ALDI — Local services in Chicago

Very poor experience on 9/8/21 with Sarita at the 201 w division location as cashier. We got in line behind a lady who had already been there for a while, she later told us that cashier has messed up transaction. To her credit, cashier did call for backup, being a manager and two more cashiers. They came after about 15 minutes of us waiting, at which point line had grown considerably. Sátira had customers from back of the line go to other registers, which was frustrating since we already had waited so long before we moved. Once backup and Manager came, ir was another few minutes before she could correct the situation and re-ring up customer in front of us. Manager went to other register, and when it was our turn, cashier was very rude and did not offer apology. I voiced my frustration at having to wait when they pulled customers from the back or the line, to which she very snappily told me it was her store policy and I could speak to the manager if I had an issue. To which I said yes please, and voiced my complaints to the manager. To her credit, she was more apologetic but no genuine concern was displayed for the extreme wait faced by all customers. I have worked 7+ years in customer service and retail and am not really sure how this behavior flies. I am fine with waiting, but being in retail we know customers get frustrated when they wait, and after 20+ minutes I would expect that managers would at least try to ring out customers with thawing frozen items as a priority. Maybe they need more staff, or better communication but overall...

While I have been a longtime fan of ALDI's low prices and friendly employees, a new and surprising issue has reared its ugly head. That being the removal of study plastic bags, and the implementation of frail paper bags.

Unlike the previous plastic bags, these new paper bags seem to rip and tear even if one simply looks at them the wrong way. I am only slightly exaggerating when I say that trying to carry groceries with them is more frustrating than dealing with a cantaloupe sized hemorrhoid. And speaking of produce, good luck placing more than a box of blue berries in them as I am convinced that the handles cannot bear more than 1 pound of stress.

When factoring in the fact that each paper bag costs you $0.12, theoretically it would be more cost effective to simply use your $0.25 on the carts provide for in-store use and push your groceries home in it instead. Afterall, you would still be reusing/recycling equipment meant for moving groceries from Point A to Point B, while also saving the turtles from life threatening...

They really messed this location up in the past few months by removing a bunch of checkout lanes and replacing them with about a dozen self checkout kiosks. It causes a huge backlog waiting to checkout because people understandably don't want to self checkout full grocery carts and now it seems like they can't even open a second lane during high volume times to move things along. Instead the employees will shout at you to use self checkout if you try to get in line even if you have a full cart of groceries and tell you there are five self checkout kiosks open. They are open because nobody wants to self checkout unless they just have a handful of things. Whoever made this decision really messed up and I'm considering my other grocery options now.

The parking for this location is down an alley off of Division. It is underground parking but it is well lit and the parking lot is huge so there should be no trouble...