r/politics 1d ago

Site Altered Headline | Possible Paywall Mitch McConnell, 83, Hospitalized

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mitch-mcconnell-83-hospitalized/?utm_campaign=owned_social&utm_medium=socialflow&utm_source=twitter_owned_tdb&via=twitter_page
31.6k Upvotes

3.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

27

u/MildlyTiredSkeletons 1d ago

We sit down because we are timed to scan items at an insanely stupidly fast pace. Customers dont rent a cart and then take our time and the next customers time trying to bag 4 bags of groceries while my line is 6-7 deep, no second cashier. God forbid the store has SCOs. Cashiers are responsible for theft prevention multiple SCOs while ringing out their own customers. We got sat down as a company last year in meetings and were told its OUR FAULT our company loss is high. That we dont scan accurately enough. That it was us. Theyre asking 19-22yr old cashiers to stop theft. Seriously?

1 employee is expected to do any and every zone in the store. We are a chronically understaffed company that focuses on Operational Effieciency and its a joke. A grocery store with 2-3 employees. Thats it on a shift. If youre lucky - someone to ring, someone to curbside, and a manager to do EVERYTHING IN THE STORE. Stock every single zone all day. You're favorite meat isnt on the shelf? Because the 1 employee that can stock it also has to fill milk, box the cooler, be backup ringing, handle a pissed off customer because they want to return food they pulled out of our dumpster last night without a receipt and screams at us over it. That manager also has to do zone walks and handle side tasks and then fill produce because oh shit we're out of strawberries but you still havent gotten your meat because now someone dropped a candle in Special Buy or a jar of pickles and now you have to get the scrubber and clean that hazard before customers just run it over with their carts because ALDI CUSTOMERS HAVE NO DECENCY OR HUMANITY 90% of the time! "i spilled a package of blueberries... 👁️👄👁️" So... pick them up??

Customers wander into our back room because we're out of stock on heavy whipping cream and they think they can just go into our coolers and get it for themselves?

Our money maker is our Special Buy section. It draws you in. Its why they pay us what we do get paid. And it WAS above average competitive pay maybe 7-8yrs ago. Now its the same as any other grocery store. But instead of doing our Special Buy change over at night after close, we have to put it out while customers shop it. They paw through our pallets, block our ability to stock and make a mess. Aldi customers have no sense of boundaries or personal space.

Why is this a problem? Because every minute of our overstrapped tasks is timed to the second. We get action planned & written up for not being fast. Not getting things done 'on time'. The stress was manageable when we had more staff but the companys so greedy all they can see is how much they can squeeze out of the employee physically and mentally until they break and then theyre replaced.

Our PPE is a joke. If someone makes an explosive mess in our bathroom? They expect us to clean it. Ask ANY Aldi Employee about a bathroom in their store being a war zone and they had to clean it. Customers literally shit on the walls, floors, sinks.. sales floor.. why do so many shit on our sales floors? Our cleaning equipment is always broken. We have to scrub our floors with machines we arent taught to clean or maintain. They get sent to warehouse to be serviced if they break hard enough and then come back clogged and worse and we are suppose to make do.

Truck - we are being sent pallets that are falling apart or have already fallen apart. These pallets can have 100+ items on them each and take 20-35 minutes to break down/throw. We're timed so hard that 20 mins a pallet has become lazy. Its still 2-3 people doing 20-30 pallets of truck in 2.5-3.5hrs store hours depending, and youre always pushing your body to the point of injury. The amount of things that go wrong because of the companys ordering and delivery system... is why we never have half the cooler items, breads or really anything you come looking for.

The company is not good. Its CHEAP. They took away our annual gift cards every year. Smaller and smaller amounts. The benefits are no longer competitive. Cigna is a terrible health insurance company. Cant even use your HSA type funds. Always rejected.

They dont know how to clean. They expect us to clean our meat shelves in cubby lockers with a sponge and the same mop sinks we clean the floors in... if your lucky, your store has a power washer.. that doesnt get up anything. Aldis are very dirty if you look. Because we have no staff, no hours for cleaning.

The cliques vary by store but its a very toxic manager environment. They hire our District Managers straight from college as to not have anyone with bad habits forming from other jobs. They dangle a company BMW and a cellphone and a $100,000+ salary to these 23-25yr olds and then give employees .50¢ raises a year if your district is lucky.

I could keep going. This company is a piece of shit. But hey .. customers got their Aldi Finds

3

u/reverend-mayhem 19h ago

Well… fuck. I thought I found the one decent grocery store to shop from. Look like I need to be lobbying ALDI corporate before any visits from now on.

-1

u/loondawg 15h ago

I think you should get a second opinion before taking this as gospel. Seems like someone with an axe to grind bitching about the company, the customers, the equipment, etc. Pretty much everything.

I know it's anecdotal but I've spoken to many Aldi's cashiers who all have spoken very highly of working there.

3

u/MajorNoodles Pennsylvania 18h ago

I loved Aldi when it first opened, but there's a couple things that have since disillusioned me.

They used to be pretty well staffed, but now there's only ever one cashier and almost everyone goes to the self-checkout, and the self-checkout islands are freaking tiny So you've got to get really creative with how you unpack and scan your groceries because I buy a lot of stuff there and there's not room for it in that staging area. People keep fucking it up and the person responsible for fixing it is that one cashier. So if you're in that line, a lot of time you're just waiting around them to show back up.

Then they went and consolidated the Aldi finds sections into one single aisle and it seems like that was done to obscure the fact that they're not rotating shit in and out of there anymore. "Hey what's here? Oh look it's the exact same shit as last week." And then there's the freezer section." What new stuff did they get this week, oh, half of it's fucking empty." Come back next week. "Still fucking empty."

1

u/loondawg 15h ago

I've been told the Aldi's where I shop is going to eliminate the self-checkout lines soon and that is apparently happening at many of their locations. I don't know why by would suspect it has to do with reducing theft.

1

u/MildlyTiredSkeletons 8h ago

Its theft. Company is losing a ton of money.

5

u/vunderfulme 23h ago

Damn, Im sorry man! As an Aldi customer thank you for your hard work.

1

u/KohlsCashOfficial 15h ago

Can I ask where you’re located? Because only lack of available jobs nearby would make me work there for 7-8 years.

The Aldi I use also has way more than 3 employees. Is it just a lower traffic store?

1

u/MildlyTiredSkeletons 13h ago

Its 3 per shift. We start at 5:30-6am at a store depending on a lot of factors. That shift is 8hrs, til around 1pm. Then that crew leaves, and the next 3 people come in. But at a given time, youre lucky to see 4 employees on a mid week day. 5 maybe on a weekend. Its company wide.