'It's The Worst Part Of Aldi' — Why Aldi Employees Are Tired Of Curbside Pickup

A job at Aldi has a few great perks, like a morning shift that can double as a workout, competitive pay, and a group of coworkers that feel like family. But just like at any job, employees don't love everything about their workdays. Understaffing and old equipment are among the main complaints, but employees have really gotten sick of Aldi's curbside pickup service (run through Instacart since 2020). Workers who have taken to the internet to vent about the situation say Aldi's curbside pickup is inefficient for both the customer and staff.

Employees have spilled their feelings about the service all over Reddit, sharing horror stories about disrespectful and lazy customers and time lost shopping for curbside orders. One post starts off with one person saying, "There will never be words in the English language to properly convey my deep hatred for curbside. It's the worst part of Aldi, to me at least." Other comments on the thread called out the inefficiency of curbside pickup – especially since it gets in the way of meeting performance goals and other strict rules Aldi employees must follow. "Aldi's model is to only have 2-4 people on the clock at any time," another person wrote. "They do not provide extra people or hours for curbside, despite charging you, the customer, a premium price for each item on a curbside order. So we go from understaffed to even worse, because the person doing curbside might as well not even be there anymore."

Aldi employees aren't just letting off a little steam about the grocery store's curbside service on Reddit; some of them say it's a deal-breaker. One Redditor said, "My store is introducing curbside soon, and it's the last straw for me. I've worked at a curbside store before, and it makes an awful job even worse. I'm quitting once it starts." 

Other employees pointed out that Aldi would be better off ending the program entirely and letting the staff focus on in-store duties. "In my store, at least we figured out it makes up about 1 percent of our sales but requires between 15-20 percent of our time," one Reddit user wrote. "Imagine how much more we would get done without curbside." And another person suggested, "If we don't offer the service, those people would mostly just come in anyway because Aldi offers something others don't."

Aldi is famous for its low prices, and the extra fees you incur when ordering Aldi groceries for curbside pickup, in some ways, defeat the purpose of shopping there. And customers have also mentioned problems with the service, including items labeled as out of stock that were actually sitting on the shelves. A patron shared on Reddit, "It saved me no time as I ended up [in] line to buy what the shopper said wasn't available. Ended up spending more time and money for a convenience that wasn't one."