>>8523195It's not a matter of consumerism; it's a matter of efficiency!
If you could properly bag your groceries when you're scanning them, then you don't have to do it all over again. The way Aldi does it makes it take three times longer for you to take everything out, put them in bags, and put it back in again.
Stores like Target and Walmart have self checkouts, where you can scan and bag your items yourself. This is fine because having to do things for yourself isn't what causes the inefficiency. Aldi would never do this because Europeans can't be trusted with that kind of freedom. Europeans have to pay for public toilets!
At European grocery stores (at least the ones I saw when I visited Germany and Spain), they have to put one-way gates at the entrances in order to stop people from shoplifting. You can't bring in items like water bottles that look like they might be sold there for the same reason.
Even the poorest parts of cities don't stoop so low. Even there, there is a level of respect for American values -- one which Aldi lacks.
