Aldi employees have said management prizes speed and efficiency over its workers' wellbeing — and
it only gets more troubling from there. From doing multiple jobs for the same pay
to a difficult work/life balance, working at Aldi isn't all it's cracked up to be.
If you think taking a job at Aldi is simply going to be checking out groceries and restocking a few
shelves without having to work too hard, think again. The grocery store has a reputation among
its employees for working them to the point of exhaustion. And for some Alid employees,
the strenuous work takes a toll on the body. One employee wrote on Quora:
"I've often come back home with back injuries and arm and leg injuries."
Another employee wrote that the company "works their employees to the bone" and
that the pay and 30 minute break didn't balance out with the physical demands.
"Aldi is all about simplicity and ruthless efficiency. It's substance over style."
If the idea of working at a leisurely pace is something you look for in a job,
Aldi isn't the place for you. In fact, it's probably a good idea to stock up on Red Bull
if you do take a job there because you'll need the energy to keep up with the speedy
pace. One former employee told the Daily Mail the company times its employees on how many items they
can scan through checkout in an hour. With the expected target being about 1,000 items per hour,
those who can't keep up are kicked to the curb. The ex-employee explained to the outlet:
"If you don't hit these targets, you are shown your actual speed and have a
performance review meeting with managing staff. If this happens three times you can be let go."
And it's not just the scanning that gets timed. One employee wrote on Reddit:
"You get timed doing pallets from the truck in the morning[.] [I]t's usually
a max of [a] half hour a pallet and if you're the main cashier that morning you
better be done by the time the store opens." One of the ways that Aldi keeps their prices low
is by keeping fewer staff in their stores compared to other grocery chains. Many stores only keep
around 10 employees on staff, which means they're often juggling multiple duties. One employee,
who was promoted to shift manager after starting out as an associate, wrote on Reddit:
"[Y]ou have to become good at everything in the store."
Sometimes you might be cleaning and other times you could be checking people out or
unloading a pallet of product. And all of these tasks happen within the
same shift! Aldi shift manager Linda Richie said in an Aldi YouTube video:
"Aldi is all about get up and go."
She then laid out all of the tasks an Aldi associate might do during a shift, adding,
"If you come in as an associate that doesn't mean that you're gonna come in and ring. You
can come in on any given day and will be placing the grocery products on the shelf,
placing our produce out, refilling the cooler, stocking the freezer, or helping the customers."
One of Aldi's veteran employees, Eric Kaiser, has worked there for 20 years
and has done countless jobs within the company. Kaiser said in another Aldi video:
"I'm not even sure how many different jobs I could potentially do."
"...because there's not just one job to be done, there's dozens."
With long hours and multiple job duties, nobody can tell an Aldi employee that they don't earn
their paycheck. While some employees are unsatisfied with their paychecks,
other Aldi workers are quite happy with the money they earn. One employee wrote on Reddit
that the job had better than average pay and benefits. The employee wrote:
"A $1,300 check every 2 weeks is pretty good for a job that requires
no discernible skills. We also get many cool little perks, amazing healthcare,
on the clock lunch breaks, dollar an hour bonus working on Sundays, paid holidays, etc."
Aldi generally seems to pay its employees several dollars more than the required minimum wage,
which is one of the things its employees appreciate about the company. For example,
in London, where the minimum wage is £7.20 an hour, Aldi pays its employees
£9.75 per hour. One Aldi employee, who recently got a $2 raise, wrote on Reddit:
"The pay is great and your raise can be different amounts each year."
Even if Aldi employees are working their fingers to the bone,
at least they're doing it for more than minimum wage.
Working at Aldi isn't just incredibly tiring because of the fast pace or the
multiple job duties that store associates are assigned. The long hours can take a toll as
well and numerous employees have said that achieving a good work/life balance can be
tricky. One employee who had been on the job more than a year posted on Glassdoor:
"The company will push you until you injure yourself or quit from exhaustion."
Another former employee who worked at Aldi for a year and a half said that the company
doesn't respect employees on their days off. The former employee wrote on Quora:
"Would call you all hours of the day for something
that could have waited. And God forbid you don't answer the phone."
Of course, not every employee feels that a good work/life balance can't
be achieved with the job. Store associate Glenda McKeever said
in an Aldi video that she likes the flexibility in her schedule:
"I work mornings and I can spend the afternoons with my granddaughters."
Of course, that statement was made in a video made and posted by Aldi,
so you can probably take that comment with a grain of salt.
If you've ever been shopping at Aldi and noticed that the employees are so
busy they hardly have a second to look up and say hello, there's a reason for
that. Since the employees are trying to work within the time guidelines for certain tasks,
there's not a lot of time for interacting with the customers. One employee wrote on Quora:
"Customers are hustled out like cattle, you don't have time to talk with them or make them smile."
