Made to pay for a bag in the supermarket

[christmasfoodshop]

Just picked up a few bits for Xmas food shop.

Had baby with me and she was tired so getting a bit irritable.

Scanned all my shopping at self checkout, ended up with a quite a lot more than I needed (as you do).

Baby crying. Paid for my shopping.

Realised I needed a bag at this point so got one and put all my stuff in there.

Go to walk out.

The shop assistant said I needed to pay for a bag. Fair enough.

She said I had to rescan it.

Baby now screaming and wriggling out my arms. Heavy bag of shopping in the other hand.

She made me wait there until she'd scanned a bag, pressed 'check-out' , selected 'pay by card' and then I had to scan. All for bloody 30p.

In hindsight, I do understand I had to pay for the bag but I was so bloody frustrated and just wanted to get out of there that I paid 30p for the bag and stormed off. Left my giant trolley in the middle of self checkout. I was at my wits end. I felt like I was at school being held back by the teacher.

It's 30 bloody pence. Let me go!!

She acted like she was earning money out of making people pay for bags.

YABU - everyone ALWAYS must pay for bags no matter what

YANBU - in the circumstance, she should have just let me go all for the sake of 30p plastic bag.

All those going into legalities if the bag only contains raw meat, razor blades or medication then you do not legally have to pay for it. Also self service makes it virtually impossible to charge correctly as they don’t know if you brought a bag from home or picked one up. 90% of people simply click ‘no bags’ and that includes the staff members who handed them the bags! Yes the op should not complain about paying in the circumstances, but it totally depends what she purchased so there is no correct answer

They don't, by law, have to charge you for a bag for raw meat, etc. it doesn't mean you don't have to pay for it if they do charge for them!

And the "90% of people simply click 'no bags'..." is made-up bollocks. You can't possibly know the stats, and I don't believe it for a second - most people don't steal. You just made that up to justify your own stealing of bags.

@hangingonfordearlife1 Same. It makes me positively giddy. Maybe we could go to therapy together for our Kleptomania?

Letting you off for the 30p is not worth her job. It's a legal requirement now go charge for bags. The retailer can be fined, all for 30p

Sorry, I understand how frazzled and awful it must have felt at that point, but YABU. Not the attendants fault and she can’t ‘just give you a free bag’

They used to be left on the self scan machines at my store (they have a hook built into the machine where they are supposed to be hung up) but people stole them at such a rate that the company made the decision that the bags should be removed from each individual machine to a central location.

That meant that the staff could more easily monitor who had picked up bags (and whether they had scanned them) but also because customers had to physically collect the bag - as opposed to them being just available at the checkout - they were subconsciously more likely to see the bag as an item they had chosen to purchase and therefore more likely to scan it like all their other purchases without prompting than when it was just sitting there on the machine.

Unfortunately this didn't last long as people were still stealing them so now, in my store at least, the policy is that the self scan staff have to carry the bags with them and you have to ask for one, so the staff can again more easily monitor whether or not you then scan/pay for it.

Being too disorganised to do something you know you have to do is a reason to sort yourself out, not be cross with other people for your own failings.

Thanks for that 28 pages in the legal loophole appears and in celebration of our capitalist rule of law society I look forward to its triumphal first use. I shall pack a barristers wig for the occasion.

Ha yes! such a terrible affliction

I'm sorry but you have to pay like everyone else. I've got a preschooler and we've had baby moments and toddler ones and we still pay for our shopping and bags. It's not just 30p it's the principle you can't get it for free just because your baby is being difficult. Wait till you have a toddler having a meltdown. 🙄

These have transformed my life. Just need to unpack once home, fold the one in current use up, and return it to key ring. Cost = 5 plastic bags each, and they last indefinitely.

It's worth being an organised old bat, sometimes.

The only people to blame are the Lib Dems for insisting on the bag charges coming in.

I agree that you should pay for the bag or be a bit more organised but I can’t help being nostalgic for the time when supermarkets often had bag packers as well as people on the till. My favourite experience when my son was small was I had bought something in a glass bottle and as he was a young toddler sat in the trolley I had said to him not to touch ( which obviously made it more attractive) - anyway we got to the till and I started to unload. Inevitably it was me who dropped the bottle - smashed glass and contents everywhere, crying toddler because he thought it was something he had done. The staff were absolutely lovely - sent me off to get a replacement - meantime cleared up the mess, put the rest of the shopping through, looked after my son, packed the shopping into bags.

She can’t decide to waiver other people’s money - it is not her decision and would be a disciplinary matter. If she owned the shop then fair enough, I think she should have done.

Late stage monopolistic rapacious capitalism has hollowed out the social civil space and replaced the human element with machines and algorithms. As humanity falls before the machines triumphs a few rebellious humans will see small acts of civil disobedience and rebellion as the last sparks of the human spirit. As Dario Fo said Can't Pay Won't Pay - nick those bags with pride or remember to bring some next time you shop, every little helps !https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can't_Pay%3F_Won't_Pay!

near the beginning of the bag tax I used to just take a bag in protest. I don’t see it as stealing, shops had no problem giving them away for free before, it was baked into their business model. It was a protest against the tax, against the fact paper bags were also taxed, and those charging more than govt amount are just sticking their arm in. I don’t just take them anymore because I’m scared of being caught but I still don’t believe we should have to pay for them.

You don't see stealing as stealing?

Interesting take on it...

The money that is raised by bag sales goes to charity. The supermarkets report their bag sales and the resulting charity donations to the government.

The government then publishes the stats around what was paid by whom to where.

It's not the case that it's just the supermarket profiteering from selling bags.

God of all the things to be radicalised against state power and corruption over, imagine choosing 30p plastic bags as your hill to die on. Pathetic.

Amazing that we've reached 26 pages discussing the concept of "you have to pay for things in shops". OP should have gone the whole hog and argued her entire big shop should've been free because she's a Stressed Mother.

When the supermarket charge above the government set rates they’re the ones that profit. Only the govt rate gets sent to whatever charity you’re talking about. And I reckon very little of it. But it’s a tax, not a purchase price, so it’s not stealing. It should never have been introduced. Carrot not stick please.

She should’ve let you leave without paying for the bag imo. These companies are robbing both their customers and their employees with their ridiculous prices and low wages. I’ll never understand retail workers who act like the stores mini police force when the company would replace them in a heart beat. It’s 30p, she could’ve easily turned a blind eye, I’ve worked multiple retail jobs and I’ve done so in similar situations.

It's because they'd replace them in a heartbeat that the workers do as they're told, and that includes charging for bags.
I doubt very much if it's a vested personal interest in people paying for bags or ensuring the shareholders get every penny in profit possible, but more likely that it's because they have a set of policies to follow and not doing so leads to concequences for them.
Most of which the customer is oblivious to and wouldn't care if they did know because it doesn't affect them, they get a freebie and a bit of validation and the worker risks getting into trouble but who cares about that? Their problem isn't it?

But still, let's expect them to mitigate against the companies profit making policies at their own expense, customer service innit!

I totally get it, I get really annoyed too. Every single time I go to the supermarket they expect me to pay for my shopping, no matter if I’m having a bad day or not. It’s just not fair is it?

YABNU - these things happen and if I was queuing behind someone in your circumstances I would offer to add their bag cost to my shopping bill.

Probably the nicest reply yet. No stitching, no condemnation,no fake revolutionary zeal (me!) just an act of kindness. I'll buy that or maybe nick it surreptitiously and give it to her !

Entitled much