to get really irritated by Aldi opening and closing tills?

[flitwit99]

I was only in 15 minutes and they must have opened and closed till number 5 about 4 times. Then they opened till number 6. But then closed it again once it has served one person. Drives me insane.

Both also and lidl are designed this way.
You are meant to pack away from the till, unless you can match their speed.
If you are stubborn enough to insist on holding up the queue as you pack every item properly then those shops probably aren't for you.
Personally I either get a trolley full and pack at the bench or just a baskets worth and whack it straight into a bag at the same time as the cashier.

Aldi is designed this way, speed and efficiency, don't like it, there's more supermarkets available that will take your custom.

I don't have a problem at all with the speedy scanning and packing. It just seems to me like the staff must spend all their time running to and from the tills. Honestly the number of times till number 5 opened and closed in the shirt time I was in there was crazy.
I find noise overpowering anyway though and the repeated announcements really bug me.

What seems to happen in my Aldi is when they open the till the person always seems to walk past 4 other employees to get to the till.
Why not put the ones working closest to the till on them?

Because set people have set tills. It isn't rocket science. There needs to be one person in charge of one till drawer in case the till was down £10 or something, or repeatedly down or up, they can retrain that person or fire them if they have been stealing. There are several other reasons that wouldn't be logical but that being the main one.

Why can't they just use any till like other supermarkets?

Generally shopfloor staff in a store will notice there's a queue and jump on any till until the queue is cleared.

Love Aldi. If they sold Felix cat food, I'd never go anywhere else.

Today I asked if the checkout lady could give me a sec to get my bags ready, otherwise she'd have a head start, and that's not fair lol.

At the end she said I was too fast packing, and she was trying to go faster. I love it!

they have to actually stop and let me pack
Completely selfish. You know 2 the drill in Aldi. You're effecting the staff members bonus, though it is not unusual, I have seen many selfish shoppers do this for spite.
Also shoppers who pack their trolley then take purse out in slow motion, count the change out, it is infuriating. I hope the staff are given grace once the bill is complete, if it take a few minutes to get the payment in the till.

RussellSprout I do a basket shop and I keep the basket and pack where you are suppose to. I'm sure that they are timed when scanning and are expected to go quickly and get through customers.

I find it quite mesmerising.

Huh, I think I was in the queue behind Russell last week. I was the third person in the queue you/she was causing, as you/she very slowly, deliberately packed every thing like it was a antique piece of bone china.

You/she were extremely rude to the rest of us, assuming we had sod-all better to do than wait round for you, when you could have taken all the time in the world by using the (clue in the name) packing bench.

I commented to the poor checkout guy and he said you/she flat-out refuse to use the bench for reasons unknown and they are as frustrated as the rest of us.

How about being a bit less selfish next time?

I think Aldi is brilliant. Full stop.

Butchy I'm also in your area North of The Wall. Where are these magical self service tills?

I use big ikea/sports direct/Aldi bags and generally have 3. I sort my shopping in to 3 groups on the belt - frozen stuff and meat, veg/fruit/dairy and then tins, jars and other shit.
The bags are open in the trolley and everything is fired in. I leave bread and eggs till the end and pop them on top.

I love Aldi. I used to go Tesco and my weekly shop would cost twice as much and twice as long (two kids wanting toys etc and I was blinded by bogof etc)

I am in and out in 30 mins. I love the fact it takes no time at all for the tills.

I have never saw anyone asked to move tills after they unpacked on to the belt. Surely this would waste time the very thing of essence in Aldi.

TheHobbitMum As a manager can you clarify, DP was a manager in an Aldi a few years ago, he said they never close a till when a customer has their shopping on the belt expecting them to unpack and reque. They'll place the red stripe behind the last shopper already packed out, so the next shopper knows it is closing.

@ccmrob12 Thanks! I’ll try that. There were three of us: me shoving things in a bag and my partner and son throwing things back into the trolley, and we still couldn’t keep up with the cashier! I’ll try just sweeping things into the trolley, but I had bottles of wine and tins and fresh meat and fruit and even though I tried to put it all in the belt in a sensible order it was still too fast! Maybe I’ll get the hang of it if I keep going back?

It sounds horrendous to me! So you put the shopping in your trolley, unpack it onto the conveyor belt, put it back in the trolley, move to the packing area, unpack it from the trolley, put it into bags and then back into the trolley to take it to the car?

I'll stick to the self scan at Tesco or Sainsbury's!

YABU.

Staff are not allowed to sit at the tills with no customers.

Shopping gets put through fast to save time at checkouts.

This means more stuff can get done in shop floor meaning jobs can get done with minimal staff.

You want a nice relaxing shopping experience with staff who sit at tills twiddling their thumbs waiting for you...then shop at Tesco, Asda etc and pay extra

I like the Aldi system, and the Aldi prices. I get annoyed at Tesco and Waitrose now when the checkout staff bore on endlessly chatting with everyone.

PinkSparklyPussyCat Aldi prices help the less fortunate eat well.
It is not a case of just popping in Sainsburys for lots of folk. There is a huge difference in price, it may not be for everyone but I am grateful it exists.

Not necessarily pink. If you do a big shop there you can buy something like this and just bung everything back into the trolley, and then straight into the car. (Or large shopping bags work just as well.)

I love it. We're not hard up thank God, but I still begrudge paying an extra £20-£25 p/w for the amenities of Sainsbury's.

At Tesco and Waitrose you can at least do Self Scan and avoid the whole conveyor/chat thing altogether. Shopping goes into the trolley once.

WRT packing, you need to be organised on the conveyor - put stuff on in the order you pack, bags ready in trolley, it's v easy, as long as you didn't cock it up by putting your wine last and your eggs first.

Sorry Emerald, I didn't mean to come across as patronising. I hate shopping and can't think of anything worse than packing and unpacking but I'm lucky that there's only 2 of us and the cat (who turned up his nose at Aldi cat food!)

PinkSparklyPussyCat No you're right, it is a crazy experience, On my first Aldi shop I came out sweating and shocked.
I got used to it eventually.