tbcustomer
map-marker Palm Harbor, Florida

Aldi Grocery - The Truth About Aldi

I posted this in another review, however I thought that this should be placed in its own topic and expanded upon!

I worked for them as a manager for a year, and in several stores as I was a floating manager from florida to nc and back!

95% of the opening managers DO NOT rotate the produce in the morning, they throw fresh on top, so more often than not there is rotten produce under the fresh produce.

You ever see those stickers $1 $2 off meat? If its put over the date the meat is dated and they are trying to sell dated meat (trust me I was there and I know how angry district managers get at the store manager for throwing out meat)

Freezer and cooler loads when they come in do not stay in the cooler and freezer! More often than not what happens is the loads come in 3-4 pallets, the pallets that are not being worked are pulled into the back room YES THE BACKROOM where there is no NO refrigeration at all, I have seen several stores working a freezer load for 1-3 hours with the freezer pallets sitting in the back room, same thing with the cooler! Why does this happen? Aldi cuts costs everywhere and instead of giving you a walkin you can work in they give you this skinny little room where you can't work each of the pallets!

Aldi does not give their employees proper breaks either, in the year or so I was there I NEVER ONCE took a 30 min lunch break paid or unpaid, yet they instruct their employees to punch a time for break so they don't get sued!

Aldi also does not rotate floor stock properly, for example In florida (st pete store) I went to cover some vacations, and found 6 cases of cereal which were outdated, among other things on the shelves that were dated and placed for sale!

If the store is not to grand opening standards at the end of the night EVERYONE is expected to stay no matter how late after your shift it is and get it fixed! Then the next day they ream the cashiers/managers for staying late because aldi refuses to give more than 1-2 cashiers and a manager in a store that does 2-5 thousand dollars an hour...

I could go on and on and on, needless to say after working there and seeing the things (including several instances of vermin in the back room where you would get yelled at for calling the bug guy) I will never EVER shop there, yes the prices are low, but you do not see what goes on in the back rooms, especially here in florida!

As for the cashiers, they are treated like garbage! They have to meet a certain ring speed (which is why they throw the groceries) or they get fired. If their drawer is off slightly FIRED, if they are more than 10 min late to work FIRED, The cashiers are lucky if they are smokers and their manager is a smoker because in an 8-10 hour shift they may get one break for a smoke, if you get anymore than that you are really lucky.

The floors of the coolers and freezers are never cleaned, I have seen SEVERAL stores in Florida with dried milk (from where it leaked) that upon going back to the store 2 weeks later and after telling management there it is still there. The only major time that they do any major cleaning is when one of the big wigs are coming, other than that you are lucky if you get a scrubber through that place at night.

There have been several times in my bouncing from store to store that they are selling dated bread and when calling out the manager who was there about this, they state "our dm is psycho I can't throw out that bread I have to sell it"

The dates are rarely if ever checked on many items and on many of my shifts I would find dated items in the cooler (milk, sour cream, cheese, lunch meats etc...) and upon taking them out to throw them away got yelled at for creating inventory problems.

As for pay, yes they do pay you a lot and there are good benefits, however you can rarely use them since you are working 40-70 hours a week if you are the manager. If you are salaried, your life is Aldi, if your stores sales arent up enough for the month, they force you to send cashiers home and work the cashier shifts even if you haven't had a day off in 2 weeks. When we opened here I did not have a day off for a month straight!

As for any of you wanting to get in touch with aldi, good luck, a DIRECTOR OF STORE OPERATIONS has stated "we don't have phone numbers published because we aren't going to pay someone to sit on the phone to listen to people ***** about things that we do wrong, if they really need to get a hold of us they can write a letter, until then its not that important" This is the mentality about customers at aldi.

If the levels of the canned goods or other items are really low DO NOT BUY THEM as they are likely close to going out of date and the store manager isn't ordering new because new stock goes directly on top of old in the dry grocery section. They have monthly rotations and spot freezer checklists but THOSE NEVER GET FOLLOWED!

Now yes the quality of the food is good for the most part, however there are so many things wrong with the operations and not taking care of items which have gone bad that I will never shop there again, speaking about things that go bad, it was not uncommon for the produce/meat that was dated or spoiled to sit in the back room in a buggy (yes a buggy that you use in the store) rotting for days! Sneak a walk into your local Aldi back room here in florida if you don't believe me, I guarantee you will never shop there again.

As for cashiers, they are also almost forbidden to have conversations with customers as this kills their productivity, if a customer asks something they are trained to be short, curt, and to the point to get the customer out of their line and move along to the next customer. They are TRAINED to throw the items into the carts like that, and if someone gets mad they call the manager and the manager is TRAINED to say whatever to the customer to get them out of the store.

All in all the aldi up north are great (NY, PA etc) but here in Florida, I wouldnt shop one if you gave me a $50 dollar gift card!

Good luck and happy shopping at publix or hannaford!

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192 comments
Guest

this looks like an article about Aldi Florida, writers says PA and NY are fine. Must be a personal beef with management.

Guest

My Goodness!

Guest

The ones in PA suck as well. Same things happen, expired food, produce that looks like animals at the zoo wouldn't even touch it. Definitely Buyer Beware.

Courtlynn Crt
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-2134710

Okay

Guest

I had walked in to drop off my resume and was talking to the cashier about the things the manager has talked about above, and she repeated 1/2 of the things the manager from Florida said. I applied for a job up north and as I said she warned me about (1) not legally having breaks and lunches (2) being monitored for scanning rates for cashiers (3) the front end where the registers are where customers can see looks like a garbage dump site (4) there are employees yelling all over the place.

Trust me Im not going to take any crap from anyone that's there.

Walking into the place I was the only male there. And there is no FN way your going to get me to clean a bathroom!

Guest

As a customer, I can tell you that both of my interactions with the cashiers was extremely rude but ironically they both told neverโ€Aldi really takes care of their employees over customersโ€ this makes me laugh so hard. Clearly no one is getting cared for.

Guest

Thank to the area manager in Palm Harbor in giving a true picture of Aldi stores.

Guest

Thank YOu!

Guest

aldi uses bait and switch to get you in the store i went to the chula vista ca store looking for a product that was in the aldi finds ad i asked the cashier and she said we dont have that at this store so i asked what store has it she said i dont know so i asked her is there someone that does she said no so then i asked her is that just in there to get people in the store she said i dont know maybe. im not a lawyer but i think thats fraud.

Julene Did

I went to Aldi Doncaster East on the 8/8/2020. At 1130 am.

The gentleman at teller was not practising infection control and 1.5 distance with the customers , very disappointed.. This is why the virus is spreading

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