Strategies for a succesful supermarket checkout experience

There is a right and wrong way to lay out your purchases on the supermarket checkout conveyor belt. By following these simple strategies you can be assured of a happier and more fulfilled checkout experience:

1. Always put the heavier items ahead of the lighter items, so the lighter items are not crushed by the heavier items (the only exception to this is given in rule 3)

2. Aim to group items together on the conveyor belt according to how you store them in your kitchen. If you have a cupboard that contains petfood and dishwasher powder, then group those items so that unpacking at the other end will be a more efficient experience

3. Aim to place fruit and veg (ie things the checkout assistant has to weigh) nearer to the end of the line of goods. Never place them at the front. Why? Because the weighing of these items always slows down the checkout person and gives you time to catch up with your packing. If you place fruit and veg at the front you lose the benefit of this.

4. This is the most important tip of all. Never pay the checkout person until you have packed just about everything into your carrier bags. If you pay early before completing the packing, they will start serving the next customer and you will have the highly stressful scenario where you are frantically trying to pack while the next customer's purchases are crashing into yours and there is a very real danger that the two might become muddled up leading to checkout rage.

5. If the person in the queue behind starts huffing and puffing because you are taking too long to pack, strike up a long conversation with the checkout lady to delay matters further. If they start to threaten you say you have to sit down because you are now stressed and your therapist has said in such situations you need two minutes to recover ie wasting even more time. Then simply sit cross-legged on the floor and breathe in deeply. I have done this and the stroppy shopper behind me had no choice but to concede defeat.

By following these rules you will remove the stress from shopping and achieve valuable time savings as well.