To get the aldi rage...

[chillypop]

... when people pack at the till?

Aldi is predicated on low costs, meaning a smaller number of staff, meaning fewer checkouts open, meaning the etiquette is for customers to haul ass through the checkout. There's a packing area to accommodate this!

Today I found myself and many others waiting whilst an individual decided to meticulously pack a shop which was presumably to feed the population of a small country. Even the member of staff at the checkout seemed a touch bewildered.

Yes, a first world problem. Am I just being impatient?

@Mousemat25 pretty much
The idea is you throw everything in your trolley and then pack into bags at the bench
I just use giant IKEA bags and put everything in there, but you're not meant to pack like you would at say Tesco and be arranging stuff neatly and taking a while

@Eeksteek it literally takes no longer to take item off till and place in open bag in trolley than it does to place loose in trolley! 🙄

I will not be changing my ways.
I do not hold people up.
If anyone doesn't like it I'll pack a little slower next time!

@Eeksteek yes as do the vast majority of people on here who say they pack at the till. Literally no-one on here has said they take their time sorting the packing . I think you're overthinking it a bit that people who don't move at lightening speed are somehow 'stealing' the cheap shop.

No OP you are not being inpatient

Lidl is the same . I put mine back in the trolley then over to the packing shelves and into my trolley on wheels thing.
I have seen too many pack at the till for my liking .

Impatient *

If a Cashier every tried to make me pack differently from the way I currently do I would simply turn and walk out leaving them with the shopping.

Despite what I said in response to the OP I do not mind people doing what you do . Its the ones who have a bag for this and a bag for that , oh and another bag for this stuff .
Agggh

But you can still get stuck in a queue behind the pernickety on!!

This is me 😅 I have a spinal cord injury that affects my coordination. Just picking items up effectively is a feat in itself. I always explain to cashier and apologise to those behind me. Hence I rarely go into Aldi as I hate being an inconvenience.

I totally get your point @chillypop 👍

Hence no packing at the til unless you are really quick and putting into bags as quick as you could put back into trolley. Its unfortunate for those who are elderly / impaired but without such a system, these types of supermarket will have to raise prices.

Not the case in Spain as I previously stated, they removed the packing bench everyone packs into bags at the till, no-one rushes them and no, the prices did not increase.

It drives me berserk when people aren’t ready to pay when they’ve been waiting in a queue for at least a few minutes. Especially the men who have to pat down every pocket they have to find where the bloody card is. Then pat down again to find glasses.

Drives you beserk? What do you expect people to do - take out their wallets/purses/cards, hold them in one hand whilst they try to pack or put them down in the packing area whilst packing and run the risk of losing them or them being stolen? I was in a supermarket where someone had their bag open and ready to access their purse whilst they were packing, someone walked past and removed said purse and their phone and no-one noticed only discovered when the person tried to pay, no, I will not be getting my purse or card out of my bag until I'm ready to pay and if waiting for less than a minute whilst someone does that drives you beserk then perhaps you need to get your blood pressure checked, waiting an extra minute or two is not the difference between life and death is it?

Are people really so busy that they cannot wait a minute. Seriously doubt it.

It is annoying when slow people go through an Aldi checkout BUT I haven't seen anyone use the packing area for years.

Everyone round here just packs it at the till.

I stood for ages yesterday at out Lidl while the checkout operator packed everything at the till for a rather demanding old lady who kept telling her which bag to put things in. Then she declared she was going to the toilet and could somebody take her shopping out to her car when she came back. There were, unsurprisingly, no members of staff spare so a member of the public did it!

nobody's ever given me any special instructions for how to use Aldi. Relax and be a little bit patient, and you'll probably add a couple of years to your life.

And they can do that... at the bench.

I can't pack as fast as a Lidl checkout person can scan - best I can do if I have the time is unload on to the belt in the order i want it and try to unload back into the trolley in that order - however I never get time as my Lidl has to open a new check out for me as only ONE of their check out lines is wide enough for my chair (scares me in the event of a fire.. theres only one bloody route out!)...so then im front of the queue, no time to do that.

This is just how Kwiksave used to work and how Lidl Aldi (netto, remember them) work now - scan FAST, they have to shift at a high rate or they get sent for retraining or sacked, its in their contract and it is why they get paid a higher hourly rate than a check out person in Tesco would.

That is their business model, its part of how they keep costs down, by conducting transactions 40% (or more) faster than other stores.

If you hate packing at a bench.. get the trolley liner bags you can buy so you're chucking stuff direct into a bag, and not faffing with opening plastic bags - do it like you're expected to and pack directly into boxes in your car instead of at the bench..

Or shop somewhere else. You can't have the savings such stores offer you AND expect them to work the way other stores do. They make those savings by doing the exact things people moan about - having pallets of stuff in the aisles, having a limited range of products, and processing transactions fast.

From Aldi

I never use the packing bench, I load my trolley and onto till in a order that makes packing really fast and I never get a backlog or hold up the que,

I like to race the cashier 😂

I actually enjoy the sport of keeping up with the aldi till operators. It’s all in the preparation-making sure bags are in trolley and stuff is arranged on the conveyer belt in a logical order.
i find the till service at Tesco et al intolerably slow.

It doesn't work if you use a basket. We don't have Aldi, but our Lidl don't let you take the basket through, nor do they have a supply the other side, so it's pack at the till or ferry armfuls across to the packing area.

I did accidently cause chaos in an Aldi years ago by, helpfully, I thought, offering a £50 note for my £49.98 worth of shopping. No, not helpful. The manager had to be called, then another, they looked the note over, held it up to the light, passed it back and forth, but had no UV scanner. If I were the sort of person who passes dodgy notes I could just as well have offered 3 dodgy £20s which would have resulted in a larger loss to them.

What really annoys me about Lidl is when I drop into Waitrose on my way home to pick up one or two items they didn't have and find several of the things I bought in Lidl are cheaper in Waitrose. It happens surprisingly often.

Maybe it’s their first time? I am not an Aldi regular (as I find it hell on earth), but I was very bewildered when I first went in one to see all the frenzied action at the tills.

We have an annoying operator who was starting to scan my stuff and push it through when the old couple ahead of me were still putting their stuff away. So I made sure I didn't pay up till I'd packed all of mine, despite her tutting and drumming her fingers.

That wouldn’t happen at ours. The staff think nothing of snarling at old ladies if they take too long to move their shopping.

When I used to do the big shop at Aldi* (large trolley completely full- household is three adults, two teenagers) I used trolley bags. No meticulous packing but I could get everything into the trolley in reasonable good order as fast as the assistant could throw them at me.

At the beginning of the pandemic they insisted on everyone using the packing shelf. Which meant it took far longer - because when your trolley is full you can't just lob everything back in, unless you want a massive burst pot of greek yogurt, squashed soft fruit, burst crisps, squashed bread, etc.

They soon abandoned that idea as it meant that customers were actually spending longer packing up and getting out of the shop, which meant the queue outside was much slower and longer.

Also bear in mind that a lot of people aren't nimble-fingered. may have arthritis or other mobility issues or other hidden disabilities which means they cannot pack quickly. So you can't really have a system based on customers swiping things into their trolley quickly, as for a lot of people it just doesn't work like that.

Just take a chill pill. Some people spend a long time at the till - I always seem to be behind the person at Sainsbury's with 400 vouchers, only some of which are valid, and wanting to tell the assistant their life story. That's life.

*Now we have Click and Collect at our store. It's brilliant.

Actually I am, being one of the much maligned boomers!