Oh my goodness, you should ask the downstairs maid to come with you next time after she has done your foot massage.

Kerouac,
It may sound strange to you because you're not used to it. If you are accustomed to having your groceries bagged, you would miss it when you are not receiving this service.
On the other hand, a French person who is used to having doctors make house calls would be surprised that one does not get this service in the US.
It's all a matter of expectations.
Karina

I find that when you have to bag your own groceries, the checkout line moves much more slowly, since you cannot pay and bag at the same time. Combine that with the glacially slow pace of customer service in France to begin with, and it makes for very long lines at checkout.

Interesting, because I have read that French cashiers handle more than twice as many customers as cashiers in the United States, but that may be due to lack of conversation.

I was trying to hunt up some reliable satistics, but this is all I found for the moment:

Chez Lidl, les caissières doivent enregistrer 45 articles à la minute (environ 27 dans les supermarchés classiques), rendre la monnaie en 30 secondes, et expédier le client en deux minutes.

Lidl may not be representative. Isn't it a German chain? And an extremely low-cost, low-overhead one at that—the Ryanair of supermarkets.

Yes, Lidl is German-owned, but it opened its first store in France in 1988 and there are now 1050 Lidl stores in France (out of a worldwide total of 5600) -- so most of its regular French customers find it to be French enough.

I'm always amazed at how fast Aldi cashiers move the items thru - breakneck pace - nevertheless lines seem ubiquitously long - part of their cost-cutting plans i guess. And don't cater to 10 items or less - buy a few items and you'll be stuck behind several carts overflowing ahead of you.

We have Aldis in America and they don't bag groceries either i understand... appealing to the low-price seeking consumer.

Call me a tacky lowbrow tourist, but I really do try to visit local supermarkets when traveling - it is a great insight into the culture. We often get to Paris just before Christmas, and if time permits we do make a stop in an Auchan to pick up some of the nicely prepackaged chocolate gifts, so much so that friends have come to expect it.
There was an Auchan hypermarket in southwest Houston in the 1990's when the area was just being developed. At the time it was something of an oddity and people actually went there just to see all 54 checkout lanes open at the same time. I went there because they had the BEST croissant and selection of cheeses to be had in town. It was also a great place to find all sorts of "exotic" ingredients for ethnic recipes, and at prices well below what one would see in smaller specialty shops.
The major public antagonists of the place were union organizers, who picketed with signs decrying "foreign ownership." Not sure who were the real foes of the place (this is Texas after all, and most deals are done behind closed doors, the epitome of low deeds cloaked in high words) but it went away, much to my chagrin.

flanner - not that I am in any way a fan of WallyWorld, but they are far from amateurs. Simple minded in the sense of retaining focus on business rather than the socially infused "business of business", but it's rather like Hollywood - they produce schlock because that's what people buy. And it is not just one country - they are now close to monopolizing Mexico. Costco seems to be staking out a middle ground and doing quite well at it.

Back to shopping cart wheels.

I went to Carrefour at the Bay 2 mall in Collégien this morning, and the very first thing I looked at was the steering system of my shopping cart. The two front wheels swiveled and the two back wheels were straight.

Aha! I thought. Some people here have been talking through their hat! But then I noticed that there were two models of shopping cart in use -- on the other model, the four wheels swiveled. Nobody seemed to give the least bit of thought to which sort of cart they were using. This was equally true at the Leroy Merlin hardware hypermarket next door -- also two sorts of cart, just like at Carrefour. Leroy Merlin is owned by Auchan...

kerouac, thanks for coming back to this. You've saved me from making a special trip to France just to photograph shopping carts!

But seriously, it's interesting that they would have both types of cart. Perhaps they have finally realized that the "four-swivel drive" is a flawed design?

Anselm

No idea. I will have to visit other establishments before I can see a trend. The Bay 2 mall is rather recent (no more than 2 or 3 years old); I want to look at an older store, even though shopping carts probably don't live more than about 5 years at most.

I have also done some research on the swivel-wheels here in the Netherlands; up until now (visited about 5 supermarkets in the area) I have only found four-wheel-swivel-carts..... And have not yet encountered people facing real problems managing them....

Maybe a new difference between the US and the EU?? In the US mostly two-wheel-swivel, in the EU mostly four-wheel-swivel??

seems like the 4-wheel swivels ones would be more manouverable than two-wheel swivels... and in more congested aisles making a turn around easier?

And of course harder to coordinate than just two-wheel-swiveled carts.

Aren't many of the shopping carts in European stores a lot smaller than the usual ones seen in US food stores?

I would say so.

And the carts found in Sam's Club or BJs in the US compare in size with European automobiles.

Dukey, yes, in a Monoprix, the shopping carts are smaller. But in a hypermarket, the shopping carts are hypermarket size.

Carts in the Carrefour i often go to in Saran seem exactly the same as in supermarkets at home, size wise.

I think it's a question of urban zones or not. Shopping carts in the middle of Manhattan are small. Since I moved to where I am now, I have never used a shopping cart in my neighborhood -- only a basket, to make sure that I don't buy more than I can carry. In my old neighborhood where I sometimes used a car, I would use a shopping cart if not on foot.

I'll be in the UK next week and will undoubtedly be in at least one "supermarket" if that is the correct term and now I am certain I'll be looking at the wheel configurations on those carts!