Here's Why Aldi Cashiers Always Sit Down At The Register

If you've ever stepped foot in an Aldi supermarket, it probably didn't take you very long to realize why it's recognized as one of the most affordable grocery chains both in the United States and overseas. From fancy cheese to bakery staples to a range of healthy snacks, the retailer's shelves are stocked with plenty of high-quality grocery items at impressively wallet-friendly prices.

To keep overheads (and therefore, prices) low, Aldi employs a number of unique strategies. For one thing, you'll never hear music playing in an Aldi store, as it saves money by avoiding licensing fees. It costs a quarter to rent a shopping cart, which shoppers get back once they return it — a method that reduces the need for employees to spend time rounding them up. You might also notice that, unlike at most other grocery chains, Aldi cashiers get to sit down while ringing up customers.

The reason for that is not simply a way to make workers happy by giving them a chance to rest. Additionally, allowing cashiers to have a seat while they work helps with the overall efficiency of the business. As one Aldi cashier told Mental Floss, the company's own testing shows that sitting down at the register allows cashiers to ring up items faster. This keeps lines moving and customers satisfied while also cutting labor costs in the long run. Checkout speed and efficiency are so important to the company, in fact, that workers are given reports documenting their ringing statistics at the end of every shift.

As a purported Aldi employee mentioned in one Reddit thread, cashiers can be expected to ring up to 1,200 items per hour. That, in addition to being required to make the rounds unboxing items, stocking shelves, and keeping aisles tidy, can make the job quite physically demanding and strenuous. (A worker shared with Mental Floss that she probably clocked more than 25,000 steps per shift.) So, when it comes to manning the registers, the fact that it could be done off one's feet is something to be taken advantage of.

Speaking as someone who once worked as a standing supermarket cashier at another grocery chain (with all the same additional responsibilities), I can definitely see why sitting down could help employees work faster. By the end of the day, being physically spent is always just going to make the employee — and lines — move slower.

Beyond having its cashiers take a seat, Aldi makes use of other quick and efficient checkout methods. Those include large barcodes on items to make them easier to scan and encouraging customers to pre-insert their credit cards so that they're ready to pay by the time items are completely rung up. Perhaps most notably, shoppers bag their own items. While Aldi employees will help load up your cart with your processed groceries, customers do their own bagging in a separate area to keep things moving along. And considering the savings they're getting by doing so, fans of the brand certainly aren't complaining.