A recent CBC News item hit home for me. Well, to be precise, the comments that followed the article hit home and made me just a little bit cranky. The people who pooh-poohed the whole issue have no idea how difficult checking out groceries can be.

The discussion centred around the ways in which our grocery-buying experience has changed in recent years. Now, in most major grocery stores in Canada, customers pack their own bags. Some stores still have people who do that and even take your groceries out to your car for you, but those services have become increasingly rare.

The shift in expectations around bagging developed following the ban on single-use plastic bags which, in turn, led to us all having a car trunk-full of reusable tote bags, grocery-store bags, and promotional bags of various shapes and sizes. Because we are all good people who want to save the planet, we have been happy to shift away from single-use bags to multi-use bags, and we feel almost proud to do so.

Then, on the heels of the removal of plastic grocery store bags, came Covid 19. The pandemic rapidly caused cashiers to be reluctant to handle anything that might conceivably carry undesirable trace elements that could make them sick, and, who can blame them? As I look inside my own bags I realize that I rarely clean them, and when I do it probably isn’t to any sterilization standard. So, those of us with a collection of multi-shaped bags containing residual detritus are now left to pack our own groceries.

People who go to the grocery store with a partner are ahead of the game when it comes to the checkout. One person can load the goods at one end and the other person can bag them at the other. Whoever is closest to the till can pay the bill. That works out quite well and even allows for some friendly chit-chat with the cashier.

Solo shoppers, on the other hand, find themselves in stressful situation. After you have found a checkout line that seems to be moving efficiently, you have to load your groceries on the conveyor belt in time to get your store’s “rewards” card from your wallet or phone, and remember to put that little separating bar between your items and those of the next person.

Once the cashier starts to process your shopping, the items are rapidly placed onto the exit conveyor which doesn’t move until you press the hidden green button. If you let the items begin to pile up, you get “the look.” Then, after you press the button and move the items along, you pull out one bag after another from your bag nest and all thoughts of careful loading fly out of the window. In order to keep up with the rapid flow of foodstuffs you might put eggs on the bottom and cans of diced tomatoes on the top. It doesn’t matter. You just have to pack, pack, pack as fast as you can.

Then, before you have finished packing, the cashier has rung through your bill and is looking to you to pay up. Forget about the green button. Now you have to find the necessary bank card in your phone or your wallet. And, be quick now, because those three people in line behind you are waiting to check out their groceries, and any hesitation makes them wish they had chosen a different checkout line.

Fortunately, I am fairly tech-savvy and I can usually find my card quickly, but I have never once found it before I have finished packing my grocery bags. There are always items waiting on the belt. And, as sure as eggs are eggs, the cashier will begin processing the next person’s items before I have finished loading up my cart–even when there is a second conveyor belt that could be used! The cashier’s instinct is to keep loading up that one belt, using a kind of grocery store coercion that is not unlike the control techniques used by abusive exes.

Once I realized how stressful this whole situation was, I tried to think of ways to circumvent the problem. The first solution was to go instead to a smaller store where there are friendly cashiers and bag-packers. This works very well for occasions when I only need a few items but is a bit expensive for longer shopping lists.

The second solution was to go to the major grocery store but not use bags. Instead, I put all my shopping back into the cart directly and I only put the items into bags once I was back at my car out in the parking lot. That worked well, but I wouldn’t want to do that when it is raining or snowing.

The third solution is the best. I am now getting my groceries delivered to my home. Yes, there are costs, but they are small and more than matched by the cost of the impulse items that I don’t buy. I can select items at my leisure in the evening and the next day a cheerful friendly delivery person puts them on my kitchen counter.

I may never enter a grocery store again.