And, the cashiers can sit down. Which makes sense.
Only office workers and managers are allowed to sit. If you’re in a customer-facing position with a chair, you’re supposed to stand up when helping a customer.
Not at most places. At some point, someone told all the MBAs that it makes the customers mad if the employees look lazy or some shit.
They also tend to make them stand at the beginning of their lane when they don’t have customers. Apparently a light signaling that they are available just isn’t enough.
Edit: My bad. I’ve never seen this at Aldi or Lidl. Just other US chains like Food Lion.
Well, turns out I do have PTSD from a decade of working retail and food service. So thanks for that lol
It’s this bizarre thing. Management want them to “look busy” or some bullshit. Aldi looks busy.
You’ll see this on some factory floors too. No chairs even for the management or QA logging numbers on computers. Chairs are for break time or some such.
Depends on the company and plant. Not to brag on my Corporate overloads as they’ve gaslit employees and poisoned the global water supply, but they do a good job of making production’s life tolerable enough (above average pay for the area, regular Kaizens for them to voice their opinions, good safety culture, keeping up 5s) that people want to work for them.
Aldi is the only place I’ve seen. However, Aldi recently started installing self checkout, which I despise.
I love good self checkouts. I hate bad self checkouts.
Bad self checkouts are those that alert the sole employee running around between twenty terminals of some discrepancy for every fucking thing. Weight discrepancy! Remove duplicate item! They didn’t select number of bags! Check their receit!
Just leave me be and let me scan my flatbread and leave already. Or open another cashier. Or just don’t implement self-checkout if it’s not really self-checkout.
Cashier stations with chairs are VERY rare, yes. The general trope is that managers/owners think it makes workers appear lazy.