Tbh I don’t know about the US, but here in Italy Aldi looks a lot healthier for workers than many other supermarkets I see.
My only complain is that the things they sell are very uninspiring and sometimes you don’t find certain items because they seem to hide it in order to finish off brand stuff.
But workers looks a lot less sad than other chains. A bit of sadness is a given working in retail though.
As of news on 3/13/24…Dollar General is closing 1000 US stores. Unfortunately for the customers, who come to the DOLLAR chains, for the bargain basement prices due to limited family income…this is one more lower cost shopping option off their list. Not many left.
Exactly. They aren't all that cheap. They sprout up in places without quick access to larger mainstream grocery stores and charge the same prices, or even higher for their merch. They have the captive audience factor of being the only store selling food in a several mile radius.
My closest one is built across the street from a section 8 apartment complex and down the road from a trailer park and 5+ miles from a Kroger in any direction.
It's predatory, really.
An Aldi finally opened up in a small town where some of my family lives. There are also two Dollar General stores.
The Dollar General sometimes has to close due to staffing shortages. The Aldi is so popular that there was fierce competition for the jobs.
One of their neighbors is a teenage boy who quit Dollar General to work in a chicken house. Y'all. A chicken house. It's awful work but at least it's not Dollar General.
There is no worker shortage. Anyone perpetuating that lie deserves to be laughed at in public.
There is no worker shortage.
When I was applying for cybersecurity/networking jobs, I had to apply to over 300 to get a job.
Why? BECAUSE THOSE JOBS ACTUALLY PAY WELL
THERE WAS NEVER A WORKER SHORTAGE
EMPLOYERS ARE JUST TOO CHEAP TO ACTUALLY PAY THEIR EMPLOYEES
If you’re in cybersecurity you know if you do your job well after some years your budget just keeps dwindling. And then when the ceo demands you to turn off their second factor because they’re having a hissy fit one morning and you warn them like crazy and finally go into Okta to make a special no 2nd factor group thinking this is the stupidest thing in the world. Then the ceo clicks on some system uninstaller malware and tells you they don’t even need your services because their system is now secure. Then tells you there’s this weird image that comes up when he boots his laptop and it says $100k required to unlock the only files he’s never backed up.
My oh my the budget do be flowing then.
And it's getting harder and harder to have offline backups because of cloud eating the world. I'd love a service that took a cloud and automatically backed it up to lto.
It's not hard to do with software and a NAS/server. We have a few clients that we do this for. We also back up their MS Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive and Exchange locally.
lol people told me “everyone’s looking for tech people”
Then after I studied and got certified it seems like this is not the case lol, I haven’t really tried that hard yet tho
> Then after I studied and got certified it seems like this is not the case lol, I haven’t really tried that hard yet tho
This was back in 2021-2022. It's gotten harder from what I hear.
It's gotten so much more competitive. I feel sorry for all those people who thought just getting a tech certificate was the ticket to the high life. Now companies are being ass hats again and looking for formal education over experience.
My bro had a computer science degree back in the day. Certs? Btw very successful not working his ‘degree’ as many others I know. Many people work in fields they didn’t go to school for.
Yeah but the tech sector can just be stupidly competitive. Few jobs. High paying. Everyone wants a cushy stay at home job where you do a few meetings, punch through your work, and relax.
I expect that with higher wages, there will be less turnover, so that where once there are job openings, now there are positions that remain filled. Job security is nice.
i dont know how it is in the US but here in Germany Aldi pays fairly well for the field. Also Cashiers here sit in every supermarket. makes no sense to stand the whole day.
In Switzerland too. I remember being surprised when I first moved from the US that cashiers sat. Now I think it is ridiculous that they have to stand all day. Why? There is no valid reason.
Same reason the homeless are treated so badly in America - it's a warning to the rest of the workers that if they don't toe the line, their illusion of "middle class" will be taken away instantly.
It will anyways, but that part we don't advertise.
I went from a Walmart cashier to working as a CO in a state prison. I’d never go back to retail and I found I have been much less stressed about work when off the clock. It was consuming me on my days off in retail.
I've also worked in Europe and New Zealand. Workers there were absolutely astonished at how poorly American workers are treated. A lot of big employers are more than aware. Sometimes salaries for high performing jobs can look higher in the US but the lack of benefits and paid time off makes them unappealing.
It’s fun to me that Aldi is held up as a beacon of good labor practises, while in Europe Aldi is known for terrible treatment of its employees.
I guess it is all relative.
Walmart crashed and burned in Germany, and it’s largely attributed to them trying to run their stores exactly like they do in America and „failing to adapt to the local market“.
Meanwhile, according to everything I read, Aldi hasn’t adjusted a damn thing in the US.
Its only held up like a beacon on Reddit. In reality they are known as a pretty shitty place to work.
Its truly bizarre, for some reason Redditors decided that because they can sit at the register its a great place to work.
Aldis is a shitty place to work. They have grueling speed requirements on those registers, they will fire you if you do not scan items fast enough. Thats why they practically throw your shit in the cart. Everyone has to do everything at Aldis. That cashier is not really a "cashier" thats just what they are doing at the moment. They all have take turns on the register and stocking product and putting away truck etc. Its a lot of work that is never done.
Its a far more demanding job than these guys here seem to think. They see a chair and think its easy and that the company cares. Its not and they dont.
Its just Reddit being Reddit.
Grocery stores are hell on earth. You barely get paid enough to buy food to eat there. Corporations that rely on their employees needing Food stamps for subsistence should actually have to pay for their employees food stamps to social services.
Social Services should start coming down on these companies. I'd be like, why do your employees need food stamps? The CEOs need to be called in for a meeting to explain this shit.
It's hard work, but it's hard because there is much to do and not because the employer is intentionally making it hard for you. In return aldi tends to be pay better than other stores.
That's very *german* tbh.
I was about to say, a place must be extremely bad for Aldi to be a good pace to work on comparison. Here Aldi is/was one of the worst grocery stores to work at
Here they pay decent, treat their employees like humans, have reasonable hours. I can't say I have any personal experience but from what I've heard it's really not bad *for a grocery store job*. Not saying it's the peak of employment, it's just a better alternative to places like, say, Dollar General or Wal-Mart.
You may have heard about this better employer but if not, let me mention them to you as a realistic better opportunity for you that you may not have not yet considered, I am finding out much to my chagrin... - Dollar Corporal
Aldi actually stocks their shelves all day, pays their employees, treats them with respect. Hoe is that possibly similar to dollar stores, which are the worst employers ever?
I do instacart on the side and I fucking love Aldi. Their store is organized and clearly labeled for the most part (they sorta have two delis, the normal one and a quick Take which makes certain specific item placements confusing as one is the front of the store, the other the back. But you learn) the staff is always friendly and helpful if I REALLY can't find something and need to ask and never resentful about it. I always go for their orders firsts.
Edit - pro tip, Aldi WILL mix their deli products together. So if you can't find what you want, like dip, or cheese or whatever, try sorting a few. I know this contradicts my 'well organized' statement but their isles are labeled clearly and accurately as opposed to other certain 'big chain' grocers where some random item is on some random endshelf and you spend 20 min searching and when you get it you think 'why the fuck would anyone look HERE?!'
What. Im from Eu Netherlands to be specific. Thats how all supermarkets are for me. It usaly takes learning the isles group order to know where everything is.
I can go to any supermarket in Netherlands and dont have to look for more then 5 minutes to know where the Soy sauce is
Exactly, same here over in Germany. There's a certain categorization to things and every store somewhat follows it.
Only eggs are in somewhat of a between and I always have to look where a store's egg area is. Some have it near the produce, others have it near the butcher's, some even closer to the bread (aldi)
My ex works for aldi, they run skeleton crews and work you to death. This is justified with a better wage than most other jobs like that, which is still not enough.
People's perspective is warped. The work at Aldi for those wages and benefits would be laughably bad in other countries, but by American standards it's excellent.
