to have found myself saying "will you please stop touching my shopping?"

[ICBINEG]

Okay so ordinarily I would imagine anyone saying that to be a card carrying nutto control freak....but...

I have tried...I really have...to make peace with the "can I help you with your packing" charity collecting gang that seem to be perpetually staking out the end of the tills in my local super market. I have tried to not feel imposed upon that I have to defend my right to pack my own bloody shopping while being made to feel guilty about it....

I have a system when packing...designed to get through the hairy bit before my toddler time bomb detonates as rapidly as possible. It is fast, it is efficient and it is my fucking shopping anyway (I digress).

So I have learnt to say, oh so very politely, that "no, I would not like any help with my packing". Which is exactly what I said today.

Normally this results in the charity packer moving out of the way, or even going to a different till end to help out there for a while...but not today.

Today's charity packing woman is determined to "own the space" at the end of the conveyor so that I cannot actually park my trolley there while..you know...packing my stuff into it.

So I take the first two items and slot them into their assigned bags. When I look up she holding my quiche (well this is an MN story after all). She is looking at the bags like "which one does this go in", I look at her like "you don't know because it's MY fucking system" and hold out my hand for the quiche and file it correctly. The 4th and 5th items go in fine...but then one of my bags falls over and the extra second it takes me to right it, affords my nemesis the chance to snatch my eggs. I feel I cannot let this go without comment...so I not only hold my hand out to receive the eggs but remind the woman that " no, really I prefer to do this myself".

Things progress apace, without intervention, and I begin to relax, feeling the battle has been won. I then do what I always do, which is leave the soft squishy bread out on the end of the conveyor while I pack the heavier items first. This is a fatal mistake as it leads the charity packer to believe that some sort of cataclysmic packing failure has occurred that, presumably, can only be corrected with her assistance. She seizes this golden opportunity with both hands and proudly dumps my bread into the fridge back (on top of the milk and next to the raw meat etc.) and beams wildly in triumph.

Which is when I say the thing that no sane person in the history of the world has ever said.

""will you please stop touching my shopping?"

Is this it? Have I left sanity behind? AIBU?

[ChewingOnLifesGristle]

Yaddnbu. I would hate it too, And my ds has been involved in packing shopping. Dh took him along to koin in, but I was against it. I think it's flippin aanoying.

Apparantly in does pay well for whatever you happen to be collecting for. Maybe people are paying in the hope of being left alone.

[sallysparrow157]

I was at asdas once on either children in need or comic relief day and there were loads of bag packing for charity annoying people. I assumed they were collecting for aforementioned good cause. No, they were a bunch of teenagers from a local private school collecting money so they could go on a sports trip to the states. That massively gave me the rage, they were taking advantage of the fact that people may assume they were collecting for a big charity event but they were actually trying to get us to pay for them to go off on a jolly.

[ButtercupsAreFlowers]

Thrilled by this - thank you, OP. So glad to discover I'm not alone in having a packing system - I get horribly stressed at the thought of anyone interfering with my shopping, and yes my system is inviolable. Utterly logical, but somehow a mystery to anyone else. Of course bread has to go in last - what else would one do?! I don't think I could cope even with someone unloading it from the trolley onto the conveyor belt - because I unload it in the order that I want to pack it. Doesn't always work perfectly - which is why I ask for the belt to be switched off once stuff has gone through. Somehow I find myself breathing too fast if it's all whooshing at me down the conveyor belt and it gets all muddled up. Feeling stressed just thinking about it...

[bootsycollins]

at correctly filing a quiche!

[LEMisdisappointed]

She clearly wasn't a mumsnetter - otherwise she would have said "did you mean to be quite so rude"

I cannot STAND it when people help me pack, a charity packer would make me cry i think. I have noticed that our local sainsbury sometimes have CHILDREN doing it!

[JackNoneReacher]

Of course YANBU.

And thank you for the incredibly long OP which I thought was necessary to convey the complexities of your system (and who doesn't have such an indepth loading/filing/packing system in place?) and also how very reasonable you were with said charity worker. I'd go as far as saying she was a bit crazy to think she could touch your eggs like that.

I once breached boot loading protocol (distracted by feral children) and when I reopened the boot my wine fell out and smashed. In the school car park. Hideous.

[Tapirbackrider]

Nice to know that my dh isn't alone with his grocery packing system - when he sees a packing 'helper', he normally approaches and tells them he'll pay to keep them away from the shopping. Works a treat

OP - YANBU, and very restrained too!

[lisianthus]

Ooh, that PA jazz hands thing would have given me the rage.

I think supermarkets should have at least one aisle that is charity bag packer free. If they then see that it is jammed with people trying to avoid the packers, then they should have a word with the packers.

Our supermarkets here are set up so that the checkout operator stands in front of a frame holding a bag open. You hand her something, she scans it, then puts it in a bag. You therefore get things packed as you want them because you contol the order in which she receives them. It's just as fast as the operator flinging your shopping onto an extension of the bench past the till and far more efficient. You don't get the situation where people are jamming things in bags, fishing out money and holding up people behind them all at the same time.

[Oscalito]

This is why I can't do online shopping. I don't mind a supervised pack by the checkout operator, as long as he or she is over 15, but I can't be the thought of what could happen if the packing was being done without me present. Not to mention the fact that the milk could be shortdated, the apples could be bruised....

[complexnumber]

Lovely thread OP. You have a very observant eye and you made me laugh.

Can we have more from you please!

[garlicnutty]

Aldi, you're not supposed to get on the conveyor yourself!

[PorridgeBrain]

As someone who has done charity bag packing twice recently (who hopefully didn't behave anywhere near like this on either occasion!), this made me laugh - well handled OP!

[PoisonedApple]

Thank god there are other people like this! Could I have some sympathy and advice please on how to deal with my 'helpful' OH who insists on assisting in putting the shopping away and at the same time re-organising things he doesn't think are efficiently stored? Aaaargh.

[ICBINEG]

poisoned isn't this the same as with toddlers? You give them a cupboard /bag of their own in which they may do as they please but keep the lion share to yourself?

[Oldraver]

I dont like anyone packing my bags but I usually give them some money anyway as I feel guilty. There is a checkout opertaot on the Co-Op that always tries to pack your bags and looks confused when you ask her not too.

I too have a system but also dont like my bag too heavy