A grocery store customer was recently lectured by an employee for double-bagging his purchases at the self-checkout counter. However, the employee’s suggestion was, in a word, baffling.
The video discussing the situation came from TikToker Adam (@its_.me._adam), a self-described “pro MMA fighter,” and it drew more than 1.6 million views in its first four days on the platform.
Adam started the video by stating, “I’m 100% certain pretty much every single person on this app has been to this grocery store establishment before. I’m not going to say the name of it because that’s really not the purpose of this video.”
He mentioned that the particular store he was shopping at has shifted over from staffed checkout counters to self-checkout.
@its_.me._adam I don’t understand some people’s logic #dadsoftiktok #parentsoftiktok #comedian #comedy #humor #laugh #over30 #teens #dadbod #storytime #dadjokes #walmart #shopping #logic ♬ original sound – Adam
“So it’s my turn and I go up to the self-checkout, and I’m bringing my stuff up,” he went on to explain. “And a worker at this establishment says to me, ‘Why are you double-bagging your stuff?’ I said, ‘Excuse me?’ She said, ‘You shouldn’t be double-bagging your stuff. Why are you doing that?’”
He then responded, “My items are kind of heavy. And sometimes the handles break or the bottoms fall out. And I just don’t want to deal with that.”
The employee suggested, “Why don’t you just pack less in there and use one bag?”
He responded, “So I should take half of the items out of this bag, and then put it in another bag?”
She confirmed this, leading him to reflect, “I don’t follow your logic.”
He then tried to break it down for the employee with an example, confirming that she thought it would be less wasteful to separate a double-bagged package of milk and juice into a single-bagged milk and a single-bagged juice.
He asked, “Isn’t that the same number of bags?”
She maintained, “No, it’s not the same.”
He then told the employee, “Well, if you think you can do a better job, you can bag them,” but she informed him, “No, it’s not my job.”
“This is why it’s very important that we play with these toys as kids that like you put the circle in the circle and the square in the square. So that, logically, things make sense,” Adam observed at the end of his video.
While avoiding double-bagging was high on this employee’s mind, it isn’t the only concern around self-checkout for major grocery chains. According to a May 2023 report in The Street, there’s a correlation between self-checkout and increased theft.
“It’s a reasonable setup when a customer has a few items,” the article notes. “When they have more, it becomes a logic puzzle as there’s limited staging space. That means that as you bag your items, it makes sense to put the full bags back into your cart. Doing that puts paid items next to unpaid ones and makes theft, both the intentional and the unintentional kind much more likely.”
Viewers clearly had thoughts to share about Adam’s double-bagging situation, with his post drawing over 20,000 comments.
“Me being me, I would have started triple bagging everything,” one quipped.
“‘Not my job’… not mine either, but here I am bagging my own groceries anyways, so I’ll just bag them like I want to bag them, thank you,” another comment read.
One person, reacting to the employee’s abilities with math, said, “And that’s how you became employee of the month.”
A number of commenters also attempted to guess what non-double-bagging grocery establishment the TikToker was referring to.
“Tell me you went to Walmart without telling me you went to Walmart,” said one who came in to share their belief that the creator was describing a Walmart.
Another maintained that using as many bags as you want was the price of self-checkout, saying, “Walmart!! if I have to check my own groceries, I’m going to use as many bags as I please.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to the creator via TikTok comment.