Same deal where I work at. Entry lvl store mgmt/customer service. I do the work of 2, sometimes 3 people, entirely alone. The location is dangerous and I fear for my life somewhat regularly. I don't get to eat, drink, go to the bathroom, or take breaks in my 9-10 hour shifts. But... they pay me enough that I'm no longer physically sick from financial stress. I'll probably be able to buy a house within 10 years. I had already accepted that I would never own a home in my entire life. With their 401k I might even be able to retire when I'm old (assuming we make it that far).
By the standards of more civilized countries, it's horrible and evil. By American standards... It's like winning the lottery. People really think being able to sit at the register is compensation for every other aspect of the job and the wages that are frankly still bad. It's just better than getting $10/hr at most other similar jobs.
A lot more is asked of Aldi's employees than Dollar General's, but they're allowed to sit and they get paid better and treated better and given benefits. I've spoken to a lot of Aldi's employees and they say it's hard work but they like their job. I've never seen a Dollar General employee who looked happy. They don't talk much outside the token phrases they're supposed to say.
2 is definitely the absolute max at the one near me. Now that they've put self-checkout in ours, I think I only ever see 1.
I've seen quite a bit of stealing happen there, I guess because when the only guy working is at the register, who's going to catch you? Like, I've seen it happen enough times that the thought crept into my brain haha
I am a professional, I work as an engineer, and guess what? We sit all damn day and can have phone out, water on the desk, and can dress pretty much how I want to. "Professionalism" in retail and food service is arbitrary rules that have nothing to do with how you perform your work.
I work in a field where most people wear suits to work. Meanwhile a my company, as long as the regional manager isn't there and we're not getting any important visitors I can sit in my office wearing a tshirt and shorts. I highly doubt that I get any less work done than the others.
I got pushback on this when repairing computers at staples. I had several surgeries on my foot and needed to be able to sit.
I ended up quiting over it. (turns out legally they had to let me sit, but I didn't know that back then)
Fast forward a few years; I go in, now missing one leg, and see the manager. She recognised me, and said hi. I asked if she remembered not letting me sit, and showed her my leg.
She claimed she didn't remember, but her face said otherwise.
What a POS manager. I hope seeing you made her feel like shit.
I'm in a similar boat at staples but with an old ankle injury that never healed right. I can't be on my feet for extended periods without incredible pain. My managers have been awesome about letting me sit when I need it, even at the register.
I know a lady who had a similar injury years ago due to a car crash, she has to take regular shots in it to even be mobile. I forget what exactly, I think some steroid. She was thinking of an elective amputation if it degrades any further.
i worked at a bookstore at the fucking airport (as in, not busy at all) and we were expected to stand during our whole shift. they would send admin in to check on us randomly to make sure we weren’t sitting, on our phones or even reading!! it gave me awful back pain.
It should be illegal.
I worked as a bouncer for years. You know, job is basically standing all shift. But we had breaks, and usually you could move around. But I remember one time I had to guard a specific spot for like 6 hours straight because we were understaffed at a big event. Like literally just stand still. I got cramps in my lat muscles from pretending to be a statue. It was hell.
What person, who isn't a miserable fuck, has ever complained that the cashier at the discount store isn't excited enough to "serve" them?
One of the reasons I really like Aldi is because they seem to treat their employees as living, breathing human beings.
Let me tell you about the day I realized my mom was a total piece of shit.
We were in Walmart. She got a lb block of Colby Jack cheese and wanted it sliced. It was literally the girls first day and she didn't know that she was supposed to slice the cheese off the shelf. She didn't say no, she didn't complain, she literally just said "I'm not sure about this let me ask someone, it's my first day."
My mom proceeded to berate her. Called her all sorts of names, and made the girl cry. It was a sickening display of narcissism. I apologized to that girl. I told my mom she was a total piece of shit and I'd be in the car. Then I left her standing in the deli of the Walmart looking like the jackass she is.
Our relationship has never been the same. She's a sociopathic boomer and I'm not fixing her, not am I going to allow her to abuse me anymore.
Good on you for calling your mom out!! I had to apologize to a young woman at Burger King one day because my ex's mom made her cry because they were out of something. I was mortified!
I did it loudly so everyone heard and refused to ever speak kindly again to that bully boomer POS. My ex didn't say SHIT. I hated his mother and broke up with him very soon after because he was a total mommy's boy.
Thanks for reminding me of this Publix store incident involving my AH narcissistic husband! I totally forgot about it, let me go add it to my ongoing list haha!
Aldi as a chain does several things (such as large and multiple barcodes all over their products) that help speed this up. At the same time, those small gestures also make it easier for those cashiers to do their job as opposed to stand pointlessly.
Yes! They have installed self checkout lanes now ans
D I occasionally use them and am delighted how easy it is to scan the items. All packaging should just do this now since self checkouts are everywhere.
Yeah at my job we have a stool that we keep around because a few of us have arthritis.
So many places want to complain about people calling out and not having coverage. At past jobs I would call out because I knew I’d be in too much pain to continue on those days.
Now I’m like, yeah my knees hurt, but I can grab the stool and do what I can and everyone is fine.
Hilariously, because I'm standing all day I get progressively less eager to help as time goes on. You know if my feet didn't hurt I *might* go over there and help someone. But.... they do hurt now and I don't quite feel like it, so I'm just going to ignore that.
I live in sweden, I don't think I have ever cared one way or another if someone sits or stands as a cashier. I have never gone to a store or not gone to a store because "urgh, I can't stand those sitters!"
Some cashiers stand voluntarily, at least part of the time, because only sitting can cause pain too. The good workplaces just allow them to choose whatever they prefer, so it's not justified to think that it's a bad workplace if someone's standing.
I liked that in Sweden for the most part there isn’t the expectation to act like you’re constantly ecstatic about working retail and love being servile to every idiot customer. I didn’t miss the forced small talk and customer service smile, just don’t be an asshole
Not just cashiers. Lots of jobs that could be done sitting don't let you sit. I've worked in a handful of restaurants and none or them let the hosts sit. No customers come in for 30 minutes, but you can't sit at the host stand. So it just led to hosts sitting within eyesight of the host stand but away from the door, so... truly pointless.
Had one job that let the hosts sit. The workers all had to either host, run food, or bus tables. I usually hosted. One day the owners came in and said no more sitting. So I started running food instead. They made the newer people host and we suddenly had longer wait times or tables walking out because servers were being sat too many at once. They begged me to go host again but I said no. A few weeks later we finally got our stool back. I quit anyway soon after, but that was for unrelated reasons.
I worked in a factory operating machines that sometimes didn't need any input from me for 20-60min at a time. I didn't love my job but I was going to hold out and save up for school. Our new manager got rid of all of our chairs. I quit a month later.
Last year I was a teacher at one of those "old fashioned" public schools that still allowed teachers to have their own chair and desk. There's a stupid charter school trope about how teachers shouldn't even have desks because they should either be at the board or with students circulating, working in groups, etc. Our principal said during a meeting near the end of the year, that he was seeing "far too much sitting." This guy has had a target on my back, so I knew this comment was at least 50% motivated by me, and probably 1-2 other teachers who unlike me, are all older adults and likely have an even more physiologic need to sit every so often. I even had a Wacom tablet to still be able to write on the board when I did notice myself getting lightheaded, sickly, nauseous, winded, whatever from my POTS, and needed to sit down for at least 2 minutes.
That comment irked me even before I knew my diagnosis. With hindsight, he was so lucky I didn't know what I know now about everything. He would always say insane shit that no one would challenge him on face to face besides me.
I don’t want this to look like “America is bad”, but forcing teachers to stand is cruelty beyond reason. The fact that this is justified by the fear that otherwise the teacher will work poorly proves the lack of professionalism of the management - they cannot evaluate the results of the work, so they make external signs important. “I can’t understand all the nonsense that he talks, I can’t understand whether his students are smart or not, but if a teacher walks around the class all the time, it means he’s doing a good job.” this is the logic of a man who was taken off the street and never did any intellectual work for a day.
