Grocery store etiquette

Two articles caught my eye today that revolved around behaviors that drive grocery store employees bonkers. The first involved bagging etiquette at Aldi stores, and the second touched on shopping cart courtesy at Trader Joe’s locations. These stories prompted me to think about how the grocery shopping experience has evolved in the last several years. The COVID-19 pandemic really threw a spanner into the works when it came to buying food, but even prior to that the supermarket landscape looked different than in the past.

Setting aside the upheaval of pandemic-related changes to shopping habits, the biggest change in recent years is the ascendance of self-checkout stations. At first, self-checkouts were aimed at “express” lanes with just shoppers who had only a few items to purchase. The biggest issue then was that someone with a cart full of items would hog the stations, slowing down others who only had a handful of products. Gradually, self-checkouts expanded until they became the predominant method for everyone regardless of quantity.

However, surveys indicate that shoppers generally do not favor these devices, preferring to have a cashier handling the checkout process. Shoppers become less loyal to stores that rely heavily on self-checkout and fraud is increasing at the devices, further weakening the trend to replace humans with machines. Some stores are even removing self-checkout aisles and are returning to having employees handle checkouts.

Another issue in the checkout aisle is that some shoppers are so busy on their phones that they are slow to load up the scanner belt and/or handle the payment process. That inattention is one issue that annoys cashiers, but bagging during the checkout process was the number one irritating behavior reported by Aldi cashiers. That slows down the scanning, and since one factor of Aldi employees’ rating is their speed, that is frustrating to the cashiers.

One way to avoid these poor customer behaviors is to avoid having checkout lanes altogether. Retailers are exploring technology like “smart” carts that will tally the items shoppers place in the carts, along with other methods to automatically ring up and bill customers without the need for waiting in line. However, those devices have proved difficult to replicate at scale, so they are still years away from widespread adoption.

The Trader Joe’s shopping cart issue is driven by the frenzied shopping experience at the stores. While I love TJ’s products, shopping there raises my anxiety level because it feels like everyone around me is participating in the game show Supermarket Sweep. I’m a label reader and I like to mull things over; both can result in a lot of side-eye from TJ shoppers. I’ve learned to map out a game plan before entering the store so I don’t hold up other customers. While a leisurely shopping experience may never occur at Trader Joe’s, there is one store near me with aisles twice as wide as most others, so I go there whenever I can.

The common thread in all of the bad grocery store behaviors is respect, or rather a lack thereof. Pulling into an express lane with an overloaded cart, parking your cart in the middle of the aisle while you browse, getting in the way of the clerk, and not paying attention in the checkout line are all forms of disrespect and selfishness. I don’t think that can be fixed by technology, so no matter what cool gadgets supermarkets implement, people are sure to find a novel way to annoy their fellow shoppers.