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Grocery Store Perils part 1: the produce aisle

Grocery shopping in Switzerland has a few wrinkles that we don't have in the US. Among other things, people shop almost daily. In the city, most people are on foot, and they don't want to carry their groceries far, so the grocery stores are small and frequent. There are more grocery stores than Starbucks stores around me, and there are plenty of Starbucks stores.

The produce section operates a bit differently from the US. In the US, the produce often has price stickers. You put the produce into a bag, and it's weighed and priced at the register. In Switzerland, there's a number listed next to each different kind of fruit or vegetable. You put your veggies in a bag, then take them to a scale in the produce section. You punch in the number, and a price sticker is printed next to the scale. You then stick that sticker to your bag. The cashier then scans the sticker at the counter. No weighing or lookup involved. It's very similar to the way that the deli works in most American stores, except that you're doing it yourself. This speeds up the checkout process and lets most stores get away with only two or three cashiers even when it's busy.

Because there's no scale at the register, it's very important to do this in advance. If you go to the register without a sticker, they have to hold up the line and have someone run your veggies to a scale to get the sticker and barcode. Needless to say, I learned this the hard way by going through the line without a sticker.

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