Good and Bad Buying at Lidl and Aldi (***Please don't expire***)

maman

It's always been like that in the local Lidl but not Aldi until this month. The background 'music' to shopping always used to be 'We are now opening/closing checkout #' I miss it! 🤣

General_Grant

maman said:

When inside it was obvious why this was happening. For the first time ever there were  some checkouts closed and people queuing down the aisles to pay.  I asked staff why and they said they didn't have enough people in. I thought maybe it was a blip  and they hadn't anticipated that it would be busy after New Year. Unfortunately this has coontinued and there are checkout queues every time I visit up to yesterday.

I would have expected that if all checkouts are open then people will be too close, won't they?

Florenceem

Covid number here is 868 so I can understand if my local shops are short staffed.

maman

General_Grant said:

maman said:

When inside it was obvious why this was happening. For the first time ever there were  some checkouts closed and people queuing down the aisles to pay.  I asked staff why and they said they didn't have enough people in. I thought maybe it was a blip  and they hadn't anticipated that it would be busy after New Year. Unfortunately this has coontinued and there are checkout queues every time I visit up to yesterday.

I would have expected that if all checkouts are open then people will be too close, won't they?

No, I don't think that's the reason. Lots of plastic screens between checkouts and moving through quickly really helps. 

od244051

I have noticed that in both my local Lidl and from what my friends/colleagues who shop at Aldi that there’s no screens between the two checkout queues and a screen in the checkout area for staff (one area for two tills) So can’t open all of the tills. In the Lidl where I shop, is just a metal pole barrier. 

Whereas the other supermarkets have screens between the queuing area and an additional barrier inside the checkout area for cashiers if two tills share a ‘hub’. Though my friends who work at supermarkets with barrier between the hub, found it very claustrophobic if two of them were using the two checkouts in the same hub. I have said to them, when their stores were built or refurbished (ie replacing manned tills with self scans etc), they weren’t thinking about a time where we needed to social distance, wear masks etc as a global virus is making millions ill and killed 2m globally.

maman

My Aldi put the plastic screens between checkouts in place from March and they're still there. All that's changed is that they started off with a guy at the door managing the queue, offering sanitised trolleys, checking people were shopping alone and allowing shoppers in and out to keep numbers down. He was replaced by the traffic lights which IMO was a retrograde step but I was slightly reassured when queues at the traffic lights appeared last week because of congestion inside. 

od244051

maman said:

My Aldi put the plastic screens between checkouts in place from March and they're still there. All that's changed is that they started off with a guy at the door managing the queue, offering sanitised trolleys, checking people were shopping alone and allowing shoppers in and out to keep numbers down. He was replaced by the traffic lights which IMO was a retrograde step but I was slightly reassured when queues at the traffic lights appeared last week because of congestion inside. 

I drive past one Aldi most days on the way to work and I have never seen the light on red, even the last 10 days to Christmas. My parents' neighbours say that you can't social distance in many parts of the store since the traffic lights were introduced. I think there's a fault with them,

Sea_Shell

I think it varies wildly from shop to shop.   

The Aldi we use, is nice and quiet when we go.   There were about 6 other customers when we went on Wednesday morning.  Plenty of room to SD and the tills aren't back to back, so no need to separate out queues (each are separated by their own belt - all on the left IYSWIM)   It's one of their newer shops.    Bright, spacious and airy.

Whilst away last year, we needed to pop into the Aldi in Evesham, and it was horrible.   Crowded, dark, old fashioned, with nasty plastic curtains hanging down between the back-to-back tills.

So it really is a game of pot luck.

203846930

Because most of the tills are back-to-back they cant use both of them because of Covid spacing so count the numbers and divide by 2 then you will have the max number of tills that can be open at any one time.

harz99

maman said:

My Aldi put the plastic screens between checkouts in place from March and they're still there. All that's changed is that they started off with a guy at the door managing the queue, offering sanitised trolleys, checking people were shopping alone and allowing shoppers in and out to keep numbers down. He was replaced by the traffic lights which IMO was a retrograde step but I was slightly reassured when queues at the traffic lights appeared last week because of congestion inside. 

Same as the two I use.