By Larry Rupert
Guest Columnist
My wife and I do some shopping at Meijer on Elida Road. We frequently see two ladies at the regular checkouts who take care of getting us checked out.
These two ladies have been there for quite a while; they are not new or even newer employees. We enjoy seeing them there because they are fast, friendly, and we never have any issues with how they take care of us — not with how they bag our purchases or anything else. They both bag things well. At times, they ask if we mind if they do this or that with the bagging process. That’s more than you get in a lot of places.
Recently we noticed that one of these ladies was never at these regular checkouts anymore, but we would see her assisting customers at the self-checkouts. On several visits, we asked employees what was going on and why this lady moved. We were told that it wasn’t a voluntary move, that she wasn’t “fast enough” at the checkout and had been moved.
We were told that the other lady who we liked to go to because of her friendliness and great service might be moved to be a bagger because she wasn’t fast enough either. Wow.
Meijer recently remodeled the store, completely changing the checkout lines, and one obvious change is the bagging. As far as we can tell, this was not a good move. We can’t see how it helps the employees because they have to reach and lean over with weight when another employee is not doing the bagging.
In the event that the customer should want to help with the bagging, they have to go to the end of the belt, away from the credit card reader/view screen. This new type of checkout was popular in grocery stores 20 to 25 years ago. Is this progress?
We have emailed the company and filled out surveys with comments and questions about the bagging change, but we received no response about this.
It appears to us that the checkout changes have slowed things down. Employees aren’t quite as young as they once were. The employees are being punished for both.
We don’t know if this is an age issue with the store chain or whether someone in management is working hard to make these checkout changes look good, but we do not believe the employees should suffer for it.
Larry Rupert lives in Lima. His column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Lima News editorial board or AIM Media, owner of The Lima News.
