To think that people shopping in Aldi shouldn’t insist on packing bags at checkout

[Shell4429]

Just, this. I was shopping tonight and two customers in front of me did this and I was really annoyed. While waiting I thought that Aldi should charge a fee for people who do this. It’s not fair on customers who do it the correct way. A surcharge would work, like it did with carrier bags. If everyone insisted on doing this surely it would drive prices up.

Our Asda doesn’t have self scan. How annoying.

DS loves it, he sits in the trolley and beeps everything.

@LightastheBreeze I do have a home delivery for stuff I can’t get in Aldi but I couldn’t afford to have all my shopping delivered. I have to watch the pennies.
I have no problem whatsoever with those who have open bags in their trolley, that’s not the issue at all. It’s the customers who are still packing when all the shopping has been scanned, and everyone has to wait until they have paid.

Light
If op swapped for one of the big supermarkets plus deluvery charge she would be paying a lot more for her shop than just petrol money. (And maybe aldi is on her way home from school pick up anyway?)

Why should she move shops when the aldi model is either 1) keep up (unless you have a health reason in which case our local is very helpful and dont throw stuff at you) or 2)
pack at the shelf.
Its not difficult to understand or comply with.

Op goes to aldi for a reason. Its far cheaper and supposed to.be quicker. People who hold up queues by just faffing with thier shopping should maybe go elsewhere not op.

Asda, Tesco & Waitrose have scan as you shop in these parts.

One of the good things about Scan as you Shop is it adds it up as you go round so great if you have a budget to stick to.

I also pride myself on my Aldi packing technique. I started taking my MIL shopping and had to ask her to stop ‘helping’ me as she was slowing me down.

Scan as you shop doesn't fit with the Aldi business model. If Aldi was exactly the same as Tesco and Waitrose their prices would be too.

I like Aldi because I can do a full shop much more quickly and much more cheaply than in other supermarkets.

@onefootinthegrave I'd suggest if people want to pack in a leisurely fashion they go to one of the many other supermarkets that allow you to do that. Aldi and Lidl have this system to keep prices down by minimising staff costs. Less time at checkout requires fewer staff

I'd suggest all supermarkets pay more staff to man the tills, they can do this as well as keep their prices down for consumers, but then of course they wouldn't have as much profit to hand out between a few fat cats who sit on their arses and don't do as much work as those on the shop floor. That way there are more checkouts, less queues, less harassed staff (how dare Aldi time them? Where are the unions and what are they doing about this!) I'd imagine that most people were behind the McStrike last week and would support better wages and working conditions for those in the fast food industry, but some on here seem to think it's OK that supermarket cashiers are timed for how quickly they can get shoppers through their tills?

It's shocking that people think the answer is packing shelves, and not better working conditions. Fuck me sideways.

I always pack at the checkout, bags open ready and in the trolley and stuff goes in pretty quick.
I wouldn't do it any other way.
How annoying to have to move over elsewhere and pack!

The only Aldi local to me is a small, city centre one - no trolleys, just basket on wheel things. There is a packing shelf but I think it just seems to be a holder for leaflets - no one uses it to pack. Everyone just packs at the till but it’s not major shopping.

So if you are doing a trolley shop,you are meant to put your goods into trolley as you select, put them on the belt, put them at the fastest possible speed ( ‘fling’ is the word used a lot by PP) back into the trolley, pay, move away to a shelf and pack into bags OR be fast and dexterous enough to fling into bags in the trolley without feeling pressured by the cashier and by other customers.

From the outside, that sounds ridiculous - normalising an irrational , customer -unfriendly, process, making it competitive even, and making others who haven’t been sucked in feel inadequate or uncomfortable. Those defending this system sound like they have been brainwashed - keeping prices down, my eye - that happens through screwing down suppliers or the quality of the goods. It’s to keep costs down to the company and profits up to the owners.

Soupdragon
"With one you simply put it in the trolley, with the other you sort it according to weight, storage etc and faff about when a bag is full. "

No. I disagree.
Most people lay things, out of their trolley on to the first conveyer, in the order they want things packed:
Tins bottles heavy stuff at the front, veg in the middle, Bread and crisps at the end.

