How to master the supermarket checkout like a pro Hi everyone! I have noticed that for many immigrants or tourists, the situation at a German supermarket checkout is perceived as extremely stressful. Truth is: everyone packs their own purchases, the cashiers often work at light speed and the people behind you will be annoyed if they deem your performance as too slow. I have optimized the process and would like to offer you a simple step by step tutorial, making the supermarket checkout a walk in the park. Most important rule: if you buy more than 5 - 8 products, take a shopping cart. 1. Take a shopping cart and do your shopping. 2. At the checkout: put the heaviest and sturdiest products like cans, glass bottles, tetrapaks, etc. first on the belt. The most fragile products like eggs, yogurt cups, tomatoes, etc. go at the end. All your purchases should now form a nice &quot;hard to soft gradient&quot; on the conveyor belt (bonus points for pros: put a &quot;Warentrenner&quot;, those 40 cm long sticks with ads on them, at the end of your purchases. The cashier, as well as the other customers, will appreciate your Ordnungssinn. 3. Now prepare your means of payment. Personally, I use an EC-Karte, which I now take out of my wallet and put it loosely in my pocket, ready to go. Same procedure applies if you choose to pay cash or via an app. Prepare it now. 4. Put the empty shopping bag / your backpack wide open in your empty shopping cart. 5. When the customer before you is done, it&#039;s time to be quick. Confidently go all the way to the front with your empty shopping cart and turn it by 90 degrees. You should be ready to receive the stream of groceries before the cashier starts scanning. 6. Lift your empty shopping bag briefly to show the cashier that you are not hiding anything underneath. This way you gain 1. their respect and 2. two to three valuable seconds. 7. Game on! The cashier will quickly pull the products over the scanner. From now on they are your problem and it&#039;s your responsibility to put them into your bag as fast as humanly possible. But since you&#039;ve arranged them in the right order, you don&#039;t have to &quot;play Tetris&quot;, you can just mechanically stack one product onto another in your bag without them getting squeezed or crushed. 8. Still, the cashier will be done scanning faster than you will be done bagging. Stress situation, now all eyes are on you! Now it is important to stop bagging the last few products and not keep the cashier waiting. Give them your prepared EC-Karte, and use the 5 seconds they need to start the payment process to put your last groceries into your bag. 9. If you&#039;ve done everything correctly, you&#039;re done bagging when they slide the pinpad over to you. 10. Pay and walk out of the store like a boss, enjoying everyone&#039;s nods of approval. Edit for the people in the comments advocating for filling the cart erratically after the cashier throws the items at you, so you can bag them out of the way and without a ticking clock: clearly you are inefficient and I wonder how you have time for anything left. Edit 2 Thanks to u/Luckyy007 for the Link: <a rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener" href="https://youtu.be/GZRl3vB4kbQ" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/GZRl3vB4kbQ</a> This is an accurate depiction of the Aldi experience.