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Comment by fragsworth | Hacker News Reader

In L.A. we've had a ban for a long time. The thin bags are banned, so they are all thick bags now. And stores are also required to charge at least $0.10 per bag.

Everyone I know just pays for the new thicker bags. It's $0.30 for three bags on a $100 grocery bill.

The real annoyance comes from people not knowing exactly how many bags they need, and usually guessing too low (not wanting to be wasteful), so the baggers take longer trying to figure out how to squish everything in the bags... and sometimes the customer has to pay an extra $0.10 if they need another bag. Which gets them to dig around for a dime. This probably slows down checkout lines by a significant amount (10% or so?).

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Also in LA. The main thing I notice is people bringing their own cloth or plastic bags into the store. I have not noticed the "dig for a dime" thing. People do spend more time fitting stuff into their bags.

This always blows my mind about the US shopping. Baggers. And greeters. I fail to understand how there can be any unemployment :D

I self checkout my groceries (the scanning and payment as well as the bagging). Normally I interact with zero people while shopping for groceries. High payroll taxes and near 0% cash use makes it a natural direction to go.

I bag the groceries in the store so that costs no extra time at checkout.

My friend and I estimate an extra 45 seconds at every checkout for this stupid tax. I say this because they always ask (regardless if you brought your own bags) if you want new bags and it'll cost $0.10. Couple that with the fact on average people visit three stores per week, make an average of $60/hour and that there are roughly 7 million people in the bay area and you get this bag tax costing the bay area an estimate:

$15,750,000 per week in lost productivity from wasted time at check outs

(.75 minutes per checkout X 3 times per week / 60 minutes per hour) X $60 an hour average salary X 7 million people

To me the tax is insane and doesn't help the environment. It just got voted on and passed too. Just force paper bag use, and the environment would be cleaner. Simple, it'll save the economy and do more.

I realize this seems like an (and is likely a slight) over estimate of the cost. However, you can do it yourself, we waste a lot of times due to this.

Why do you wait 40 seconds to say no?

I don't it usually on average it takes me roughly 10-15 seconds to have the interaction:

"Do you want the bags? That will be 10 cents"

"Ugh, yeah - give me three please"

Then occasionally I screw up and need another. Or the bag rips because I have too few. That takes like an extra 4 or 5 minutes plus money. Plus if I'm doing it on an automated machine there is usually a lot of lag.

Regardless it's not just the 15 seconds for me. There is a rough average of 2 people in line ahead of me so:

15 seconds for me + 30 seconds for others ahead in line

> That takes like an extra 4 or 5 minutes plus money.

An EXTRA five minutes? That also sounds very unlikely.

Maybe time yourself with a stopwatch next time? I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

In some cases, the burden could affect business owners more than customers, if they open more checkout stands to account for longer delays to maintain a similar level of service.

You could also just bring your own bags...

It is worse than that, because now there is often an awkward sharing of responsibility where customers start to pack their own bags, then stop to pay, and the cashier/bagger isn't sure whether to take over, and usually doesn't

> make an average of $60/hour

Are you kidding me?

$60/hour? The average person definitely does not make that.

I believe the average is around $35 / hour, then you have to add the cashier cost which is $20-$30. The cashier cost is $20 for salary plus $10 for benefits.

Your assumptions on typical behavior do not match my experiences. I normally bring my own bags, and because of that, I pack the bags while the clerk scans the items (as opposed to having that person do both tasks). This greatly increases the speed to checkout. And more often than not I see the same behavior from others who also brought their own bags (and at least in SF, bringing your own is very common).

Also, I worked in retail when I was younger. Most bigger stores keep an eye on the lines and will move more employees to the checkout registers if the lines are getting too long.

Mostly agree, though worth pointing out in your analysis that the median household (not person) makes an aggregate of $25/hr, not $60. The average American is over twice as poor as the assumption you made in your calculation. In the bay area alone it's better, but still only around $35/hr, about 50% poorer. Median household income is like 70-75k in the bay area.

I included the cashier cost, because the store will need to hire more cashiers if they have longer lines. That's an estimated $20 for salary and $10 for benefits or $30 / hour per cashier

So you have people that work at a store doing nothing else other than putting stuff people bought into bags?

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