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.
good for them. that’s how you get quality workers and reduce turnover
They’re finally catching up with my local burger chain that offers health insurance, tuition, etc. Also in the US.
“up to $23 an hour”… Doing a whole lotta heavy lifting in this headline.
How is it sane to list the maximum you can make, vs what to expect day 1?!
It reads like the minimum went from $18 to $23. So the minimum is up from $18, to $23.
Aldi announced that it it looking to hire thousands of new workers, as well as increasing their minimum wage to $18 and $23 an hour.
My read on this, is that they are discussing the minimum for two separate positions. Potentially cashier and team leader. Would make sense as they don’t have many employees on shift at a time.
I hope so. It would be a nice change compared to… Well… Everything.
Edit: ahhhh see it now. I read it as “up to” alone, but implied “increased to” instead.
English is hard sometimes.
It really is. The fact “up to” can mean either a maximum value, or an increase to a value, is stupid.
That’s just being read wrong, it’s not written like a “save up to $10” kind of line. The “up” just describes the change (i.e. ‘the starting wage is going up; becoming $X’). Within the article, it’s completely unambiguous:
The national average starting wages for Aldi workers will be set at $18 an hour and $23 an hour for warehouse workers.
One opened in my city, only Aldi within 50 miles. It is always packed and both of the major regional grocers have raised their “now hiring” wages several dollars, run much more aggressive deals, and their parking lots are maybe 4/5ths as full as they were a month ago.
Which is great for me because I’ve been to several Aldis and realized it just isn’t for me. Being one guy with a pretty weak appetite, the actual dollar savings don’t really come out to much for me (maybe -$10 versus a major grocer if I’m really stocking up), and the “Aldi Experience” doesn’t really mesh with how I buy food. It’s still great to have them in the market, though.
Their produce is always super cheap. Same strawberries I’d get at Ralph’s (Kroger) for $4.99 I can get at Aldi for around $1.70
And let me guess…“somehow”, they haven’t had to hack up their prices after raising wages, huh?
No but the CEO had to cut down to just one new AMG Merc per year. It’s a doggy dog world out there
You’re joking, but quite possibly he’d not even want to buy the one.
The owner family is very reclusive after a kidnapping in the 70s - but we know at least that the founders were living relatively frugal.
Ownership of Aldi is by a handful of “stiftungen” - and one of the more recent judicial squabbles in the family were of one side accusing the other trying to pull more money out of Aldi than necessary to live a non frugal livestyle.
Don’t get me wrong - they’re billonaires, though probably quite limited liquid assets. But based on their behaviour they have a good chance to survive the revolution.
Allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are wrong. In an age where false morels are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite. So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there. Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this I am here to bring you back into reality. I have a six cents when it comes to these types of things. It is almost spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go. Make my words, when you get down to brass stacks it doesn’t take rocket appliances to get two birds stoned at once. It’s clear who makes the pants in this relationship, and sometimes you just have to swallow your prize and accept the fax. You might have to come to this conclusion through denial and error but I swear on my mother’s mating name that when you put the petal to the medal you will pass with flying carpets like it’s a peach of cake.
It is telling that Aldi is successfully expanding in the USA while keeping the same model that made it big in its home market of Germany and the rest of Europe.
When Walmart tried to gain a foothold in Germany, it hemorrhaged billions before giving up. The managers responsible covered their asses with bullshit about cultural differences or unions, but the truth is that they just couldn’t offer competitive prices. Looks like, even in the US, shoppers favor low prices over wasteful frills like greeters.
Greeters are literally a charitable expense (that they’ve mostly replaced with security goons) the wasteful frills in Walmart are executive compensation and benefits.
You think the managers at Aldi work for the satisfying feeling of serving their community or what? Aldi cut costs in any way possible and greeters are simply a very visible way.
Aldi isn’t really a direct competitor of Walmart. There are other more similar (hypermarket) chains in Germany that directly offered the same as Walmart. For its attempt to enter the german market, Walmart bought up a bankrupt chain of such hypermarkets. The stores were in worse locations than those of their competitors. Basically, it was unwanted left-overs. The Walmart, closest to me, was right next to its competitors but on the far side. It was just a little less convenient. If they had been able to offer better prices or quality, that might have made it worth it. But they couldn’t. There were only greeters and packagers.
