If you’ve never been to an Aldi, you should know that it’s an experience. The one-stop shop is a haven for budget-friendly shoppers — it offers both name- and store-brand groceries, household goods, and more. You can easily grab all the essentials, and then some.
Speed and efficiency at checkout are the name of the game. Aldi’s known for having fewer lanes and employees than other stores, and its products have massive barcodes on the packaging so that employees to scan your items at lightning speed. (Although you’ll need to bag up your haul yourself.) If you’re brave, or simply want to tackle the process on your own, some Aldi stores have self-checkout lanes. But that may become a thing of the past with Aldi’s latest change.
Recently customers nationwide have been noticing that their local Aldi has removed the self-checkout lanes from its stores. People quickly took to Reddit to express their frustrations on all sides of the coin. “It’s been about two weeks since I went to my local Aldi. Since then, the self-checkouts have all been removed. It’s back to waiting 10-15 minutes since there’s always only one lane open. Does anyone know what happened and why?” one person commented.
Speculation is that it’s to reduce theft, with some employees getting in on the conversation. “Fellow store manager. Too much theft!! The amount of loss the divisions take is too high. So no more self-checkout!” In another Reddit thread for a Chicago Aldi location, another employee commented that “some days they lost up to $7k in inventory.”
Some customers are all for the change — especially considering how swiftly the employees run the operation. “The cashiers are so much faster than I am. They should simply be regarded as loss prevention and keep them at all stations. This goes for every retailer,” one person stated. “Those cashiers are so fast, I wouldn’t want to self scan,” said another.
Meanwhile, other shoppers prefer the self-checkout and would be disappointed to see it go. “Its crazy to me that so many people don’t like the self-checkout. I personally love it. I always felt so rushed and stressed with the employee and having to bag everything in that bagging area was so annoying. Now I can take my time and bag things while I check out and don’t need to feel so rushed,” another person wrote.
While some shoppers say the self-checkout lanes are still up at their Aldi stores, others state that their Aldi locations never had self-checkout at all. “Aldi just is not set up for self-checkout. I hate waiting behind people trying their best to check out/bag their own groceries. I don’t care how few items I have. I always get in line with the cashier and it always saves me time,” one person wrote.
It remains unclear whether this store change will take effect across all Aldi stores or not, but if you’re a self-checkout-lover, you may want to make note for your next grocery shop.