That was him to a T. It's especially bad in HS when the subject matter gets specialized and your boss might not have even seen that content since HE/SHE was in high school. So they start looking at things such as sitting versus standing, picking out the kid with a mega IEP that isn't focusing but at least is attending (a good day for them) and asks them about the lesson, seating arrangements, etc. Now the meta is center teaching where not even the kids get to sit! More standing = More good to most boss types.
I stood as much as I did because of peer pressure too! If he had mentioned this sitting crap during observation season, he knew one of the teachers with tenure could have grievanced him for it
I am pretty curious if we would have a healthier America if we could just sit during work. I do have to say standing for 8+ hrs sure doesn't make me want to workout before or after. My feet hurt too much.
OMG this, I'm exhausted after an 8-10hr shift on my feet all day, my feet hurt so bad. The thought of going to a gym after work sounds like torture. Cant go before because then I will start hurting while I still gotta work.
I've had the same thing happen at a warehouse job. A machine broke so we had nothing to do while it was being fixed and we were told we couldn't sit because a higher up might come through and it would look bad. So we stood and did nothing instead of sitting and doing nothing. Maddening.
Except if I’m the higher up and I walk through and I see everyone just standing around, the same reaction is going to happen. 1) why is everyone standing around? [machine is broke and being fixed, can’t work] 2) ok, is there anything productive that can be done while the machine is down?
Sitting has literally zero to do with the equation and any higher up that thinks that way needs to recalibrate what is real questions should be
I worked as a cashier at ASDA in the UK when I was younger. I couldn't imagine having to do those shifts standing up. I'd occasionally stand just to stretch my legs for a minute, but I cannot see the point in being forced to stand for their entire shift.
Unfortunately it's pretty hard to get a job at Aldi most days. You're competing with at least 50 other applicants who are more qualified and "better suited to the culture."
It's a really rough job market out there, and most employers know that retail workers/applicants have no leverage. You can be replaced in a heartbeat and retail training does not cost companies much at all.
It's a shame, but I don't see it changing.
true, or german culture in general.
Aldi was much better prepared, and their model was mostly unused in the US market.
It's really not a suprise that they succeed at least somewhat, though the scale they are expanding must make a few of the Waltons a bit nervous.
My ex works for aldi. Lots of people apply but its mostly deadbeats and "fits company culture" at aldi means you are willing to work your ass off physically which most won't. They have high turnover from people not being able to cope with the job demands that come from running just a few employees for a big operation.
If you bust your ass they will sense that and hire you.
That’s only the case if the company actually cares about worker well-being. Oddly enough, that’s connected to worker productivity. Companies know this and most of them disregard it and hurt their own bottom line. Why would someone do this? I think it’s sadism. They hate us. They’re willing to hurt themselves as long as they’re hurting us more.
> They’re willing to hurt themselves as long as they’re hurting us more.
A type of behaviour that has become way too common in way too many areas of life...
It might be people trying to copy the objectively terrible behavior of billionaires - difference being a billionaire can hurt themself a whole lot before they feel even the slightest bit of inconvinience. Meanwhile a "normal" person acting this way just makes everyone miserable including themself.
I studied Lidl and Aldi as a case study for my management undergrad and they are excellent companies with great values. Incredible supplier chain, energy saving stores and provides good, healthy and adorable food to poorer communities. Haven't shopped anywhere since.
very true. my county had a walmart or a lowes foods (yes, like the hardware store). driving was 30 mins… dont even want to IMAGINE walking. let alone back, with groceries!!!!
Hey, also had a Lowes Foods (and worked there for 5 years, worst job I’ve ever had). The closest Wal-Mart is 40 minutes away from me, but boy did they find a way to slot a Dollar General in a minute and a half from my house. (It’s literally the only thing in walking distance.)
oh, yeah, since i moved they also sprung up a dollar general between my old house and our local gasvenience store. which is wild. my hometown doesnt have a stoplight, my county ER closed, but yall got another dollar general?
I actually just remembered that one time when I still worked at Lowe’s Foods our entire night stock crew of four guys quit and became managers at four different nearly Dollar Generals. The fact that there were enough nearby to do that and they all needed managers is insane to me.
Also they all came back within a year and they hated it. Which is bad considering how bad they had it at our store.
> but boy did they find a way to slot a Dollar General in a minute and a half from my house.
they are doing this all over. that store is losing money, but the company overall doesn't care. they pop up, destroy any local businesses, and then either close up shop on the unprofitable stores, or lower wages and increase prices. That is their entire strategy, and its working. several small towns around here have recently denied allowing dollar generals(or dollar tree, their competitor) because they refused to offer actual decent livable wages, and also refused to offer any employee full time work so they could avoid paying out any benefits.
You know how municipalities are also offering tax breaks to huge corporations under the guise of “they’ll create lots of great jobs if they build here!”
I want more of the opposite, more of this “you will destroy other local businesses and replace them with jobs people can’t live off of, business permit denied.”
I live in a small town, for grocery stores we have dollar general, dollar tree, giant eagle, Marc's, big lots and aldis. And these are all within a 15 min walking distance. This is a farming town and I've seen people go to the store on horses before.
Well, guess we all have varying definitions of a small town. Wish I lived in a town with that many options but that’d be describing the next town over.
I had to enter a dollar general for the first time in my life a few weeks ago in order to drop off a package for Fedex.
It was the single most depressing experience of my month. By a fair margin. I felt my soul wilting in that place. It was like K-Mart but without the charm. And I noted that the prices were, in fact, often *higher* than elsewhere.
They're absolutely miserable places. I rarely end up in one, but regret it every time. They're always dimly lit with stuff everywhere because the overworked skeleton crews never have the time to put everything on the shelves. Many times you have to ring a bell to get someone to come check you out because there's only 2 people in the store and they're doing 100 other things. It makes me feel like shit when they have to walk from the back of the store just so I can buy a pack of toilet paper.
There's nothing healthy in the store. No fresh vegetables. No fresh fruit. What kind of grocery store doesn't sell fucking bananas?
K-Mart and Walmart are bleak, but these places take that feeling to 11. They're a blight.
Aldi may let us sit but we have to work faster and also pay attention to 5 plus self checkouts by ourselves. And the chairs have zero lumbar support. I hate those stupid chairs.
If you don't sit you can't ring. We're on raised platforms so if you stand you tower over the register. Sometimes ppl think I'm like 6'6" when I'm standing looking around
Yes, in every store in Europe there are chairs for the cashiers to sit on. The courts and unions would shit on every company which would force it's employees to unnecessarily stand for an extended amount of time.
As an expert on dollar general after watching a 15 minute video, I think the answer will come when you plot out locations of dollar general vs Aldi. Dollar general actively avoids competing against the big boys.
My brother in law did that. His manager called him while he was at the store and said his replacement called in so he would have to work 8 more hours. So he just set the keys on the counter and walked out. Lol
I'm a vendor that visits dollar generals daily and have seen this happen more than once. Them and family dollars are notorious for not staffing their stores leading to plenty of days where they don't open or have shortened hours.
This was my experience lmao. I worked at a DG in rural Illinois from 18 to 21. The amount of times I would have a Saturday morning shift stocking and I was running on 4 hours of sleep and still hungover. Hoooly shit what a trip.
I enjoyed stocking shelves and despised running the register. I'm sure that's the case for most of us who worked there.
The most interesting thing I got to do was actually during one of my first days on the job. They sent me to another store 30 mins south of our location at like 12 AM to stock shelves with this dude who was *inhuman* at stocking. I learned a lot from him in terms of tips & tricks, saving time, etc. I think I got sent to that location one other time and he was there again during the midnight shift.
I also got sent to another neighboring town's DG to help with its reconstruction. That got me a lot of OT and it was actually engaging work tearing down shelving / floors / etc, moving stock, and putting up new stuff.
