Great Money Exchanged For Poor Work Life Balance
Pros
ALDI is reputable for their great compensation. I started as an associate (cashier/stocker) back in 2018 making $12/hr. After a year with the company I moved up to a shift manager (now called assistant store managers) and was making $19/hr. Then moved into the store manager trainee role at $21/hr. Finally, moved into the store manager role and reported earnings of $70000 at a low volume store that resulted in a lower monthly bonus than some of my other colleagues at higher sales volume stores. Great benefits including medical, dental, and vision through Cigna. Finally, they offer a 5% 401k match through T.Rowe Price. Fast paced environment resulted in the work days flying by and it is a very active career (easily could log 5-10 miles of walking per day).
Cons
As mentioned in my headline the pay is great but you sacrifice a work life balance (not as much as an hourly employee but as soon as you step into the salaried manager role you really notice). As a salaried manager you are scheduled for 50 hours (5x10 hour shifts). The store manager creates the schedule, however any unfilled shifts result in you working more than 50. When my store was understaffed (and most stores were pre-covid so I can only imagine what it’s like now) I would easily put in 60-70 hours. Next, ALDI is able to pay well by using the bare minimum in labor hours to achieve high store efficiencies. As a result most stores operate with only 2-3 employees at a time with high volume stores able to accommodate 4 and sometimes 5 on a busy day. With my store being lower volume I was only able to have 2 employees in the store at any time and that’s including myself, so one associate and one manager. If an employee called off and there wasn’t an employee that could pick up the shift than one of the openers would have to pull a double because it is a security requirement to have two people in store at all times. At one point it was just me, my assistant, and two associates so if no outside help was provided from another location than all of us were working 7 days (two openers and two closers each day). At this point I was pushing 80 hours with no additional compensation for anything over the 50. There were a handful of weeks where I actually logged 100 hours. Over the years there have been class action lawsuits from store managers seeking compensation for scenarios like this. After so many of those the company actually required us to fill out arbitration agreements as a condition of employment stating we would not participate in above mentioned lawsuits. Finally, the expectations are set to the highest possible level that I have not even come close to experiencing at any other employer. As mentioned above, ALDI pushes efficiency which in short is sales divided by labor. Stores efficiency targets are set to 90%+ and when I was an assistant at a location where we had a tenured staff our district manager set our target as 100%. We achieved it and instead of being content the next target was set at 105%. With 100% being perfect, that additional 5% could only be achieved by cutting hours to the bare minimum that not only exhaust employees but takes away from store standards and the customers shopping experience.