My local Aldi has a half dozen check-out lines. Usually two of them are open, but they cut it down to one if they are really busy.

The Aldi cashiers are fast. Really, really fast.

The Aldi model is, they do not provide free grocery bags, and you have to put a quarter in the slot to get a shopping cart. The quarter is returned when you return the cart.

I do not always have change in my pocket to get a cart, so if I'm not buying a lot of stuff, I just use a couple of sturdy canvas grocery bags that I keep in the car; I walk through the store and put the items in the bags.

I did my usual routine, arrived at check-out with two bags. While I was removing items from one bag and placing them on the conveyor, the speedy cashier grabbed the other bag, turned it upside down, and dumped all the items onto the conveyor. All the items. Including a dozen eggs.

I talked to one of the Aldi cashiers one time about how fast they process things. They told me they're scored on how fast they go and if they aren't able to go above a certain speed, they don't keep their job. To them, speed matters.

Some cashiers there are masters at scanning items and arranging them in the cart so they're easy to bag. Others, not so much.

quote:

they're scored on how fast they go

Are there penalty points for decorating the conveyor with a dozen broken eggs?

quote:

I do not always have change in my pocket to get a cart, so if I'm not buying a lot of stuff, I just use a couple of sturdy canvas grocery bags that I keep in the car; I walk through the store and put the items in the bags.

I've never been in one. (I've had one here for years, but it is outside my usual gallivanting range.) Do they not have hand baskets?

My Aldi cashiers are always very fast, and can be rough with tougher items, yet they are still gentle with fragile items like eggs and bread.

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
I've never been in one. (I've had one here for years, but it is outside my usual gallivanting range.) Do they not have hand baskets?

No. Aldi is a budget grocery store, and one way they keep their bottom line low (and therefore prices low) is with a specific system for their carts, which eliminates the need to pay an employee to go wrangle shopping carts. There are no hand carts, and push carts have to be "rented" with a quarter, which you get back when you return the cart to the storage area. (It's actually kinda nifty, with the carts being chained in place with a special lock that is unlocked with a quarter, and the quarter is then ejected from that cart's lock when you chain the cart back up.)



They also don't bag the groceries, so they don't have to pay baggers either, and it allows their cashiers to simply focus on rapid checkouts so they can have fewer cashiers on staff at any given time. They don't provide paper/plastic bags, so you have to bring in your own bags, and bag the items yourself in a separate designated bagging area once you're done with checkout.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

they're scored on how fast they go

Are there penalty points for decorating the conveyor with a dozen broken eggs?

You’re the one that bucked the system by using bags for your groceries instead of using a cart. At Aldi, the only way I wouldn’t use a cart would be if I could carry the items in my hands to the checkout. Plan ahead and have a quarter with you next time.

quote:

Originally posted by bryan11:

scanning items and arranging them in the cart

Something that annoys me when I do use a cart: The cashiers like to put my food items in the seat area. You know, the place where babies with poopy diapers sit. I do not like my food placed there, so when I do get a cart, I use the little seat belt to lock the seat shelf in the stowed position.

quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge:
You’re the one that bucked the system by using bags for your groceries instead of using a cart. At Aldi, the only way I wouldn’t use a cart would be if I could carry the items in my hands to the checkout. Plan ahead and have a quarter with you next time.

Yep.

I suspect you were holding up the line by transferring items one by one from your bags onto the belt. The cashier was probably trying to help hurry things along, and didn't realize there were eggs buried in the bag.

Another reason why it's a good idea to just follow their specific system and use a cart, so the cashier can see everything, and there are no surprises.

I don't often walk around with change in my pocket, but back when I shopped at Aldi frequently, I kept a quarter stashed in the car whose sole purposes was for getting a cart.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

Yep.

I suspect you were holding up the line by transferring items one by one from your bags onto the belt.

Nope. Not holding anybody up. The previous person was taking her sweet time, putting her credit card back in her wallet, blocking the aisle, her cart was still alongside the cashier, so my order could not have been processed. I was pre-staging my few items; the cashier had nothing else to do until previous shopper moved it along, so cashier expressed her annoyance at previous shopper by grabbing my bag and dumping it.

If she had left it alone, all of my items, including unbroken eggs, would have been on the conveyor, ready to ring up, when previous shopper finally got out of the way. Cashier gave perfect demonstration of "haste makes waste."

quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge:

You’re the one that bucked the system by using bags for your groceries instead of using a cart.

Yes, no, and maybe. If I'm just getting a few items, it is faster and easier for me to forego the cart. I get through the aisles faster, and there is much less temptation for impulse buys; when carrying things instead of dumping them into a cart, I tend to stick with the list of items that I had intended to buy.

Believe me, at 82, with physical limitations, I do not hand-carry a big bunch of things, so when I just have a few things to grab it is not worth getting a cart.