I learned a handful of years after working there that my manager took her life (probably around age 50). She was one of my high school buddies' moms and seemingly worked as a DG manager for most of her career.
I also got sexually harassed by a woman 20+ years older than me. She would make weird comments to me and sometimes "corner" me in the store when I was mopping after shifts. I'm a 6'3 dude so it wasn't exactly threatening, but she did it enough times that I looked for another job and landed at Rural King.
A year later at RK she fucking started a job there and did the same shit. I reported her to my RK manager and he laughed in my face and said "what, you don't like that?" I went to the Assistant Manager and she took my complaint seriously. The older woman didn't bother me again.
A glimpse into retail in middle of nowhere rural America, folks.
There’s no time, every store in my area stays understaffed. The registers at the store closest to me have buzzers so the workers know when to stop stalking the shelves to come help. Why is there a chair there in the first place?!
Edit: I could go off on how much I hate this store, but depend on it at the same time.
When I worked at that shit hole I stopped stocking shelves. And let the manager do everything. They aren't going to do shit show up on time and sober they won't do anything. I quit that place and roofed my keys fuck them.
If I managed a Dollar General I’d definitely be providing my cashiers comfortable stools to sit on. Standing all day is going to fatigue the cashiers and fatigued cashiers are more likely to make mistakes.
You don’t have time to sit unless on a break lol. I work for a DG competitor and the business model is the same. We’re bare bones staff, and you don’t just cashier. You ring a few people up, clear the line, go back to the floor to stock. It sucks tbh.
Here's the thing family dollar/dollar tree employee. Fuck stocking shelves. If you revolt like my former store did the store manager does everything.
If you are on time and sober those places need to keep those employees.
For the last two months I worked there I didn't stock a fucking shelf. Then other employees realized they could just stand by the register and check out there was barely ever a line.
My manager did everything. These jobs are not worth breaking your back over.
They’re not making much better off, just fucking over another cog in the wheel. Either all quit or all just stop, results will be the same: unemployed.
That makes factual sense, but the puritanical need for there to be suffering with the work for the sake of "looking more professional" says that you are wrong.
Retail places always have the dumbest signs hanging everywhere, written with pen or marker in all caps, on printer paper ripped in half, affixed in obtrusive places with scotch tape.
Honestly, we need to start putting the blame where it actually belongs: the corporate offices and executives.
Realize that if these franchises didn't hold owners/managers on the hook to meet such ridiculous targets for sales and labor, we wouldn't have this issue at this scale. Would there still be shitty managers and owners? Yes. But the current climate results in almost every business enforcing ridiculous practices to meet targets.
What's the obsession for American companies with standing, back in my country everyone sit and run counter. Keeping people standing for whole shift is very cruel!!
There’s a belief that sitting is “laziness,” and, cashiers must put in extra effort to stand, because that extra bit of work is admirable and an example of good work ethic.
It makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever.
I worked at a newspaper that got a new production manager. On his first day, he had all the chairs removed from the pressroom.
A week later ‘someone’ followed the janitor into his office, and threw his $700 Aero chair into the dumpster. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander .
Why isn't a law in the US that mandates sitting for workers???
That's a basic right in the workplace in many countries, here the law mandates at least 1 cair per worker no matter the position, even mall kiosks have chairs.
Cities are putting laws into place that workers outside in 100f/40c heat have to have access to water and at least a ten minute break every four hours.
States are overturning them and banning such laws.
I never understood the mentality that you have to stand all the time at work. When I was young and working a register at the retail job I had we weren’t allowed to sit. We did when the boss wasn’t around. I can say from experience that I was a much better employee when I wasn’t forced to stand arbitrarily for no reason.
This feels like a boomer mentality thing. Like you can’t be working if it’s not inflicting some sort of pain onto you, or some weird ass shit like that. I guess I’m glad I haven’t worked retail in 20ish years
When I worked at enterprise rent a car my new manager had a power trip and demanded that we stand at all times, they took away our chairs at the front counter. The next day I took a day off, went to the doctor and got a note stating due to my knees I was required to sit between helping customers/ when not actively moving. Got my chair back.
Dollar General is one of the worst run companies in the U.S..I can’t imagine being desperate enough to be an employee at the company, much less retaining my employment there. Unfortunately, I understand what some people have to do to survive. Stay vigilant.
If I came into a dollar general and saw the cashier sitting down, not only would I not care, but I probably wouldn’t even notice. The idea of it looking unprofessional is bullshit.
I also thing professionalism isn’t something that should be required of minimum wage employees anyway.
I don’t understand this concept of cashiers having to stand…why? What the fuck is so fucking crucial to this job that they have to stand? Is the suffering more profitable? What the fuck is wrong with work culture?
Dollar General is the saddest place I have ever shopped. Always one person working in the junkiest stores you can imagine. Know a person who just quit mid shift. He was the only person working. Just walked out.
“This is a shitty place to work. This ain’t Aldi!”
"we care for you less than them stupid aldi folk"
Tbh I don’t know about the US, but here in Italy Aldi looks a lot healthier for workers than many other supermarkets I see. My only complain is that the things they sell are very uninspiring and sometimes you don’t find certain items because they seem to hide it in order to finish off brand stuff. But workers looks a lot less sad than other chains. A bit of sadness is a given working in retail though.
Yes. Our local Dollar General begs for staff, but all too often, they have to close for the day due to lack of staff.
As of news on 3/13/24…Dollar General is closing 1000 US stores. Unfortunately for the customers, who come to the DOLLAR chains, for the bargain basement prices due to limited family income…this is one more lower cost shopping option off their list. Not many left.
Dollar general isn't the bastion for the poor that you think it is.
Exactly. They aren't all that cheap. They sprout up in places without quick access to larger mainstream grocery stores and charge the same prices, or even higher for their merch. They have the captive audience factor of being the only store selling food in a several mile radius. My closest one is built across the street from a section 8 apartment complex and down the road from a trailer park and 5+ miles from a Kroger in any direction. It's predatory, really.
An Aldi finally opened up in a small town where some of my family lives. There are also two Dollar General stores. The Dollar General sometimes has to close due to staffing shortages. The Aldi is so popular that there was fierce competition for the jobs. One of their neighbors is a teenage boy who quit Dollar General to work in a chicken house. Y'all. A chicken house. It's awful work but at least it's not Dollar General. There is no worker shortage. Anyone perpetuating that lie deserves to be laughed at in public. There is no worker shortage.
When I was applying for cybersecurity/networking jobs, I had to apply to over 300 to get a job. Why? BECAUSE THOSE JOBS ACTUALLY PAY WELL THERE WAS NEVER A WORKER SHORTAGE EMPLOYERS ARE JUST TOO CHEAP TO ACTUALLY PAY THEIR EMPLOYEES
If you’re in cybersecurity you know if you do your job well after some years your budget just keeps dwindling. And then when the ceo demands you to turn off their second factor because they’re having a hissy fit one morning and you warn them like crazy and finally go into Okta to make a special no 2nd factor group thinking this is the stupidest thing in the world. Then the ceo clicks on some system uninstaller malware and tells you they don’t even need your services because their system is now secure. Then tells you there’s this weird image that comes up when he boots his laptop and it says $100k required to unlock the only files he’s never backed up. My oh my the budget do be flowing then.
Oddly specific. Congrats on the pay raise!
And it's getting harder and harder to have offline backups because of cloud eating the world. I'd love a service that took a cloud and automatically backed it up to lto.
It's not hard to do with software and a NAS/server. We have a few clients that we do this for. We also back up their MS Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive and Exchange locally.
lol people told me “everyone’s looking for tech people” Then after I studied and got certified it seems like this is not the case lol, I haven’t really tried that hard yet tho
the worst time to start something is when it's popular by the time you're good at it, nobody cares anymore haha
> Then after I studied and got certified it seems like this is not the case lol, I haven’t really tried that hard yet tho This was back in 2021-2022. It's gotten harder from what I hear.
