[ctime]

I've never once seen this in my life (I typically have over 100k miles of airline travel per year) and have been traveling for work in the US since 2000. I don't understand how this scenario would play out, does he just grab a bag at random and hold it over his head? Read off the tag? Most people I know would be incensed if someone else were to grab their bag off the luggage belt.

You might be confusing this with curb side check in, which is a service airlines use as a convenience to customers checking bags (so they don't need to go to the ticket counter with heavy/numerous bags ).

[rdl]

Baggage handlers at airports pull bags off the belts and put them in a line nearby (and sometimes give them to passengers) when there's a need to clear the belt, or when they don't have other work to do (at some airports). This is mainly to keep the belt from filling up.

They also sometimes do this when looking for a bag for transfer (which failed to get interlined correctly or something, or when an elite has a connection but there's no interline agreement.)

[therein]

I am sure these people attend other tasks once that's done. They likely also have other belt-related tasks to deal with behind the doors.

[ilkan]

I don't travel much. But they are called porters (or, redcaps in Barbados because they wear red caps for easy identification). Let's say you are elderly, tired or have a lot of baggage. You wave a porter over, he or she takes the indicated bags off the airport conveyor belt, loads them onto a trolley, wheels them through Customs, and loads them onto the taxi for you. I've seen elderly, handicapped or heavily burdened (eg couples with 3 kids and 10 bags) use them. How else would one get by?

[baxtr]

Similar to people who pack your groceries into bags at cashier. Have only seen this in the states, nowhere else

[dyarosla]

Pretty sure the idea here is to quicken the checkout and lines-> having someone fill bags as someone else handles payments and you handle paying, makes queues move faster than having them grind to a halt due to someone packing their bags too slowly.

[tigroferoce]

IN Italy there’s a little desk behind the cashiers and it’s split in half so while you fill your bags using one half the next client uses the other half. The amount of useless jobs in the states always amazes me, but then you look at the unemployment rate and everything becomes less useless ...

[foobarchu]

The US has this depending on the establishment. The chain "Adli" (German in origin I think, but they're common in the US) doesn't have baggers, they just have a counter past the checker and you are expected to bag your own groceries. I'm also pretty sure they require you to bring your own bags too, though, so baggers wouldn't make much sense.

[dyarosla]

This too can get clogged. Been there and seen it take forever to go through lines in Italy.

I think you may not realize how many shoppers/how much person-density there can be in the US.

[reitanqild]

When LIDL came to Norway this was one of their mistakes. They insisted on not having the split desk behind the cashiers.

Norwegians was confused every time AFAIK.

[cabaalis]

I was a bagger for a while. For me, it was an entry level thing at the grocer. You would be responsible for organizing (not stocking) the shelves and sometimes cleaning. The highest paid people except managers and the owner were the cashiers. This was 20 years ago.

[hgezim]

Oh boy. I normally lurk but this one gets me.

Having to bag my own groceries is infuriating. In Canada, The Real Canadian Superstore was the first to do this and it has a shitty feel.

The lines are long, I bring my own bags and have to get out of peoples way as I pay and try to bag my own groceries.

I actually started going to self checkouts because if they don’t bag my groceries, cashiers are useless to me!

If you think bagging is just stuffing bags in orde that groceries come, you’re nuts. I hate it when a useless cashier takes my apples and just tosses them into bags too. They’re fragile and need to be handled as such.

I definitely think bagging is a service worth paying for and appreciate when I get a bagger that gets it.

Oh, my first real job was bagging and helping customers with the groceeos to their cars. Not useles.

[mamon]

In my country I've seen it mostly as a charity before Christmas: some teenage volunteers would ask you if you want them to pack your groceries, expecting a small donation in return.

[rayiner]

Packing your own groceries is work and boring though.

[gtvwill]

If packing your own groceries fills your definition of work and doesn't just come under "shit you just do to get something from one place to another because you need it in your life". You REALLY need to get out and perform a variety of jobs. Like damn you gotta be about as useless as tits on a bull if you think pulling the food your going to eat that is NECESSARY FOR YOUR SURVIVAL off a bench and into a bag is work.

[rayiner]

Growing food is necessary for my survival but I don’t do that myself. Grocery bagging is also not trivial. You can’t just throw things into a bag in random order, you need to think about it. A well packed set of shopping bags is a big convenience, and I don’t want to spend the bandwidth to do it.

There is a big difference between a job that creates convenience for other people and one that’s redundant or pointless.

[gkya]

> You can’t just throw things into a bag in random order, you need to think about it. A well packed set of shopping bags is a big convenience, and I don’t want to spend the bandwidth to do it.

Please tell me that you say this only to win the argument, because, come on. Putting things into something else is as trivial as it gets, and I can assure you that, even though I have never seen one, a person whose job is to fill the bits someone else bought into bags for them will give absolutely zero fucks about how he puts them things into them bags. Except maybe it's somewhere like Harrods, I guess, if they are paid high enough (now I recalled this: there was a comment or an article recently about an employee of Harrods whose job was to get fired when customers came to complain about other personnel).

[rhino369]

You probably only think this because you don't do a good job. There are strategies and methods for bag packing that produce better results.

You figure out how to build a base, how to seperate items by contimination risk, learn how to fill a bag up.

People who do it poorly give you 15 bags when 7 will do.

The biggest incentive is to do it faster. The job is boring as sin, so you just want to get it over with.

It's also a good job for mentally challenged people. It's low stress, something they can learn, and something they can do well at.

[briandear]

Except while I am putting things on the conveyer belt I can’t exactly be bagging at the same time. In France, checkout lines are slower because you have to run from one side of the checkout belt, to load, then to the other side, to bag and then you have to pay; meanwhile people are waiting. That “useless” job increased efficiency since bags can be filled while I am attending to the transaction. Unless you buy just a few things at a time, it’s a huge timesaver.

[nicoburns]

Also common in latin america.

[michaelbuckbee]

It's something that has disappeared over time (like elevator attendants). If I had to guess it was a holdover from before there were actually conveyor belts and porters manually pushed out cards of luggage to stops and helped people with them.