An Aldi Shopper's Hack For Easier Self-Checkouts Is Pure Genius
Some Aldi fans felt the supermarket chain was doing god's work when it began rolling out self-checkouts in 2019. The idea was to make the shopping experience hassle-free and quick, and people seem to be relieved to have a checkout option that doesn't involve standing in long lines. But some customers absolutely hate them for a variety of reasons like slow customers and a lack of customer service, which is already scarce to begin with.
Love them or hate them, if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that self-checkouts can put a weird performance pressure on us. The urge to quickly scan everything and not inconvenience the person behind you (and maybe earn a hypothetical badge for being the fastest self-checkout scanner in all the land) is very real. One Aldi shopper shared a hack to make this process faster.
Redditor u/lwpho2 suggests laying everything "in a single layer in your cart with the bar codes facing up." That way, everything can be quickly scanned with the scanner gun at the self-checkout kiosk, and nothing has to leave the cart. The hack works like a charm for people who don't have much in their cart, and the multiple barcodes on Aldi's grocery items make the process even easier.
There are limits to the smart hack
As pointed out by the original poster, the hack only works when you have limited items in your cart. "Unfortunately, when I go to Aldi, I have absolutely zero self-control so I never end up with just one layer of stuff," one user pointed out. The Redditor also had a bit of difficulty when they tried to scan the barcode on the egg carton due to its grainy surface and inconvenient placement. "I was afraid eggs would somehow spill out," they wrote. All in all, the hack does have its limits, but it certainly works.
People try all sorts of things to save time when shopping at Aldi, and sometimes, they end up doing more harm than good. One shopper came under fire in 2021 for sharing how she spaces out each item on the conveyor belt just so she could have enough time to load them in her shopping bag. Even the Aldi employees were against it.