We’ve seen high technology replace jobs at grocery stores with self-checkouts. But now low technology is eating them too.
This is why my sister doesn’t have summer work:
Her local Hannaford supermarket replaced human baggers with these Wal-Martesque bagging turnstiles. What was often a job for students or people with disabilities has now become another duty for cashiers. And frankly, they’re not very good at it.
During my most recent trip to Hannaford, my cashier was particularly slow doing the work for meant for two people. She picked through everything one-by-one to find like items—first the canned goods, then the meats, then the frozen stuff. Each item was individually fished out, scanned, and placed into the plastic bags on the turnstile. While trying to avoid squishing my bread or cracking my eggs (work normally reserved for the bagger), she was taking up my time.
Hannaford might be saving themselves from paying minimum wage workers to share the bagging burden, but they are annoying their customers. What’s worse, shoppers often leave behind goods they’ve paid for because they were hidden somewhere on the turnstile.
For those who were luckier than my sister to get a job at Hannaford, they were probably sent to the parking lot on shopping cart duty—until someone finds a way to do that task automatically too.
I totally agree with you. Since Hannaford made this change, I seen fewer shoppers in their store. I used to shop there every week, but now I shop at a different store. I only go there to pick up a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk, and the store is always empty.
My pet peeves about Hannaford:
They eliminated the baggers and created one new position. A person stands at the entrance to the checkouts and directs you to the shortest line. This insults my intelligence. I am smart enough to pick the shortest line. After all, I have been doing it my whole life. Kohl’s has a similar system where they corral all the shoppers into one line before they reach the check out, but they do not insult your intelligence. A shopper does not want to feel stupid!
Also, it takes too long for the cashier to check people out and bag at the same time. They can’t do everything right, that is why they squish the bread.
I expect Walmart to have low prices and no baggers. That is one way they keep the prices down, but when I pay full price at Hannaford, I except to have a bagger pack my groceries correctly so that the bread doesn’t get squished and so I don’t go home without a bag.
I was a grocery store bagger in Queens, NY for over twenty years. I was not paid by the store I was working at; rather I was paid by the customers themselves for packing and transporting their groceries to either their car or their home for whatever tips they deemed me worthy enough to receive. I was well known in the neighborhood as someone who was honest, trustworthy and capable, ready to help with any task and, with light complaining, able to do whatever was asked of me. Nearly all of the managers and sub-managers knew me, but they actively kept me from obtaining actual paid employment there and, when I was offered employment, the manager who made the offer was quickly and mercilessly fired, saying that he had stolen money (which this person would never do; it wasn’t in his character).
Somewhere along the line, a customer complained to the upper level management that I had somehow insulted one of his family members, and this person making the complaint was a prominent figure in the housing complex across the street. Needless to say, I was told that I was not allowed to come inside and bag anymore, thereby cutting nearly 75% of my “wages”…but when the manager left for the day late at night, the night manager took pity on me and let me come in,for which I will always remain grateful, and it kept my financial head above water…for a time.
In February of 2009, the main manager came back to the store late at night and found me bagging. I was thrown out of the store in a nefarious manner and told that if I ever set foot inside again, the police would be called and I would be taken away. Having lost my main source of income, four days later, I put in the appropriate papers…to start receiving public assistance.
There are no more bagging jobs anymore, and those that are being done now are being done at stores which are not union; the store where I worked was a union shop (how they never found out about me, I have no idea) and being done by mostly foreign-speaking persons. They are at the mercy of the people that they serve; obtaining in a week what a checker in the same store usually makes in a day. I speak from the only experience I have, which is bagging groceries for most of my pre-teen and adult life.
I’m sorry that this happened to you. Bagging is just one of the jobs that have been replaced by technology.