EM: The game everyone plays at Aldi.

I take it on as a personal challenge to beat the cashier at Aldi.

Call me petty if you must, but I’ll happily admit that it is my sole supermarket mission to get all my groceries in the bags, while standing at the register.

Why? To avoid being forced into the embarrassing “bagging area”.

How I HATE the bagging area. I don’t want to have to double handle my goods! I don’t want to pile them up in my cart in a haphazard fashion, chicken touching dishwashing liquid touching apples. ANARCHY! It also prolongs my time spent food shopping and ain’t nobody got time for that.

And I suspect, you see, that Aldi want this. They want you to languish in the bagging area.

They encourage their cashiers to perform their jobs at the speed of light so that they can move through as many people as possible at the registers in the shortest amount of time. They hurl your shit at you with great speed once it is scanned. Normal people accept this and put in all in their trolleys to be bagged and boxed at a later time.

BUT NOT ME!

Side note: My love for Aldi knows no bounds, the fact that I can buy a “crazy fogger” fog machine, snow gear and tiny teddies in one spot is all that I need in this life and the next. Whoever does the buying for Aldi is obviously a slightly unhinged, MacGyver influenced genius.

That all being said, on my most recent trip, I’m ashamed to say – I was beaten.

This cashier dude saw me coming a mile off, he took note of the full trolley and how I was positioning myself right next to him, so that I could quickly shove the groceries in my bags and spring into action.

He was the real deal y’all. He was wearing wrist guards for Christssake!

Those wrist guards allowed for maximum speed with minimum strain; he had clearly done some serious register hours.

We engaged in some lightening quick pleasantries and it was ON. It quickly became apparent that I was ill equipped and under prepared.

He was an artist, a majestic check-out chick. He was some sort of Produce Scanning Ninja. As soon as I had put my mince down, it was scanned and ready for bagging before I had even reached into the trolley for my pasta sauce.

WHO EVEN WAS THIS SAVANT?!

Try as I might, I just couldn’t keep up. My Aldi anxiety was at fever pitch.You know what I mean – it starts churning in your guts as soon as you approach the unnecessarily long conveyer belt. You know it is you versus the cashier versus the person waiting behind you.

He scanned the last item and I was only 3/4 of the way through; my items spilling over the counter. He looked at me with a mixture of pity and contempt and said “I’m sorry you’ll have to go through to the BAGGING AREA”.

The f*cking bagging area?! Why don’t you just stab me in the heart, Cashier Dude. OH THE SHAME.  I heard the lady behind me suck in her breath. Everyone else in the queue was judging me.

They could all see what I had attempted to achieve and how miserably I had failed. At that moment I hated them all with the burning heat of a thousand suns exploding in hell.

Look, I accept that I was beaten by a better man. A stronger competitor.

He obviously wanted it more than I did.

I will be back though and next time – I will bring my small assistants (AKA children).

That bitch is going down.

Are you familiar with Aldi Anxiety? Do you have any strategies you’d care to share?