u/brassdeap

Maybe not the simplest question, but what's the Aldi attitude toward firing?

I've been working here about a month and a half. With the inconsistency between afternoon and morning shifts as well as constantly bouncing between cooler/freezer, I feel like I'm progressing pretty slowly. My manager has started expressing the same concern. I am improving, but at a snail's pace.

I'm generally a slow learner, and having to switch between different tasks while also developing a system for each one has been taking me a while. My manager recently asked me to start keeping track of my pallet times with sheets, which I sometimes forget to grab because my duties seem to change too often for relevant learning and absorption from shift to shift. I'm pretty sure that's one more thing frustrating him.

Yesterday, I had to call in for a morning shift because I suddenly came down with what felt like food poisoning. I notified both the LSA on duty and my SM, who was working later that day. The LSA responded, but my SM didn't, which is unusual.

Today, I came in still not feeling 100% and was assigned to freezer, which is currently the area I've had the least experience in. Between feeling sick, under-trained, and already being discouraged about my progress, it took me quite a while to finish my pallets, and my manager was visibly annoyed.

I've also had a couple unrelated bumps with my car early on that caused me to miss one of my first shifts and arrive late another time. I was never spoken to about either incident.

So now it feels like there's a dark cloud hanging over my next shift. Everything combined is posturing me as a poor attendance, slow learning employee, which is true at the moment, but not in my favor. Am I realistically at risk of getting fired, or is it more likely I get a good talking to or even decreased from full time? I'm not sure what to expect with how weirdly Aldi operates.

TLDR: 1.5 months in I'm slow, missed some shifts, and my manager seems frustrated. Am I at risk of getting fired?

Where does this culture come from? Coming to Aldi I would've never expected my biggest issue was the customers.

Spit soaked cherry seeds all over the floors, items in the most random of places including cold items left to rot, poop smears in BOTH bathrooms in places that don't even make sense as well as regular empty alcohol containers, customers proudly entering the store at closing and staying as long as they please and subsequently extending my night by 30 minutes, a general huge misunderstanding of how the store even functions, and perhaps the most frustrating: none of these people seem to know how to operate a self checkout.

I can't explain the cortisol spike I feel when a customer SEES I'm busy before closing, and STILL decides to stand at the register staring at me like a lost little kid with their 2 items and debit card with five empty SCOs behind them.

Genuinely what is wrong with Aldi customers? I cant even begin to touch the surface of what makes them so terrible. I worked a sketchy corner smoke shop, and I would take those penny-ridden customers back in a heart beat over the absolute childish behavior fostered by seemingly the vast majority of Aldi customers across stores. Why are methheads more tolerable than the average Aldi customers?

Insanity

I recently finished training and have been getting used to the different tasks and store layout. Honestly, everything has felt surprisingly straightforward and chill? Standards and metrics get mentioned, but it doesn't feel like they're breathing down my neck, and hardly seems to be the focus compared to doing quality work.

I've also had extremely pleasant customers. Working at a gas station on a rough corner beforehand helped teach me how to handle entitlement without things escalating quickly though, and I know the worst is still yet to come.

That said, after reading a lot of recent posts here, I'm starting to wonder if I'm just in the honeymoon phase. Is my store just one of the good ones? Have certain changes just not reached us yet? Or is the rough part still coming?

So far I've worked mornings, usually on cooler before moving to register or grocery. I haven't done curbside yet and I've heard it can be undesirable. Oddly enough I've only worked one closing shift, and it was on the 4th of July.

I've also already had two big hiccups in the form of a scheduling communication issue that caused me to arrive late once, and another day where unexpected car trouble kept me from making it in. Based on some of the stories I've read online, I was expecting to be publicly executed for both, but management has been understanding and seems to be allowing a chance to redeem myself. Overall, it hasn't felt like a huge deal.

So, should I expect things to get noticeably tougher once I'm fully settled in? Or are most of the horror stories about Aldi heavily dependent on the specific store and management? Are they secretly plotting my demise?