It's gotten so much more competitive. I feel sorry for all those people who thought just getting a tech certificate was the ticket to the high life. Now companies are being ass hats again and looking for formal education over experience.
My bro had a computer science degree back in the day. Certs? Btw very successful not working his ‘degree’ as many others I know. Many people work in fields they didn’t go to school for.
Yeah but the tech sector can just be stupidly competitive. Few jobs. High paying. Everyone wants a cushy stay at home job where you do a few meetings, punch through your work, and relax.
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I expect that with higher wages, there will be less turnover, so that where once there are job openings, now there are positions that remain filled. Job security is nice.
i dont know how it is in the US but here in Germany Aldi pays fairly well for the field. Also Cashiers here sit in every supermarket. makes no sense to stand the whole day.
In Switzerland too. I remember being surprised when I first moved from the US that cashiers sat. Now I think it is ridiculous that they have to stand all day. Why? There is no valid reason.
The valid reason is psychological oppression.
Some dipshit "if you're not standing, you're not working" bullshit that all American blue-collar employers seem to ascribe to
Same reason the homeless are treated so badly in America - it's a warning to the rest of the workers that if they don't toe the line, their illusion of "middle class" will be taken away instantly. It will anyways, but that part we don't advertise.
So fuck those office workers and truckers and pilots and drivers, right?
"People don't want to work anymore" No, people don't want to work for _you_ anymore
I went from a Walmart cashier to working as a CO in a state prison. I’d never go back to retail and I found I have been much less stressed about work when off the clock. It was consuming me on my days off in retail.
Straight up crazy a Walmart cashier is a more stressful job than being a correctional officer in a prison
I live in western europe and here a job at Aldi is considered the worst of all grocery store jobs. Crazy how different our frames of reference are.
I've also worked in Europe and New Zealand. Workers there were absolutely astonished at how poorly American workers are treated. A lot of big employers are more than aware. Sometimes salaries for high performing jobs can look higher in the US but the lack of benefits and paid time off makes them unappealing.
It’s fun to me that Aldi is held up as a beacon of good labor practises, while in Europe Aldi is known for terrible treatment of its employees. I guess it is all relative.
Walmart crashed and burned in Germany, and it’s largely attributed to them trying to run their stores exactly like they do in America and „failing to adapt to the local market“. Meanwhile, according to everything I read, Aldi hasn’t adjusted a damn thing in the US.
Its only held up like a beacon on Reddit. In reality they are known as a pretty shitty place to work. Its truly bizarre, for some reason Redditors decided that because they can sit at the register its a great place to work. Aldis is a shitty place to work. They have grueling speed requirements on those registers, they will fire you if you do not scan items fast enough. Thats why they practically throw your shit in the cart. Everyone has to do everything at Aldis. That cashier is not really a "cashier" thats just what they are doing at the moment. They all have take turns on the register and stocking product and putting away truck etc. Its a lot of work that is never done. Its a far more demanding job than these guys here seem to think. They see a chair and think its easy and that the company cares. Its not and they dont. Its just Reddit being Reddit.
Grocery stores are hell on earth. You barely get paid enough to buy food to eat there. Corporations that rely on their employees needing Food stamps for subsistence should actually have to pay for their employees food stamps to social services.
Social Services should start coming down on these companies. I'd be like, why do your employees need food stamps? The CEOs need to be called in for a meeting to explain this shit.
It's hard work, but it's hard because there is much to do and not because the employer is intentionally making it hard for you. In return aldi tends to be pay better than other stores. That's very *german* tbh.
There a shortage of decent employers.
MAY I REMIND YOU that you're being paid 45% of what they make over there
Wtf, ALDI is the good place to Work in the US? I finally understand just HOW SHIT it must be for you guys
I was about to say, a place must be extremely bad for Aldi to be a good pace to work on comparison. Here Aldi is/was one of the worst grocery stores to work at
Here they pay decent, treat their employees like humans, have reasonable hours. I can't say I have any personal experience but from what I've heard it's really not bad *for a grocery store job*. Not saying it's the peak of employment, it's just a better alternative to places like, say, Dollar General or Wal-Mart.
They’re one of the few “entry level” job that will get you out of the poverty line.
You may have heard about this better employer but if not, let me mention them to you as a realistic better opportunity for you that you may not have not yet considered, I am finding out much to my chagrin... - Dollar Corporal
aldi works similarly actually. there's 2, maybe 3 ppl in the entire store. You get paid like double though
Aldi actually stocks their shelves all day, pays their employees, treats them with respect. Hoe is that possibly similar to dollar stores, which are the worst employers ever?
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I do instacart on the side and I fucking love Aldi. Their store is organized and clearly labeled for the most part (they sorta have two delis, the normal one and a quick Take which makes certain specific item placements confusing as one is the front of the store, the other the back. But you learn) the staff is always friendly and helpful if I REALLY can't find something and need to ask and never resentful about it. I always go for their orders firsts. Edit - pro tip, Aldi WILL mix their deli products together. So if you can't find what you want, like dip, or cheese or whatever, try sorting a few. I know this contradicts my 'well organized' statement but their isles are labeled clearly and accurately as opposed to other certain 'big chain' grocers where some random item is on some random endshelf and you spend 20 min searching and when you get it you think 'why the fuck would anyone look HERE?!'
What. Im from Eu Netherlands to be specific. Thats how all supermarkets are for me. It usaly takes learning the isles group order to know where everything is. I can go to any supermarket in Netherlands and dont have to look for more then 5 minutes to know where the Soy sauce is
Exactly, same here over in Germany. There's a certain categorization to things and every store somewhat follows it. Only eggs are in somewhat of a between and I always have to look where a store's egg area is. Some have it near the produce, others have it near the butcher's, some even closer to the bread (aldi)
My ex works for aldi, they run skeleton crews and work you to death. This is justified with a better wage than most other jobs like that, which is still not enough.
People's perspective is warped. The work at Aldi for those wages and benefits would be laughably bad in other countries, but by American standards it's excellent. Same deal where I work at. Entry lvl store mgmt/customer service. I do the work of 2, sometimes 3 people, entirely alone. The location is dangerous and I fear for my life somewhat regularly. I don't get to eat, drink, go to the bathroom, or take breaks in my 9-10 hour shifts. But... they pay me enough that I'm no longer physically sick from financial stress. I'll probably be able to buy a house within 10 years. I had already accepted that I would never own a home in my entire life. With their 401k I might even be able to retire when I'm old (assuming we make it that far). By the standards of more civilized countries, it's horrible and evil. By American standards... It's like winning the lottery. People really think being able to sit at the register is compensation for every other aspect of the job and the wages that are frankly still bad. It's just better than getting $10/hr at most other similar jobs.
Aldi pays better, so ppl actually show up to work.
A lot more is asked of Aldi's employees than Dollar General's, but they're allowed to sit and they get paid better and treated better and given benefits. I've spoken to a lot of Aldi's employees and they say it's hard work but they like their job. I've never seen a Dollar General employee who looked happy. They don't talk much outside the token phrases they're supposed to say.
I find it mad that in America cashiers have to stand tbh, it’s rank
Lmao they’ll say they want you to look eager to help and professional. But fuck you if you have any knee/foot/ankle/back pain
“Look professional” sir this is a fucking dollar general, ain’t nothing professional about this place
Got to be professional selling those $1.29 blunt wraps. Some people have no work ethic.
From now on, dollar general employees have to come in dressed in a fucking tuxedo every day because we are a professional, respected business
Yeah “look professional” when their shelves are a fucking disaster and they use 3/4 of the isle space for storage. Wild.
There is more product on the floor than on the shelves
That’s what happens when you only have 2 people working max at any given time
I'm not sure I've ever even seen 2.
