When it comes to a shopping trip to Aldi there are almost three things guaranteed to happen; you'll pick up a bargain, get lost in its Special Buy aisle and struggle to keep up with its cashiers.
Aldi prides itself and its staff for their efficiency when it comes to scanning customer's shopping through the checkouts, and credits it as one of the reason it is able to offer low prices.
But is it really as quick as you think it is?
Our colleagues at KentLive decided to put this speed to the test and even compared Aldi checkouts to Morrisons.
The results
Aldi
The rules of the test were simple – 13 items, stopwatch, buy them and time how long it takes for the products to be scanned. Then compare Aldi's time to another supermarket.
We found after a quick run around the shop gathering 13 random things the end result was 21.52 seconds.
21.52 seconds it took for the Aldi cashier to scan all 13 items.
Morrisons
Again, another 13 items were selected at random, all of a similar size.
This time however, the number of items were scanned through at a time of 24.27 seconds .
So in the end, as expected, Aldi was quicker.
But only by a matter of 2.75 seconds.
For example, 26 items scanned would be 6 seconds quicker at Aldi, 52 items would be 12 seconds quicker and so on.
Even if you were buying a huge shop of more than 100 items, the chances are that Aldi is only going to be 30 seconds to one minute faster at best.
Why do Aldi tell staff to scan so fast?
Now, following the barrage of attention its cashiers have generated online, Aldi has explained exactly why its cashiers are so speedy.
The supermarket giant has said staff members are "encouraged" to be as efficient as possible, which helps to keep the prices low.
They also said they realise some people may need to pack at different speeds and that checkout assistants are trained to alter the rate at which they scan so that they match the pace the shopper can go at.
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