What Aldi Employees Want You To Know Before Shopping Without A Cart
Listen up, Aldi shoppers. Aldi employees are on Reddit and they've got a lot of tips/pet peeves/requests for you. It's true: as one surprised Aldi customer noted after reading through the subreddit, there are a lot of unspoken rules.
This one, however, is worth filing away. Yes, you need a quarter to use a cart at the discount grocery chain. Aldi says that the deposit ensures that customers replace carts, saving them the trouble of hiring employees hired specifically to collect them. Sometimes, according to Aisle of Shame, a blog that dedicated an entire article to explaining the complicated ins and outs of Aldi shopping carts, a fellow Aldi shopper might gift you with their cart on the way out. An altruistic customer may even leave a quarter in a cart's coin slot, where it will patiently wait for you and your mimosa wine, bagel seasoning, and red bag chicken needs ... or whatever other Aldi products get you through the night. But if (gasp) you decide not to get a cart before shopping at Aldi, there's one cardinal rule you should never break.
An Aldi cashier explains why you shouldn't take their carts
Never, we repeat never, take a shopping cart from an Aldi cashier if you didn't have a shop cart in the first place. Aldi cashiers' carts are reserved strictly for customers who have their own cart to begin with. As Aisle of Shame meticulously explains, Aldi cashiers transfer goods from customers' carts to their own carts to speed up the bagging process. That's why, per one Aldi employee on Reddit, "Taking our cart slows us down, slows down the line and is just annoying."
Turns out, Aldi employees' Reddit vexation isn't just about the inconvenience of finding another cart. Another employee explained, "We are basically timed at how quickly we can ring up and if we aren't hitting our numbers, we get reprimanded with negative evals." This means (not to be dramatic or anything), if you steal an Aldi employees' cart, you're potentially affecting their employee evals. Don't expect an Aldi employee to just loan you a quarter, either. As a third Aldi employee on the same Reddit thread explained: "9 times out of 10, we loan out carts and quarters we never see again. And we have to maintain our money drawer. That quarter you're borrowing counts against my drawer. I've been short $5+ dollars just from 'loaning out' quarter." Ouch!
We know, we didn't realize Aldi shopping cart etiquette was so complicated, either. But now we do, and you do, too. Happy shopping, Aldi customers!