It’s like the sentence that my husband and I burst out laughing over on some crime show last night. A character was telling a detective about the whether the victim, a young girl, might have committed suicide. He replied in the negative:
“She had that Canadian thing going on, you know?”
“How do you mean?”
“You know — happy for no reason.”

@chunlei — I can totally see an acknowledgment leading someone to believe it’s their turn. Maybe the patient ones among us pay for the rudeness of others.

@J. — I have to admit, the clerks at my store are good at making sure everything is bagged, sometimes even making sure there’s an extra person at the end of the counter. It doesn’t quite make up for the rude service though.

@Michael — At my store, each checkout line has two or three bag holders, so the clerks have a bit of buffer when trying to pack items without squashing them. I purposely put the heavier items on the belt first though and proceed by weight to make it easier for them, and maybe this is why I’ve never seen them have a problem bagging things.

@Xibee — I can see your point there, about how much of a hassle it is to untangle a mess once you’ve moved on to the next customer, but at the time when the previous customer is waiting for their credit card to go through and you’re face to face with the clerk, a simple hello would suffice. It’s not necessary for them to start scanning your items to acknowledge that you’re there.

As for the not speaking to you thing, that is a purposeful signal to you that they are not yet waiting on you, since the person in front of you (at least where I shop) frequently turns around with their reciept in hand, JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS TIME FOR YOUR TURN, to whine and complain that the clerk didn’t take some stupid coupon price off their total, or some such rubbish. Clerks are now making damn sure they are finished, because trying to untangle a mess once you’ve started to ring up another customer on their new computer systems is a pain in the ass.