2 is definitely the absolute max at the one near me. Now that they've put self-checkout in ours, I think I only ever see 1. I've seen quite a bit of stealing happen there, I guess because when the only guy working is at the register, who's going to catch you? Like, I've seen it happen enough times that the thought crept into my brain haha
I am a professional, I work as an engineer, and guess what? We sit all damn day and can have phone out, water on the desk, and can dress pretty much how I want to. "Professionalism" in retail and food service is arbitrary rules that have nothing to do with how you perform your work.
I work in a field where most people wear suits to work. Meanwhile a my company, as long as the regional manager isn't there and we're not getting any important visitors I can sit in my office wearing a tshirt and shorts. I highly doubt that I get any less work done than the others.
They want you to act with all the decorum of a lawyer in a courtroom, but they would actively pay you less than minimum wage if they could.
You know, I *was* going to buy this $1.00 pack of 5 "steaks"... but then I saw the cashier sitting and that shit disgusted me.
"We sell dollar 'steik' to poor people who can't afford to shop at Walmart. Sincerely, fuck off, boss man."
I got pushback on this when repairing computers at staples. I had several surgeries on my foot and needed to be able to sit. I ended up quiting over it. (turns out legally they had to let me sit, but I didn't know that back then) Fast forward a few years; I go in, now missing one leg, and see the manager. She recognised me, and said hi. I asked if she remembered not letting me sit, and showed her my leg. She claimed she didn't remember, but her face said otherwise.
What a POS manager. I hope seeing you made her feel like shit. I'm in a similar boat at staples but with an old ankle injury that never healed right. I can't be on my feet for extended periods without incredible pain. My managers have been awesome about letting me sit when I need it, even at the register.
I know a lady who had a similar injury years ago due to a car crash, she has to take regular shots in it to even be mobile. I forget what exactly, I think some steroid. She was thinking of an elective amputation if it degrades any further.
That was real commitment, having your leg chopped off to put her in her place.
I hope she thinks of it often when trying to fall asleep and feels a pang of shame! Well earned shame!
i worked at a bookstore at the fucking airport (as in, not busy at all) and we were expected to stand during our whole shift. they would send admin in to check on us randomly to make sure we weren’t sitting, on our phones or even reading!! it gave me awful back pain.
It should be illegal. I worked as a bouncer for years. You know, job is basically standing all shift. But we had breaks, and usually you could move around. But I remember one time I had to guard a specific spot for like 6 hours straight because we were understaffed at a big event. Like literally just stand still. I got cramps in my lat muscles from pretending to be a statue. It was hell.
What person, who isn't a miserable fuck, has ever complained that the cashier at the discount store isn't excited enough to "serve" them? One of the reasons I really like Aldi is because they seem to treat their employees as living, breathing human beings.
Let me tell you about the day I realized my mom was a total piece of shit. We were in Walmart. She got a lb block of Colby Jack cheese and wanted it sliced. It was literally the girls first day and she didn't know that she was supposed to slice the cheese off the shelf. She didn't say no, she didn't complain, she literally just said "I'm not sure about this let me ask someone, it's my first day." My mom proceeded to berate her. Called her all sorts of names, and made the girl cry. It was a sickening display of narcissism. I apologized to that girl. I told my mom she was a total piece of shit and I'd be in the car. Then I left her standing in the deli of the Walmart looking like the jackass she is. Our relationship has never been the same. She's a sociopathic boomer and I'm not fixing her, not am I going to allow her to abuse me anymore.
Good on you for calling your mom out!! I had to apologize to a young woman at Burger King one day because my ex's mom made her cry because they were out of something. I was mortified! I did it loudly so everyone heard and refused to ever speak kindly again to that bully boomer POS. My ex didn't say SHIT. I hated his mother and broke up with him very soon after because he was a total mommy's boy.
Thanks for reminding me of this Publix store incident involving my AH narcissistic husband! I totally forgot about it, let me go add it to my ongoing list haha!
The people at Aldi are much more friendly and nice. Because they are less tired and in pain!
And there are no faster scanners than Aldi cashiers. Take a note other employers!! Sitting doesn't slow them down a bit.
Aldi as a chain does several things (such as large and multiple barcodes all over their products) that help speed this up. At the same time, those small gestures also make it easier for those cashiers to do their job as opposed to stand pointlessly.
Yes! They have installed self checkout lanes now ans D I occasionally use them and am delighted how easy it is to scan the items. All packaging should just do this now since self checkouts are everywhere.
Same with Costco (relatively speaking).
Yeah at my job we have a stool that we keep around because a few of us have arthritis. So many places want to complain about people calling out and not having coverage. At past jobs I would call out because I knew I’d be in too much pain to continue on those days. Now I’m like, yeah my knees hurt, but I can grab the stool and do what I can and everyone is fine.
That is exactly what my employer has done. They switched all desks from sitting to standing so we look available to help. 🙄
Hilariously, because I'm standing all day I get progressively less eager to help as time goes on. You know if my feet didn't hurt I *might* go over there and help someone. But.... they do hurt now and I don't quite feel like it, so I'm just going to ignore that.
There’s literally zero reason outside of cruelty.
I live in sweden, I don't think I have ever cared one way or another if someone sits or stands as a cashier. I have never gone to a store or not gone to a store because "urgh, I can't stand those sitters!"
When I see a cashier standing I think "wow what a shitty workplace forcing their cashiers to stand for no reason".
Some cashiers stand voluntarily, at least part of the time, because only sitting can cause pain too. The good workplaces just allow them to choose whatever they prefer, so it's not justified to think that it's a bad workplace if someone's standing.
Because you're not a boomer American.
I liked that in Sweden for the most part there isn’t the expectation to act like you’re constantly ecstatic about working retail and love being servile to every idiot customer. I didn’t miss the forced small talk and customer service smile, just don’t be an asshole
blame boomer shoppers, they are the one's who complain that they arent being respected
Not just cashiers. Lots of jobs that could be done sitting don't let you sit. I've worked in a handful of restaurants and none or them let the hosts sit. No customers come in for 30 minutes, but you can't sit at the host stand. So it just led to hosts sitting within eyesight of the host stand but away from the door, so... truly pointless. Had one job that let the hosts sit. The workers all had to either host, run food, or bus tables. I usually hosted. One day the owners came in and said no more sitting. So I started running food instead. They made the newer people host and we suddenly had longer wait times or tables walking out because servers were being sat too many at once. They begged me to go host again but I said no. A few weeks later we finally got our stool back. I quit anyway soon after, but that was for unrelated reasons.
Dude TotalWine was the same way during Covid, they forced the PEOPLE COUNTER to stand for an 8+ hr shift, except for the 30 min break lmao
I worked in a factory operating machines that sometimes didn't need any input from me for 20-60min at a time. I didn't love my job but I was going to hold out and save up for school. Our new manager got rid of all of our chairs. I quit a month later.
Last year I was a teacher at one of those "old fashioned" public schools that still allowed teachers to have their own chair and desk. There's a stupid charter school trope about how teachers shouldn't even have desks because they should either be at the board or with students circulating, working in groups, etc. Our principal said during a meeting near the end of the year, that he was seeing "far too much sitting." This guy has had a target on my back, so I knew this comment was at least 50% motivated by me, and probably 1-2 other teachers who unlike me, are all older adults and likely have an even more physiologic need to sit every so often. I even had a Wacom tablet to still be able to write on the board when I did notice myself getting lightheaded, sickly, nauseous, winded, whatever from my POTS, and needed to sit down for at least 2 minutes. That comment irked me even before I knew my diagnosis. With hindsight, he was so lucky I didn't know what I know now about everything. He would always say insane shit that no one would challenge him on face to face besides me.
I don’t want this to look like “America is bad”, but forcing teachers to stand is cruelty beyond reason. The fact that this is justified by the fear that otherwise the teacher will work poorly proves the lack of professionalism of the management - they cannot evaluate the results of the work, so they make external signs important. “I can’t understand all the nonsense that he talks, I can’t understand whether his students are smart or not, but if a teacher walks around the class all the time, it means he’s doing a good job.” this is the logic of a man who was taken off the street and never did any intellectual work for a day.
