Which kind of bears out my underlying thesis. You asked why something was happening because it was not perfectly normal to you. And nobody knew why Minnesota was ‘different’.
I have only seen baggers extermely rarely in UK and then, I suspect, only when an elderly person or harassed mum asked for help, and then it was another member of staff - the cashier NEVER does this. The queue would lynch any cashier who delayed matters by taking time to do that. We have been trained by speedy cashiers and the tuts of our fellow shoppers behind us to get bagged as fast as possible and get the hell out of the way before the first item from the next person in the queue arrives behind the cashier into the bagging area. 
