Only office workers and managers are allowed to sit. If you're in a customer-facing position with a chair, you're supposed to stand up when helping a customer.

Cashier stations with chairs are VERY rare, yes. The general trope is that managers/owners think it makes workers appear lazy.

In California, companies are required by law to provide them seating and let them sit down, but most everywhere else they are expected to stand.

Not at most places. At some point, someone told all the MBAs that it makes the customers mad if the employees look lazy or some shit.

No, and even worse "if you have time to lean, you have time to clean"

It’s this bizarre thing. Management want them to “look busy” or some bullshit. Aldi looks busy.

You’ll see this on some factory floors too. No chairs even for the management or QA logging numbers on computers. Chairs are for break time or some such.

Corporations make that decision. And our country allows (if not encourages) it.

Yes, seriously. Same goes with drinking water behind the counter.

Other than Aldi, pretty much no.

hahahah right? I was like 'uh...I don't think that's where all the money's disappearing to my guy...'

You think the managers at Aldi work for the satisfying feeling of serving their community or what? Aldi cut costs in any way possible and greeters are simply a very visible way.

Aldi isn't really a direct competitor of Walmart. There are other more similar (hypermarket) chains in Germany that directly offered the same as Walmart. For its attempt to enter the german market, Walmart bought up a bankrupt chain of such hypermarkets. The stores were in worse locations than those of their competitors. Basically, it was unwanted left-overs. The Walmart, closest to me, was right next to its competitors but on the far side. It was just a little less convenient. If they had been able to offer better prices or quality, that might have made it worth it. But they couldn't. There were only greeters and packagers.

Aldi announced that it it looking to hire thousands of new workers, as well as increasing their minimum wage to $18 and $23 an hour.

My read on this, is that they are discussing the minimum for two separate positions. Potentially cashier and team leader. Would make sense as they don't have many employees on shift at a time.

I hope so. It would be a nice change compared to... Well... Everything.

Edit: ahhhh see it now. I read it as "up to" alone, but implied "increased to" instead.

English is hard sometimes.

That's because ALDI doesn't cushion cost increases or sell loss leaders. If eggs shoot up in price 400% they immediately raise the price to match. Most grocery stores will try to eat at least some of that cost for some time hoping it will go down before they have to raise even further. That kind of pricing model means they need much larger margins on all their other products to afford that. Same way they sell milk and rotisserie chickens at a loss to get people in the store.

ALDI does not play those games and keeps their margins more consistent but their prices are more susceptible to spikes in costs.