The Reddit Aldi Bagging Hack That Makes Shoppers' Lives Easier

Aldi: Lidl's supermarket cousin. Both are German groceries stores, both carry a wide range of groceries, and both seem to have that one section that's full of completely random items. However, Aldi has some unique practices when it comes to grocery shopping. The locked-up shopping carts are one; the other is how the checkout process works.

For any uninitiated, the cashiers at Aldi sit behind their registers, and as they scan your groceries, they drop the groceries into your cart — or a cart that's already there beside them. They don't bag your food, they just put it in the cart. Then you go to a separate part of the store and bag your groceries yourself. This ends up generally being more work for the shopper, although there's supposedly a method to such madness. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of people who find this inconvenient, inefficient, and even frustrating. Leave it to the good users at Reddit to find a solution. User @setherby posted an image of their "hack" for making Aldi a more convenient experience: They use stay-open groceries bags so that the cashier ends up also bagging your items when they drop your groceries in the cart.

Some Redditors supported @setherby's pragmatic approach to Aldi's cashier practices, but it doesn't seem like everyone agrees with this new method for bagging groceries. "I will absolutely move your bags," noted @realsqwirl. "The bagging counter is there for speed and for health reasons. If you try to bag at the register you are a problem." We can see how from an employee perspective, this "hack" may be an issue. According to user @uwillneverfindmeirl who claims to work at Aldi, employees could receive a "negative performance review," as scanning groceries is "timed." Unsurprisingly, that's not the only way to annoy checkers at Aldi.

Aldi Hack #104: Use grocery bags that stay open and the checkout person will bag your groceries.
by
u/setherby in
aldi

We're not sure that dropping the groceries into the bags will change the rate of scanning, but there's probably a way to make sure the cashier doesn't technically have to go through the process of figuring out which items should go in which bags. One commenter had an interesting idea: "Will also help if you place items on the belt in a good order to be bagged," which sounds like it could speed up the process and keep your items in good shape without requiring the employees to literally bag your items. This "hack" seems convenient overall, but from the polarized responses, we can't guarantee it won't irk your cashier.