The only major chain retail store that I know of that allows their cashiers to sit is the Aldi grocery store, a German chain. Their starting pay is also $12 an hour chain-wide.
The interior of the store looks like this so they save money on the annoying shelf restocking. Products remain in their boxes until being removed by customers. No unboxing and putting stuff on shelves, and constantly having to rearrange it. Also, the boxes make inventory a breeze as a sealed box has a defined number of items in it.
Typical American grocery stores have shelves like this
Every item has to be unboxed and neatly stacked on the shelves. If they get messed up by the customers, everything has to be rearranged back to specific rigid order. When you have to verify the inventory, every item has to be removed from the shelves to be counted and put back. Aldi’s also do not have plastic bags. You can buy reusable bags or simply use the empty cardboard boxes that are available.
Last is the carts. Most grocery stores have their carts strewn across the parking lots, rolling around and hitting cars until a store employee is sent out to collect them, after being yelled at by the manager when they were told to do other tasks in the meantime. Aldi’s chains those carts together and you have to put a Quarter in to release it. When you are done, you plug the chain back in and get your Quarter back. If others are lazy, you can collect and return the loose carts and collect the Quarters.
It stops this…
Then the employees have to do this
reblogging this because I love Alidis
With the exception of the shelf stacking, all of this is totally normal in every single supermarket chain in the UK… what the heck America
Same for Germany… why would you make it any more complicated than that. Just. Why not let them sit??
They’re not normal for no reason. The right to sit during work seems normal for most retail workers in these countries because they are it is part of the labor rights that have been won by unions. Sometimes the right to sit was won in an agreement with the store and sometimes it was put down in national laws.
For example, in the UK your employer legally has to provide you with a comfortable seat if you do work that can be done while seating. In the Netherlands you have to be provided a seat if you work at a cash register for more than 4 hours a day or for more than 1 hour uninterrupted.
Unionize.
Oh yes, let’s ignore charging poor people a quarter to use a fucking cart, and focus on the fact they let their cashiers sit. Gods, capitalism is a shit storm, and everyone who reblogged this without pointing out how fucked up it is that they charge poor people money to use a grocery cart has lost any respect I might’ve had for them.
Also, in the US that charging a quarter thing would never work. People would be even less inclined to put the carts bak properly, and those carts would get stolen at an even greater rate. You can’t just point at something done differently in another country and say that we should do that thing because it works there. Just because it works there doesn’t mean it would work here.
ALDIS ARE IN THE US. i’ve had an aldi in my town for almost as long as i’ve been alive. people dont steal the carts and most people put the carts back because they want their quarters back. you… get the quarter back… also, i’ve seen plenty of people pass on carts, so the next person who comes up doesn’t have to use their own quarter.
aldis are in the us and i’ve hardly ever seen their carts in a mess. so like, yes. this works.
Aldi stores are also much more affordable and most other grocery stores. I get everything there and only go to other stores if I can’t find it at Aldi.
frodo and sam’s love for each other is literally the only thing keeping middle earth from just spontaneously combusting
No, but like, that’s literally it. Gandalf straight-up says to Elrond this Quest can’t succeed by force or wisdom, but by friendship. If Frodo and Sam hate each other even a little, Middle-Earth is doomed.
And it gets more terrifying when you realize that one of the strongest powers of the Ring is to turn people against each other, and that even if it didn’t, the Ring and the Quest still put Frodo in a psychological state where he can barely keep himself sane, let alone love anyone or anything other than the Ring. In fact, I’m fairly sure the Ring tried to persuade Frodo to kill Sam far more often than the books shows – the Ring tends to encourage murder, from what we see. Instead of listening to the Ring, Frodo somehow manages to keep in the back of his mind that he can trust Sam more than he can trust himself, and I have no idea how Frodo can resist the temptation to think his trust is misplaced.
And sure, one could say, “Oh, but Sam has to understand it, so it’s not all that bad” but you have to remember Sam is a plain, non-Tookish hobbit with no inclination or skills for adventuring around and yet he has to become the entire Fellowship. Name one thing the Fellowship did for Frodo that Sam doesn’t also do. He has to advise, guide and protect him as well as keep his hope alive and remind him of who he is. The amount of pressure he’s under is incredible, and unlike, say, Aragorn, he has no experience to draw from. Plus, Merry and Pippin tend to rely on each other, while Frodo relies on Sam, but Sam himself hardly seems to have anyone to turn to for strength. I’m not saying Frodo doesn’t support him as well as he’s able – actually, Frodo is remarkably consistent about taking care of Sam from Book I to Book VI. But what Frodo is capable to offer (see the paragraph above) is far from being all that Sam needs. And actually, in the last stages of the Quest, Sam is basically living a one-sided relationship under the worst possible conditions, and that his devotion doesn’t even waver despite that just blows my mind.
That the Quest was successful is one of the most incredible and beautiful things that Tolkien wrote. Frodo and Sam walked straight into the Land where no love can exist and managed to become closer to each other than they had been. It’s the biggest fuck you Sauron probably ever got. No, seriously. Frodo and Sam beat a Maia basically by cuddling a lot and talking about food. Like, what the fuck??? I mean, if I told you someone could write a 1000 pages novel in which a pacifist and his gardener beat a minor god via supporting each other emotionally, would you believe me?
It’s classic Tolkien: the surprise element (i.e. flawed creatures can be incredibly noble even under unspeakable distress) might overcome even the most carefully thought out plots devised by powerful evil lords. (See also: the entire Silmarillion, pretty much.)
“A pacifist and his gardener beat a minor god via supporting each other emotionally”
I would read 50 books with this premise. I don’t love all 1,000 pages, but this is the heart that keeps me rereading
funeral-biscuit 