If I have 3 bags ready in the trolley I pack, spread the heavy items across the 3 bags, then the veg across the 3 bags, then the lighter items, crisps and bread across the 3 bags.

If I DID pack into the trolley I would once again have all the heavy stuff at the bottom, wine tins 4 pint'er of milk, veg, then bread and crisps on the top.

So now I need to pack it into a bag?
Either at the packing shelf or at my car?

So I unpack all the light stuff, the stuff At the top, the bread and crisps.

Put that somewhere. where? on the packing shelf? or in the boot of my car?

then I unpack all the middle stuff, the meat the veg, the pasta, that needs to go into a separate place.

now I've got all the heavy stuff which I need to take out, either put in the boot of my car or on the packing shelf.

and then get my bags ready. and then put it all back in: the heavy stuff,the middle stuff,the light stuff.

basically double packing. Doubling the workload.
yeah right that makes sense!!🙄

Put your bags in your trolley and fling the stuff in the bags as it is scanned. What is the difference in this and putting it directly in the trolley?

And then head off to Waitrose to get your Chablis

Ya shove yer shopping back in the trolley, pay the lovely cashier and pack your shopping on the back shelf.

Surely that takes longer. I take the shopping out of the trolley and put it on the conveyor belt, I then put it back in the trolley, I pay for the shopping, I take it out of the trolley at the packing bench and then pack it in bags and put it back in the trolley.

If I start shopping at Aldi I'm going to get some of those trolley bags from Lakeland and pack as I go!

There seems to be an awful lot of packing and unpacking involved and what happens if you get a cheesecake or trifle some other thing like that, it could get squashed in all this flinging, chucking and packing.

Sorry for the fuck me sideways. This really shouldn't have worked me up as much as it did!

Come back Waitrose, all is forgiven!

Talk about making mountains out of molehills.
You load your conveyor belt in the right order so you can out all the heavy stuff in bags. If you dont keep up just lay the other stuff on top then.pack it into bags at the shelf or car. Its not difficult.
If you dont like it dont go to aldi or lidl its that simple.

I organise my stuff with heavier things first on the conveyor belt. Then I have three big bags open in my trolley and just throw the stuff into the bags. It's as quick as just putting them in the trolley. I finish packing at the same time as the last item is scanned.

Some people really have no idea of how the business works. More staff means costs rise and suppliers get paid less. Supermarkets actually work on very small margins. Aldi had grown hugely and quickly because its model is successful.

I always dare myself to pack super slowly to see what the check out people will do once the space is all piled with scanned stuff, but I've never dared yet.

I’m going to dare myself to do this next time, and do tinkly laughs at the enraged mumsnetters tutting behind me.

Surely the WHOLE fun of going to Aldi is the passive aggressive scanning vs packing race you have with the cashier - I love it!! God damnit I don’t care if I squash my bananas I must win! 😂

People might not know how the business works but it is a supermarket so it is not that strange that they would treat it like any other supermarket they are used to in this country. If many of the supermarkets in Germany uses a similar system then people will equally be used to that. Cut people some slack while they get used to it!

If slow packing in this country was causing Aldi such consequential profit problems they wouldn't have continued to expand here.

And the idea that slow packers should just shop at tesco is discriminatory - in all likelihood many of those are the people who need to watch their pennies.

Customer service in the lidl near me is at least as good as waitrose which if the one near me is anything to go by has crap customer service so it's not impossible to be a decent supermarket with a decent level of customer service and reasonable prices.

The customer service in Aldi is good. There aren't many slow packers. There's just the odd one and that's what the OP is referring to. It's very difficult to be slow because the shopping starts piling up with nowhere to go. I think some comments have been taken far more seriously than was intended.

But if it is just the odd one then what is the problem.

If you go on aibu then it's no fun if every one just agrees ;)

Doyoumind what a load of old shit.Tesco's last yearly profit was £1.3b and according to the BBC, although Aldi's operating profit dropped 17%, their sales were £8.7b so I'd say supermarkets can employ more staff and keep prices down if their executives weren't so fucking greedy. I might not have a degree in economics but I can sniff out people being patronizing at 50 paces.

Have a good day. I'm off out to Aldi to do a monthly shop and pack it all by the till.