According to one now former Aldi employee, the sheer speed that cashiers are pushed to work at
can even be off-putting to some customers. The former employee told Cambridge News:
"I had to be fast and many customers were not happy about it. Sometimes customers
would swear at me because of how fast I was going."
The former employee went on to add that during his two years working for Aldi,
he brought up the issue with upper management but his concerns fell on deaf ears.
Critical feedback is part of any job and generally isn't considered
a bad thing. An Aldi employee named Casey stressed on YouTube that it's
important to know how to accept criticism if you work for the company. Casey noted:
"If you can't accept criticism, this job is not for you."
However, some employees have voiced their concerns that Aldi managers aren't doling out constructive
criticism, but threatening guilt trips instead. One employee said on Quora that while their
manager said they had shown improvements, it was never enough. This person added:
"Aldi can never say 'you did well today' it's always 'okay this was better but you
have to do more or you will have to be held accountable for your efficiency.'"
A store manager on Glassdoor voiced similar concerns and said that area managers could
benefit by listening to workers, but instead followed a leadership culture that was more
about "threats and pressure." The opinion that Aldi's upper management is ungrateful for its
staff isn't limited to just a few newer employees. Another Glassdoor job review by
a manager who had been with Aldi for more than a decade said they were never given praise for
a job well done. This person also added that Aldi employees were "expected to work like robots."
While Aldi does ask a lot of its workers in terms of workload, they do seem to offer employees
plenty of room to advance — or at least some of them. One employee told Reddit that in less than
a year on the job they were promoted to shift manager and saw a significant pay bump of about
"$500 a month." That sort of money is nothing to scoff at, and according to the employee,
there is tons of potential for growth for hard-working and "dedicated" employees.
On the flip-side, some Aldi employees on Glassdoor have complained that the
company is reluctant to promote people past managing a single store. One shift
manager who hosted a Reddit Ask Me Anything session said that while they like the company,
getting a shot at moving up isn't easy. The shift manager wrote:
"I've applied for the district manager position (which is the gatekeeper for
any corporate job). I didn't even receive a generic pre-interview
rejection letter. In my opinion, that's very distasteful and rude."
The shift manager then added:
"Any company worth [its] salt promotes internally and respects [its] employees enough to contact
them about their goals and ambitions. This isn't the case with Aldi from what I've experienced."
However, it's not impossible to cross over from the store to the office side at Aldi. Take for
instance Aldi employee Brittany Sayles, who has been with the company for 14 years. According
to a video posted on the company's YouTube page, Sayles started as a cashier before
working her way up to an inventory accountant position on the corporate side of the business.
"There would be no other place I would want to work."
The old adage that a company is only as good as its employees rings especially true for Aldi,
seeing as it's so dependent on a small number of people in each location. Multiple accounts
from employees attest to the fact that having dedicated coworkers makes all the
difference when it comes to store efficiency and job satisfaction.
One employee said that they had worked at two different Aldi stores and had
contrasting experiences at each one. The employee wrote on Reddit:
"There is not too much time to be socializing during store hours,
but I became great friends with the entire store [...] However,
when I transferred to a store in Massachusetts, I didn't have the same experience. The store wasn't
run well and the management was poor so my time there was short and not enjoyable."
It's simply not the kind of job where a person can coast by without dragging everyone else
down. If one person isn't pulling their weight, it's a guarantee other employees
will notice. Store associate Glenda McKeever said in a video posted on Aldi's YouTube page:
"We are a smaller group of people and we all have to do everything."
Alright, so we've heard from Aldi's employees and managers,
about what it's like to work for the company. Is it just bitter employees
lashing out and biting the hand that feeds them? Perhaps the higher-ups at Aldi agree
with employee concerns and admit that the work environment doesn't have to be so exhausting.
As you might have imagined, that's not the case and Aldi doesn't agree with the negative
opinions of some employees. A spokesperson for the grocery retailer in the UK told Cambridge News:
"[I]n our most recent independently-conducted employee survey, 85 percent of our employees
rated Aldi as a great place to work, which is higher than the industry benchmark of 80 percent."
A statement from Aldi Australia to the Daily Mail defended claims of poor work/life balance
by pointing out employee schedules are "planned well in advance" so that employees have the
flexibility to book vacations and other commitments around their work schedules.
While there certainly are some pretty nasty opinions from employees in regards to working
for the company, Aldi still has a pretty solid job rating. According to Glassdoor,
Aldi has 3.5 stars out of five based on its 13,000+ reviews, as of June 2023.