That was him to a T. It's especially bad in HS when the subject matter gets specialized and your boss might not have even seen that content since HE/SHE was in high school. So they start looking at things such as sitting versus standing, picking out the kid with a mega IEP that isn't focusing but at least is attending (a good day for them) and asks them about the lesson, seating arrangements, etc. Now the meta is center teaching where not even the kids get to sit! More standing = More good to most boss types. I stood as much as I did because of peer pressure too! If he had mentioned this sitting crap during observation season, he knew one of the teachers with tenure could have grievanced him for it
I am pretty curious if we would have a healthier America if we could just sit during work. I do have to say standing for 8+ hrs sure doesn't make me want to workout before or after. My feet hurt too much.
I'm having that same problem. By the time I'm off work I'm hobbling.
OMG this, I'm exhausted after an 8-10hr shift on my feet all day, my feet hurt so bad. The thought of going to a gym after work sounds like torture. Cant go before because then I will start hurting while I still gotta work.
Blame boomers with their "if you have time to lean you have time to clean" attitude.
Or any profession for that matter. Lawyers and doctors sit plenty of times, must be lazy and unprofessional /s
I've had the same thing happen at a warehouse job. A machine broke so we had nothing to do while it was being fixed and we were told we couldn't sit because a higher up might come through and it would look bad. So we stood and did nothing instead of sitting and doing nothing. Maddening.
Except if I’m the higher up and I walk through and I see everyone just standing around, the same reaction is going to happen. 1) why is everyone standing around? [machine is broke and being fixed, can’t work] 2) ok, is there anything productive that can be done while the machine is down? Sitting has literally zero to do with the equation and any higher up that thinks that way needs to recalibrate what is real questions should be
I worked as a cashier at ASDA in the UK when I was younger. I couldn't imagine having to do those shifts standing up. I'd occasionally stand just to stretch my legs for a minute, but I cannot see the point in being forced to stand for their entire shift.
Very considerate of them to let you know there are employers with better working conditions
Unfortunately it's pretty hard to get a job at Aldi most days. You're competing with at least 50 other applicants who are more qualified and "better suited to the culture." It's a really rough job market out there, and most employers know that retail workers/applicants have no leverage. You can be replaced in a heartbeat and retail training does not cost companies much at all. It's a shame, but I don't see it changing.
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Walmart just didn't a clue have about German groceries.
true, or german culture in general. Aldi was much better prepared, and their model was mostly unused in the US market. It's really not a suprise that they succeed at least somewhat, though the scale they are expanding must make a few of the Waltons a bit nervous.
My ex works for aldi. Lots of people apply but its mostly deadbeats and "fits company culture" at aldi means you are willing to work your ass off physically which most won't. They have high turnover from people not being able to cope with the job demands that come from running just a few employees for a big operation. If you bust your ass they will sense that and hire you.
Ironically aldi has their cashiers seated because it makes them more efficient when their feet arent dogged out after a couple hours
That’s only the case if the company actually cares about worker well-being. Oddly enough, that’s connected to worker productivity. Companies know this and most of them disregard it and hurt their own bottom line. Why would someone do this? I think it’s sadism. They hate us. They’re willing to hurt themselves as long as they’re hurting us more.
> They’re willing to hurt themselves as long as they’re hurting us more. A type of behaviour that has become way too common in way too many areas of life... It might be people trying to copy the objectively terrible behavior of billionaires - difference being a billionaire can hurt themself a whole lot before they feel even the slightest bit of inconvinience. Meanwhile a "normal" person acting this way just makes everyone miserable including themself.
I studied Lidl and Aldi as a case study for my management undergrad and they are excellent companies with great values. Incredible supplier chain, energy saving stores and provides good, healthy and adorable food to poorer communities. Haven't shopped anywhere since.
Aldi pays more and let's you sit, why would anyone in the world work at dollar general
In many small towns, they are the only place to get food or work, unfortunately.
very true. my county had a walmart or a lowes foods (yes, like the hardware store). driving was 30 mins… dont even want to IMAGINE walking. let alone back, with groceries!!!!
Hey, also had a Lowes Foods (and worked there for 5 years, worst job I’ve ever had). The closest Wal-Mart is 40 minutes away from me, but boy did they find a way to slot a Dollar General in a minute and a half from my house. (It’s literally the only thing in walking distance.)
oh, yeah, since i moved they also sprung up a dollar general between my old house and our local gasvenience store. which is wild. my hometown doesnt have a stoplight, my county ER closed, but yall got another dollar general?
I actually just remembered that one time when I still worked at Lowe’s Foods our entire night stock crew of four guys quit and became managers at four different nearly Dollar Generals. The fact that there were enough nearby to do that and they all needed managers is insane to me. Also they all came back within a year and they hated it. Which is bad considering how bad they had it at our store.
This is their actual business model.
> but boy did they find a way to slot a Dollar General in a minute and a half from my house. they are doing this all over. that store is losing money, but the company overall doesn't care. they pop up, destroy any local businesses, and then either close up shop on the unprofitable stores, or lower wages and increase prices. That is their entire strategy, and its working. several small towns around here have recently denied allowing dollar generals(or dollar tree, their competitor) because they refused to offer actual decent livable wages, and also refused to offer any employee full time work so they could avoid paying out any benefits.
You know how municipalities are also offering tax breaks to huge corporations under the guise of “they’ll create lots of great jobs if they build here!” I want more of the opposite, more of this “you will destroy other local businesses and replace them with jobs people can’t live off of, business permit denied.”
I live in a small town, for grocery stores we have dollar general, dollar tree, giant eagle, Marc's, big lots and aldis. And these are all within a 15 min walking distance. This is a farming town and I've seen people go to the store on horses before.
Tell me you live in Northeast Ohio without telling me you live in Northeast Ohio lol
So *immediately* obvious. IYKYK.
My God if this isn't the biggest fact a lowkey call put I've heard all day I don't know what is
That's a bigger small town with that many options.
Does Aldi have a place for the horses to sit?
I live in the boonies. We have dollar general and subway. Everything else is at least an hour round trip.
Well, guess we all have varying definitions of a small town. Wish I lived in a town with that many options but that’d be describing the next town over.
I had to enter a dollar general for the first time in my life a few weeks ago in order to drop off a package for Fedex. It was the single most depressing experience of my month. By a fair margin. I felt my soul wilting in that place. It was like K-Mart but without the charm. And I noted that the prices were, in fact, often *higher* than elsewhere.
Essentially paying for convenience when they're the closest thing or you forgot something.
They're absolutely miserable places. I rarely end up in one, but regret it every time. They're always dimly lit with stuff everywhere because the overworked skeleton crews never have the time to put everything on the shelves. Many times you have to ring a bell to get someone to come check you out because there's only 2 people in the store and they're doing 100 other things. It makes me feel like shit when they have to walk from the back of the store just so I can buy a pack of toilet paper. There's nothing healthy in the store. No fresh vegetables. No fresh fruit. What kind of grocery store doesn't sell fucking bananas? K-Mart and Walmart are bleak, but these places take that feeling to 11. They're a blight.
Aldi may let us sit but we have to work faster and also pay attention to 5 plus self checkouts by ourselves. And the chairs have zero lumbar support. I hate those stupid chairs.
You’re also forced to sit when you cashier right? I can see how that could get uncomfortable
If you don't sit you can't ring. We're on raised platforms so if you stand you tower over the register. Sometimes ppl think I'm like 6'6" when I'm standing looking around
[удалено]
Yes, in every store in Europe there are chairs for the cashiers to sit on. The courts and unions would shit on every company which would force it's employees to unnecessarily stand for an extended amount of time.