As far as planning ahead and having a quarter in my pocket, I rarely, almost never, have any coins in my pocket, and it's not easy to plan ahead for those instances when I'm on my way home from work and get a text from my wife asking me to get a couple of things. Carnac might be able to do it, but I'm a little out of practice.

We first saw the quarter cart rental about 20 years ago all around Europe. No carts left between cars in the parking lots there. If someone does leave one, it is rapidly grabbed for a free quarter. I don't know why we don't see it around the US.

quote:

There are no hand carts, and push carts have to be "rented" with a quarter, which you get back when you return the cart to the storage area. (It's actually kinda nifty, with the carts being chained in place with a special lock that is unlocked with a quarter, and the quarter is then ejected from that cart's lock when you chain the cart back up.)

Slight drift.
When I lived in Long Island, NY, the local supermarket tried this cart rental scheme.
The people shopping would sometimes leave the quarter in the slot and abandon the cart in the lot.
The local ne'er-do-wells would break the locks to get the quarter rather than push the cart back to the cart corral to retrieve the quarters.

Phase two of the locking scheme turned into carts with locking wheels. Once they crossed a sensor embedded in the ground of the lot, the wheel locked up.
This led to carts abandoned all over the place with locked up wheels thus requiring an employee to unlock the wheels with a device and wrangle the carts.

end drift.

My mother worked for Safeway and years later I did too. It seems that that particular chain flipflops on a variety of issues, including cashier speed. Though, unlike Aldi, we weren't under threat of termination if we didn't meet a certain standard.

I hope you complained about your groceries getting dumped out. That should never happen anywhere!

I think I’m glad we don’t have Aldi, or any of those other high falutin grocery stores with a “system” here. I doubt that the denizens of this region would be interested in or capable of coping with such a methodology, but it would be mildly entertaining to watch them try. It sounds like an even bigger pain in the ass than what passes for grocery shopping in Jerkwater, and it would sure honk me off if some numbskull cashier dumped my groceries out at the register, even if I didn’t adhere to their damn imaginary “system”.

quote:

Originally posted by Orguss:

I hope you complained about your groceries getting dumped out. That should never happen anywhere!

Nah, no complaint to management. The expression on the cashier’s face was sufficient. I’m pretty sure that it was a learning experience for her and will not happen again. No point raising a stink about it.

Nothing faster than commissary cashiers on payday, except F1 pit crews. Maybe...

I bagged groceries at the base commissary as a kid. It was tough to get on as a kid as the "getting hired" process was much like getting made by wiseguys.

But I asked what I could do to "earn respect", and that (I later found out) was the right question, and so I was sent to fetch carts from the parking lot, and run a few errands, then let to take the "low tip positions".

But I got fast and even being small, I could handle two of the "tip carts" (looked like a large hand dolly), you put on in font and one behind you, like book ends and then "tip" them back on the back wheels, and then try not to loose either one.

I got larger tips because I was sort of a "side show" being so small and handling the carts so well.

All that said to say, I watched the cashiers.
I saw how they grabbed items and how they slung them back, always separating cans, boxes etc, and typically two baggers manned an aisle, and the cashier would send items back without looking, and "set them up" to each bagger in an order that allowed the bagger(s) to pack bags in good order and by "type" of items. That way, when the customer got home, freezer stuff was in one bag, canned goods in another, boxes in another, but never so many cans that the bag would be too heavy.

Customers "learned" to fill their cart(s), (often 2 piled mountain top high) that made the cashier's and baggers job easier. All of this was to keep things moving, since the commissary was always packed on paydays, and if not for the "order", it would be a zoo.

I still pack a cart, and unload a cart the same way, and I can get through most checkouts faster than many people, even with a cashier that is slow or unorganized.

Funny, the things you pick up along the way in life that stay with you, that you give no thought to until a reminder comes along and flips on the old film.

quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:
I still pack a cart, and unload a cart the same way, and I can get through most checkouts faster than many people, even with a cashier that is slow or unorganized.

Funny, the things you pick up along the way in life that stay with you

Very true. My mother taught me about this from a young age, and I still do it to this day. Similar items get grouped together in the cart, and then grouped together on the belt, with the heavier items in each group first, and the especially fragile stuff like eggs, bread, and bananas left for the very end.

Its not the cashier speed that concerns me. Its mashing the shit out my bread and baked goods when the bagger drops cans on top of them.
I now put all that stuff on the conveyor last in hopes it will go on top of the bag.
I hate the grocery store!

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Its not the cashier speed that concerns me. Its mashing the shit out my bread and baked goods when the bagger drops cans on top of them.

If the bagger at Aldi drops cans on top of the bread, you only have yourself to blame.

Sounds like you have dementia and forgot that you fell down and broke the eggs.

They have plastic bags for a nickle which are large and strong.

https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/...how-to-shop-at-aldi/