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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm lucky to have Aldi as my closest grocery store.
I do end up going to another half the time not because I don't want to go to Aldi, but because I just need one odd ingredient I don't think they'll have.
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.
That's because ALDI doesn't cushion cost increases or sell loss leaders. If eggs shoot up in price 400% they immediately raise the price to match. Most grocery stores will try to eat at least some of that cost for some time hoping it will go down before they have to raise even further. That kind of pricing model means they need much larger margins on all their other products to afford that. Same way they sell milk and rotisserie chickens at a loss to get people in the store.
ALDI does not play those games and keeps their margins more consistent but their prices are more susceptible to spikes in costs.
We have both Aldi here but they're differently named. One is just Aldi, the other is Trader Joe's.
It's our super low cost grocer, that has in recent years become more high quality. When I was a kid (80s-90s) it was like "never buy fresh anything there because it's all crap" but these days it's all pretty decent quality stuff. Not like farmstand good, but better than Walmart.
Yeah, they've been in Texas at least 20 years. Looks like they are in most of the states in the eastern half of the continental US and the states along the southern border.
They have been here in the US for a long time, I think their first american store opened in the 70s. Personally I love Aldi I shop at my local one here in Missouri at least once a week. Their price on extra firm tofu just can't be beat its at least 1/3 the price it is at my other local supermarkets.
I mean it is a german company, they might just standardize EU standards through out their company. At least this is a small pipe-dream I have had about them.
Great, now that they have bought winn-dixie, and are moving in places, mostly, where there are failed/failing regional chains, we will have even less competition.
Remember, despite saying Aldi does not discriminate based on union/desire to unionize, A LOT of their ex-management say they were straight up told to fire anyone who mentions it, and they would rather get sued for it, than allow it.
If workers like their job and feel appreciated, they work harder. The job also likely attracts better people.
They might be able to hire less people as a result
I did night fill at a supermarket here in Australia once. And there are so many useless people working at them. There was never any incentive to work beyond the minimum standard
Here in Australia at least, supermarkets are making record profits, so it would simply be less money for shareholders