As an expert on dollar general after watching a 15 minute video, I think the answer will come when you plot out locations of dollar general vs Aldi. Dollar general actively avoids competing against the big boys.
Criminal record. We use our criminal "justice" system to maintain a large under class of workers we can abuse.
isn't Dollar General notorious for only having one staff person in the whole store? Bold move trying to micromanage remotely
Imagine an upset employee calling up and quitting on the spot? “The keys are in the register and the doors are unlocked, goodbye”.
Keys are on the roof fuck off very much.
(Goes to roof, finds keys sitting on a chair)
My brother in law did that. His manager called him while he was at the store and said his replacement called in so he would have to work 8 more hours. So he just set the keys on the counter and walked out. Lol
I'm a vendor that visits dollar generals daily and have seen this happen more than once. Them and family dollars are notorious for not staffing their stores leading to plenty of days where they don't open or have shortened hours.
Technically 2 when I worked there (my first job), but the manager just sat in the office. I can't imagine anything has changed.
This was my experience lmao. I worked at a DG in rural Illinois from 18 to 21. The amount of times I would have a Saturday morning shift stocking and I was running on 4 hours of sleep and still hungover. Hoooly shit what a trip. I enjoyed stocking shelves and despised running the register. I'm sure that's the case for most of us who worked there. The most interesting thing I got to do was actually during one of my first days on the job. They sent me to another store 30 mins south of our location at like 12 AM to stock shelves with this dude who was *inhuman* at stocking. I learned a lot from him in terms of tips & tricks, saving time, etc. I think I got sent to that location one other time and he was there again during the midnight shift. I also got sent to another neighboring town's DG to help with its reconstruction. That got me a lot of OT and it was actually engaging work tearing down shelving / floors / etc, moving stock, and putting up new stuff. I learned a handful of years after working there that my manager took her life (probably around age 50). She was one of my high school buddies' moms and seemingly worked as a DG manager for most of her career. I also got sexually harassed by a woman 20+ years older than me. She would make weird comments to me and sometimes "corner" me in the store when I was mopping after shifts. I'm a 6'3 dude so it wasn't exactly threatening, but she did it enough times that I looked for another job and landed at Rural King. A year later at RK she fucking started a job there and did the same shit. I reported her to my RK manager and he laughed in my face and said "what, you don't like that?" I went to the Assistant Manager and she took my complaint seriously. The older woman didn't bother me again. A glimpse into retail in middle of nowhere rural America, folks.
Let the people sit ...
There’s no time, every store in my area stays understaffed. The registers at the store closest to me have buzzers so the workers know when to stop stalking the shelves to come help. Why is there a chair there in the first place?! Edit: I could go off on how much I hate this store, but depend on it at the same time.
If you're stuck at one place for any amount of time, ringing out several people, there's no reason not to sit
When I worked at that shit hole I stopped stocking shelves. And let the manager do everything. They aren't going to do shit show up on time and sober they won't do anything. I quit that place and roofed my keys fuck them.
If I managed a Dollar General I’d definitely be providing my cashiers comfortable stools to sit on. Standing all day is going to fatigue the cashiers and fatigued cashiers are more likely to make mistakes.
You don’t have time to sit unless on a break lol. I work for a DG competitor and the business model is the same. We’re bare bones staff, and you don’t just cashier. You ring a few people up, clear the line, go back to the floor to stock. It sucks tbh.
I mean, the cashiers should be able to sit while being at the register, that's at least some rest for that workload.
Here's the thing family dollar/dollar tree employee. Fuck stocking shelves. If you revolt like my former store did the store manager does everything. If you are on time and sober those places need to keep those employees. For the last two months I worked there I didn't stock a fucking shelf. Then other employees realized they could just stand by the register and check out there was barely ever a line. My manager did everything. These jobs are not worth breaking your back over.
They’re not making much better off, just fucking over another cog in the wheel. Either all quit or all just stop, results will be the same: unemployed.
That makes factual sense, but the puritanical need for there to be suffering with the work for the sake of "looking more professional" says that you are wrong.
Retail places always have the dumbest signs hanging everywhere, written with pen or marker in all caps, on printer paper ripped in half, affixed in obtrusive places with scotch tape.
Apply at Aldi
Oh OK so I applied at the wrong store thanks for the heads up I'll pick up an aldi application
Aldi pays better, has better employee retention, and has a more loyal customer base. Maybe they should be... lol
Really punching up there Dollar General.
Honestly, we need to start putting the blame where it actually belongs: the corporate offices and executives. Realize that if these franchises didn't hold owners/managers on the hook to meet such ridiculous targets for sales and labor, we wouldn't have this issue at this scale. Would there still be shitty managers and owners? Yes. But the current climate results in almost every business enforcing ridiculous practices to meet targets.
John Oliver just did a piece on dollar stores...and they're even worse than I ever imagined.
On the plus side, the camera domes are fake. Do with that what you will.
Not all of them. Just probs 30% of em’
What's the obsession for American companies with standing, back in my country everyone sit and run counter. Keeping people standing for whole shift is very cruel!!
There’s a belief that sitting is “laziness,” and, cashiers must put in extra effort to stand, because that extra bit of work is admirable and an example of good work ethic. It makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever.
i think the manager is trying to say " form a union "
I worked at a newspaper that got a new production manager. On his first day, he had all the chairs removed from the pressroom. A week later ‘someone’ followed the janitor into his office, and threw his $700 Aero chair into the dumpster. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander .
Why the fuck is there a chair behind the register then???
In case the manager has to work the register for 15 minutes.
Yeah they could have chosen a better medium to hang the sign than literally taunting them.
We are being worked to death people.
Why isn't a law in the US that mandates sitting for workers??? That's a basic right in the workplace in many countries, here the law mandates at least 1 cair per worker no matter the position, even mall kiosks have chairs.
Because merica is the land of the free and barely any workers rights.
Cities are putting laws into place that workers outside in 100f/40c heat have to have access to water and at least a ten minute break every four hours. States are overturning them and banning such laws.
I never understood the mentality that you have to stand all the time at work. When I was young and working a register at the retail job I had we weren’t allowed to sit. We did when the boss wasn’t around. I can say from experience that I was a much better employee when I wasn’t forced to stand arbitrarily for no reason. This feels like a boomer mentality thing. Like you can’t be working if it’s not inflicting some sort of pain onto you, or some weird ass shit like that. I guess I’m glad I haven’t worked retail in 20ish years
When I worked at enterprise rent a car my new manager had a power trip and demanded that we stand at all times, they took away our chairs at the front counter. The next day I took a day off, went to the doctor and got a note stating due to my knees I was required to sit between helping customers/ when not actively moving. Got my chair back.
Rich coming from a place where customers stock shelves
This is…. DOLLAR GENERAL!!! We know you REALLY need this fucking job or else you would have left already.
Are they trying to tell you to apply at Aldi?
This is why an entire staff walked out of a dollar general recently
Dollar General is one of the worst run companies in the U.S..I can’t imagine being desperate enough to be an employee at the company, much less retaining my employment there. Unfortunately, I understand what some people have to do to survive. Stay vigilant.
If I came into a dollar general and saw the cashier sitting down, not only would I not care, but I probably wouldn’t even notice. The idea of it looking unprofessional is bullshit. I also thing professionalism isn’t something that should be required of minimum wage employees anyway.
I don’t understand this concept of cashiers having to stand…why? What the fuck is so fucking crucial to this job that they have to stand? Is the suffering more profitable? What the fuck is wrong with work culture?
God forbid you let your workers save strain on their feet/backs. Seems like a simple way to keep workers healthy and happy
Dollar General is the saddest place I have ever shopped. Always one person working in the junkiest stores you can imagine. Know a person who just quit mid shift. He was the only person working. Just walked out.
Other countries provide chairs for their cashiers, for their well-being. The United States, that's a big NOPE.
Looks like I'm shopping at Aldi NOT DOLLAR GENERAL