Ed,

I was in Aldi Grafton supermarket on Saturday afternoon and could not believe the new customer checkout changes that have been installed.
Three of the four checkouts have been removed, and they have installed a double-sided ‘self serve’ bay, leaving only one standard manned service checkout.
This checkout is now on the opposite side of the shop, along with relocated alcohol shelves.

And – not surprisingly at all – not a sole using this dominating ‘do it yourself’ bay, and a long queue beyond the moving belt all waiting on the single ‘manned’ checkout – myself included.
This, Aldi, is disgusting. Not only are you heading towards employing even less staff, but you are clearly fostering the unpopular ‘cashless society’ concept. As well, the more credit cards that your new “service” will utilise, the more surcharge profits to be made.
Aldi, if it wasn’t good enough for you to NOT support Australia Day, you NOW want customers to do most of the work in your shop for you.
Whether this retrograde step comes from Grafton or from the bean counter heirarchy in Aldi Head Office, it is just classic greed. Clearly you don’t care a hoot about what customers want in the quest for even more efficiency and profits.

Warren Rackham, Maclean