Aldi

I shopped at an Aldi today for the first time in, maybe, fifteen years. When I shopped there before I found some aspects of the place odd, and the place seemed like a very cut-rate version of a supermarket. Having been to Europe, I now recognize the European aspects of the place - the coin deposit for using a cart, the seated cashiers, the active encouragement of the use of reusable shopping bags. (Aldi has European characteristics because it is, in fact, a European chain - German, to be exact.)

One thing I forgot - or maybe never encountered before, because I had purchased only incidentals - was that Aldi does not accept credit cards. I do not, as a rule, use debit cards, so fortunately my mom and I had enough cash on hand to pay for our order. (I immediately stopped at an ATM and withdrew money equal to what we had spent, plus a little extra; I would have been better off using my ATM card as a debit card.)

I don't like dealing with cash-only businesses. I always feel like there's something shady and underhanded going on, like somebody's trying to keep a transaction off the books, maybe to avoid paying sales tax*, maybe so they can sell inventory that doesn't officially exist. Turns out my uneasiness may have a rational foundation: shell companies that take in payments in the form of cash are a fundamental part of any money-laundering scheme, as was helpfully explained on NPR last year. (No dictionary required!**)

So, anyway...Aldi. Yeah. Odd place. Kinda out-of-the-way for me. Not super convenient, and that offsets whatever savings I might realize there. Maybe I'll go there again if I'm looking for something specific that I know they have much cheaper than anywhere else. And I'll be sure to take a pocketful of cash.***


*Or maybe the opposite is true: To charge sales tax for things that are not supposed to have sales tax charged on them. Pennsylvania recently announced that sales tax exemptions would be ending on a number of items, including candy and magazines. Now, I'm a feller who has bought some candy and magazines in his time, and I don't rightly recall being not charged sales tax on these items. So if sales tax was collected on non-taxable items, where did it go?

**Just shows how quickly this movie became dated: If Office Space were taking place today, and the guys were wondering about the particulars of money laundering, they would JFGI. Or look it up on Wikipedia.

***One of the items we bought there today was a waffle maker for $12.99...because we've been looking for a waffle maker. And just down the aisle was a gas-powered portable electric generator for $399.99. I wonder how many people have walked into the store with enough cash on hand to purchase one of those as an impulse buy?