To be irritated with supermarket staff that guard the carrier bags like rottweilers

[orangesandlemonssaythebellsofstclements]

Before I start - this is not a debate about whether or not we should be paying for carrier bags, or who's fault it is that we have to pay. I don't care. I will happily pay 30p for a carrier bag.

My issue is this - every time I go into my local Tesco, if I want a bag, I can't just take one from the end of the till or next to the self serve like you used to, I have to flag down a member of staff, ask them guiltily for a bag, which they will either take out of a closely guarded box or unclip from their belts and hand to me. But they won't just hand it to me, they'll hand it to me and say "there's the barcode" and the stand over me making sure I scan it. On a few occasions I've even had them push in front of me at the self-serve and scan it for me.

Why do they treat me, a customer who has been shopping there for over 20 years, and who has spend probably hundreds of thousands of pounds there, like I am going to steal from them? It's insulting and rude.

I've even had them snap "you must have loads of them at home by now" when I ask for one. Like it's any of their business what I buy and what I do with my purchases.

Why do they make us feel this way just for wanting to buy something they have for sale?

10 stolen is £3 loss. Loss in each supermarket is recorded every stocktake, including which items are causing the loss, and the staff responsible will get spoken to if it's a significant amount. Likely the checkout staff have repeatedly been told by their managers to do better with monitoring it.

This doesn't happen in my local Sainsbury's but they do have a ridiculous receipt scanning regime in place to prevent shoplifters.

I reckon it's deterred zero shoplifters as not having a receipt isn't going to matter to any thief with half a brain.

Power trips come is all shapes and sizes!

@TortolaParadise it’s stock control, not a power trip.

I’m with OP. If they trust you enough to let you self scan an entire shop (ie. they want you to save them money) they should trust you to pick up a bag and scan it yourself.

I needed a bag today, but I was in a hurry and all the assistants were busy. I ended up carrying the stuff out like a game of Jenga. And before the sanctimonious pipe up, I wasn’t expecting to go to the shops while I was out, I was asked to pick up some things for a relative.

Agree op it is annoying.
Asda do this too.

They make a lot of money from the bags. I know chunk is donated but they can deduct an admin fee. Which is a lot.

Yes agree!

I don’t get it either. I imagine thousands of pounds in meat, booze, cosmetics and electronics get stolen in the average week at Tesco. A bloke legged it out the door the other day, holding multiple bottles of booze, alarms blaring. No security in sight. They guard the 30p bags ( surely one of the cheapest items in store) like dragon’s gold though.

I have taken my own ever since they started guarding them (carrying them around on their wrist and being impossible to track down!!). It’s probably saved me a fortune.

My friend works in retail and last week they had back to back shop lifters all evening. While dealing with one another walked out with a £50 item.
While their bags add up it’s probably the least of their worries.

I hate it too. When I shop in Asda and have to ask for a bag I have to wait for ages while the queue mounts up as of course there aren’t enough workers to assist. They then come and scan the bag for me.

Totally sick of all the supermarket chains treating us all like criminals when it is partially their fault for people stealing! If they lowered their prices and weren’t so greedy we wouldn’t have such an epidemic of thefts.

Shopping is an awful experience now thanks to the supermarket’s shitty ideas:

Self service tills instead of staff serving us
Scan shopping as you walk around
Put shopping in own bags while you shop
Not always given a receipt

Did they honestly implement the above and expect shoplifters to not think ‘yippee!’

YABVU. We need to use less bags for environmental reasons. For people with enough money, charging isn't a deterrent clearly, so I'm glad they make it physically harder for you to get one. Surely you can reuse them? Maybe if you have to jump through a few annoying hoops to get one it will put you off?

A generous £100 a week x 52 weeks a year x 20 years
£104,000
No, she probably hasn’t.

I work in Tesco and it's because of shrink (losses). You wouldn't believe how much money stores lose on carrier bags and when we have stock counts it comes off our budget. The more Tesco loses the more prices will inevitably rise because they don't take the hit for any losses, even carrier bags.

I went shopping in M&S. my what a different experience! Quite calm and bags on all self scan tills. If I could afford it I’d ship there all the time. Which got me thinking maybe the well off don’t realise how awful it is at the bottom.

Morrisons scan them as well. Always makes me chuckle.

They always seem to do the I don't see you thing as well as you weave from side to side trying to get their attention.

Meh, whatever gets them through the day.

You must look dodgy! I’ve never had this.

If it helps them to feel like they are doing something worthwhile just let them.

You've spent hundreds of thousands of pounds in a Tesco? You deserve a VVIP badge and literally a free bag every visit for life.

You think £100 is generous? 😂 Some families are spending £300-£500 a week on food.

£100 doesn’t go very far these days.

Not 20 years ago they weren’t, though, so I figured it would even out as an average.

We spend 80-100 for just us two. Even a few years ago it was only 50 on a dear week.

I've had them scanned for me before too and I've never thought anything of it. You're being ott about this.

I'm kind of with you. I think supermarkets like Tesco need to take some responsibility for their actions. If people are stealing carrier bags then maybe they shouldn't have gotten rid of most of their manned tills. I went to my local supermarket the other night and there were 20 self service tills (10 trolley tills and 10 basket tills) being manned by one poor woman who was clutching carrier bags like her life depended on it. It's shit for us and it's shit for her. They have created a situation were the customer experience is awful. So I'm just not going back.

I also had an argument with a security guard about the large wheeled baskets. He would not let me wheel the basket to my car and then bring it back in case I stole it. I asked him why it had wheels. He answered "because it's so big when people fill it up a normal basket is too heavy". EXACTLY!!! So they want me to buy so much shopping that it's too heavy for me to carry but I have to figure out how to get it back to my car. Another supermarket creating a situation that makes it difficult for shoppers to shop.

Just find somewhere else to shop. I know it's becoming increasingly difficult because they are pretty much all the same but the stranglehold they have over the public is disgusting and scary.

I don't mind asking for a bag but in my local Asda they seem really pissed off at you for bothering them ! The lady actually huffed at me today

YABU to be annoyed at the shop assistants. This is the result of commercialism and there being little to no concequences for stealing just about anything, and staff are as much screwed over by the policies put in place by the companies, and the lack of shits given about shoplifting as the customers, more so in fact.

Being annoyed at them only means you get to offload your feelings onto someone you know can't respond or change anything.

Perhaps if customers and staff joined forces against this bullshit it would mean these companies had to take some notice, but people would rather bitch about and at the staff, so nothing will change because the company still has their profits, while the customer is pissed off and the staff get the blame, and that's all that matters.

What would you like staff to do? What do you imagine a mainly part-time, low paid work force should do when supermarkets get rid of manned tills and force them to hand out carrier bags like they are giving away their own child's best kidney?

Staff can either work there and follow their rules or not work there. The real power lies with the consumer. Take your business elsewhere. If it means so much to you and you have a social conscious then take your business elsewhere.