#retailproblems

Customer: “I saw a sign that I get a free drink?”

Me: “For signing up for our rewards program, yes :)”

Customer: “Oh… I don’t have one of those”

Me: “Well if you sign up, you can get the free drink! :)”

Customer: “Eh I don’t want to sign up”

Me: “…” “…” “:)”

Customer: “I hate getting all those emails”

Me: “Oh, well you can opt out of emails, I can show you how :)”

Customer: “No thanks, I don’t want an account”

Me: “Okay… well the drink will be [x amount] :)”

Customer: “I thought it was free?”

Me: “:)”

Me: “It’s free if you sign up for our rewards program :)”

Customer: “I don’t want to sign up”

Me: “Then the drink isn’t free :)”

Customer: “You can’t just give me the drink?”

Me: “No, I can’t unfortunately :)”

Customer: “Why not? It’s only [x amount]”

Me: “If that’s not a lot of money to you, why don’t you just pay for it? :)”

Customer: “This is shit customer service”

Me: “:)”

Customer: “This is highway robbery, squeezing every dime out of people, you should be ashamed of yourself—”

Me: “I don’t control the prices, I’m just a cashier :)“

Customer: “—making a fucking fuss over a damn drink and it’s not even a large—”

Me: “That’s not my decision, I’m just a cashier :)”

Customer: “—and you bet I won’t be coming back here again”

His family’s phone numbers, address, social security numbers and bank accounts were spread. His employer had to transfer him from the register to the stock, because girls felt it was acceptable to harass him on the job and take unwanted pictures. Not to mention that this all started because some creepy chick felt it was fine for her to sneak a shot of a random dude she didn’t know and post it online.

me: 

The interior of the store looks like this so they save money on the annoying shelf restocking. Products remain in their boxes until being removed by customers.  No unboxing and putting stuff on shelves, and constantly having to rearrange it. Also, the boxes make inventory a breeze as a sealed box has a defined number of items in it. 

Typical American grocery stores have shelves like this

Every item has to be unboxed and neatly stacked on the shelves. If they get messed up by the customers, everything has to be rearranged back to specific rigid order. When you have to verify the inventory, every item has to be removed from the shelves to be counted and put back. Aldi’s also do not have plastic bags. You can buy reusable bags or simply use the empty cardboard boxes that are available.

Last is the carts. Most grocery stores have their carts strewn across the parking lots, rolling around and hitting cars until a store employee is sent out to collect them, after being yelled at by the manager when they were told to do other tasks in the meantime. Aldi’s chains those carts together and you have to put a Quarter in to release it. When you are done, you plug the chain back in and get your Quarter back. If others are lazy, you can collect and return the loose carts and collect the Quarters. 

It stops this…

Then the employees have to do this