Is packing realy _that_ difficult a skill?

[zengar]

This is something that has bugged me for a while, but for some reason has reached the "need to express it" stage today. A while ago I bought an insulated tote bag so that I didn't have to worry about frozen things thawing on the way back to my apartment from the supermarket. For some reason, I can fit almost twice as much into it as the average bagger at said market. Admittedly, some people do find Tetris challanging even before it gets to fast to keep up with, but we're basicaly talking about fitting rectangular objects into a rectangular container here. All it takes is a moment's thought (for me at least) about the effecient use of the space in front of me rather than just piling the objects in willy-nilly.

For that matter, I carry the things from the freezer aisle in the bag so that I know I'm not getting too much to fit in. These people see me take it all out of the bag in the first place. So, knowing it's possible, why doesn't it seem to occur to them to try re-achieving it? So far, I think there has been a grand total of two times I haven't had to undo their packing and do it right so that none of the refrigerables would be left outside of the insulation.

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

It's that "packing gene." Some folks got it, some don't.

[jdack.livejournal.com]

Nobody ever thinks you're shoplifting when you stuff frozen foods into a tote bag?

[catgirlpink.livejournal.com]

I used to wonder about that too, but it's common practice here (Bangor, Maine) for people to put all their groceries in tote bags if they feel like it. They just empty the totes at the register and then refill them. I watched it all the time back when I was a cashier. I still feel uncomfortable with it myself, so when I bring totes I just put them in my shopping basket until I get to the register. I can understand making an exception to that for frozen foods, since making sure they fit and stay cold would be important for walking or long travel.

[catgirlpink.livejournal.com]

There's actually a bit of training for proper packing. They take a day or so and make you watch mind-numbingly dumb training videos. One of them goes over "proper bagging procedures". You think, I know this, I'm not stupid, please let it stop.. stop.. ack!... Um, anyway, they do give some tips, like how all meat is supposed to be individually wrapped and separate from other groceries, all frozen stuff is supposed to be together. Stupid easy stuff. But the minute the video is over, no one gives a crap about it ever again. In fact, the supervisors encourage bad packing, because throwing stuff in all over the place is faster than taking a few seconds to think about how easily it could fit in proper places.

I end up re-packing a lot. Sometimes I don't even have to re-pack so much as just take one or two ridiculously under-packed bags and put them inside one of my under-packed tote bags.