There are so many cons to working here. First off, your absences since joining Aldi will never roll off, which they can then use to exploit you whenever they want. Even if your call offs are pretty low and you brought doctor's notes for most of them, if they want to write you up they will. At my store, people are constantly calling off, and although I hadn't made a call off in several months, as soon as I did for a legitimate reason that wasn't related to feeling ill but would have endangered me greatly, they jumped on the chance to write me up to set an example instead of punishing the employees who constantly call off. They also allowed newer employees several no-calls no-shows before writing them up, let alone firing them. It seems once you've been here for awhile, they try pretty hard to get rid of you if they don't plan to advance you any further. Hard work goes unappreciated around here, and truth be told, you may not want them to notice anyway because they'll give you a ton of new responsibilities at the same pay scale and position. If you're closing the store for the night, they force you to stay until all tasks are completed. Day shift is never held to the same standard and may go home as soon as they reach their end time. Day shift also tends to have more workers, but does not get extra tasks like closers do. As it is, closing can result in you getting off anywhere from 1-3 hours past your shift end time, so when they slap extra tasks on your shift, you end up stuck even longer. Then after that, they yell at you for staying so late but if you hadn't stayed late, they would have yelled at you for not completing your work and probably would have written you up. Often times, there's only about 10 workers scheduled for the entire day, with only 2 or 3 people left with closing the store. They are always severely understaffed. Management expects you to not only call out at least 4 hours before you're even supposed to be there, but they also expect you to find a replacement for your shift. Why they demand 4 hours when they're not even going to do their jobs as managers (managing the schedule is definitely a manager's job) is beyond me. They're so lazy that more often than not they won't even call other stores for help. As others have said, almost nobody ever agrees to cover. They're overworked and want their days off. Some people work over a week with no breaks. Work/home life balance is a joke to them despite them promising it. You're either working so much that you hardly have time for yourself or your family, or you're working so few hours that you can't afford to eat. I have also seen good employees get written up for just being a minute or two late because they expect you clocked in and on the floor 5 minutes before your shift even starts despite the handbook saying it is suggested that you do this, but not mandatory. They truly have no care for their employees, and honestly, the work itself isn't really difficult, it's having to work in such a toxic environment with lazy managers that make this job difficult. They rarely promote from within, so advancement within the company is slow, if not impossible for some people. Management is way too lazy and DMs are even worse. They have no idea what they're doing and are always looking for others to pass blame onto. I doubt they could do any of the tasks they demand of their workers, especially in the timeframes they give us. Overall, the pay isn't really worth all of the stress and toxicity, especially with other companies starting to get more competitive with their wages lately.
