generally don't bag their shoppings while the Europeans do. In Israel at least I know we do. And yeah, just pack everything and get out. I hate supermarkets.

Well we have most of our food delivered thanks to tescos,but whenever i do go to a supermarket,i bloody hate it.

The title says wal-mart.....in wal-mart they just put stuff in the bag and then turn a little table thingy so that the full bag is facing you and an empty bag is facing them.

And on the subject of arrangement....personally, I'd much rather put my stuff in the bags msyelf than have somebody do it for me. I know they're bound to screw something up if they do it, so like the saying goes, if you want something done right, do it yourself. I also think that it's best to wait till you get home, because, for one, there might be a long line behind you, and you could be slowing people down by having a place for everything and everything in its place. For two, it really doesn't save any particular time at all in the long run. When you get back to the house you're just putting stuff away anyways, so what good does prearranging it do?

Interesting. Looks like the Americans generally don't bag their shoppings while the Europeans do. In Israel at least I know we do. And yeah, just pack everything and get out. I hate supermarkets.
I noticed some other differences in Swampy's little schpiel as well. We call a trolley a shopping cart, and a till is the check-out counter or whatever. Oh, and what the crap is salad creme?

The only place I've ever been to that makes you bag your own stuff is Aldi's. I hate it there- they always act like they're in such a big hurry & you're wasting their time by shopping there.

Hey! They have an Aldi's in Australia. Yeah, and you do gotta bag your own crap there. I didn't help though.

I'm assuming salad creme is salad dressing. And yeah, trolleys.... hahahah...

Aldi's! I love that place! Free boxes for all, and you can steal other people's carts to earn quarters. It's almost as good of a hang-out as Walmart.

Novus, I'm surprised you think walmart doesn't sort. Whenever I've dared to go grocery shopping at wallyworld, they're pretty good about sorting. I generally put the stuff on the belt in the order it'd go in the bag, but still, they're not bad.

Good ol' Aldi's... Making you pay a quarter for a shopping cart which you receive back upon returning the cart, so that they don't have to pay people to collect them from the parking lot. So cheap and generically good...

At any rate, I can't recall ever bagging my own groceries. One time, though, at SuperValu, the dick of a soon-to-be valedictorian of my school was my bagger. I felt quite good after telling him "That's right, bag my groceries, bitch!"

Only at insanely cheap discount markets do you have to bag your own stuff.

Thats not true everywhere. At the shoprite that I go to I generally have to bag my own things. Only rarely is there someone to do it for you. Personally I don't organize my groceries at the store, except for seperateing chemicals from food. Other then that I just try to cram as much crap in one bag that I can.

PP, I was saying wal-mart did bag it, but they did it differently than other stores.

It pleases me immensely to realise that I am not the only person bored enough to think about these things. Your lives all suck too and I'm so glad.

My life actually only becomes sucky when I come across this board......or maybe the rest of my life is sucky, but I've deemed it as normal, so when I come across this board, I automatically assume it's sucky without going to the trouble to realize.....
.......okay my head hurts.

Nope, Swampy, you're not alone. I think we should all unite in an anti-something-to-do-with-this-thread's-topic group.

We're getting an Aldi where I live. It looks strange. Like it belongs in Europe. Come to think of it, it does. Ignore me.....

We sort our shopping out while we're at the register, then when we get home, its easier to put away. Frozens together, meat together, boxes together. Blame my Mum.

Here in Hawaii... the Walmart store experiences are alot different then the other stores... for example... the have automated registers where you can walk up to them... and not have a hassle in buying your stuff fast... it just takes three minutes and your out the door... and they are only in all of the Walmart stores...

Also I am the type of shopper... that likes to go in and out of the store quickly... for if I stay in a shop to long... I feel like I am wasting my life... being like those other petty wemon or men... that stay in the store for hours on hours... I believe shopping should be fast and easy... where all shopping should be finished in 15 to 30 minutes... but then again that's just my opinion...

Did anyone else think that's too many elipses?

Not at all....though wemon is a new one.