Aldi is the German hard discount champion that sent Walmart packing, because it couldn't match Aldi's price/value points. Aldi's success is due to a combination of a limited range of cheap medium quality staples (thus at an unbeatable price for value compared to branded products) and higher ticket priced discounted weekly non-food products. Aldi's cheap computers account for ten percent of Germany's total computer sales. Procurement, ruthless logistics and no frills (selling directly out of the pallets) are further pillars of Aldi's success.

Aldi is known for paying its employees above market wages, following Ford's realization that motivated personnel will work harder and better. Unfortunately, as the author's account shows, Aldi has shifted from Ford to Walmart practices, exploiting its employees both quantitatively and qualitatively. Quantitatively by not paying for all the hours worked. Aldi employees are expected to come half an hour early to work to "prepare for work" before clocking in, and stay half an hour late (having already clocked out). Thus, Aldi receives an additional hour of unpaid work per day per employee. More ingenious than this classic exploitation is the qualitative one: Aldi pushes the job responsibilities one level up, so that apprentices are expected to do regular work while receiving only apprentice wages. The market manager position is regularly assigned to a market manager deputy. This kind of fake empowerment allows Aldi to pay far less to persons with less job security (officially, they are only filling in temporarily for a vacant position). By over-hiring, Aldi has intensified the rat race, always keeping a stable of competitors vying for a promotion. The harshest qualitative exploitation is occurring in activities Aldi has outsourced to low-cost service providers. Some of the people unpacking, rack jobbing and cleaning in Aldi shops are no longer Aldi employees but badly paid subcontractors!

Having started as willing devil's apprentice (most Germans grew up on Aldi products), the author's disillusion and burn-out led him to seek a nicer work environment. The question is whether the wheel of retailing will always crush those unwilling to live with the smallest of margins or whether it is possible to allocate some of the efficiency savings in logistics and IT to improve the working conditions of the employees - something like Fair Trade for labor practices. ( )