A shopper who posts on TikTok as Emily Allison (@emilyallison) said in a video that she went to Aldi expecting the usual rush of checkout and instead ran into another customer who started placing items on the belt before she had finished unloading. The first video had gained 75,200 views. She captioned it, “who does this?”
Allison said she was ringing up a week’s worth of groceries and putting them on the belt for the cashier. She described Aldi as cheap and said that is partly because “they only have like 2 people working at a time,” customers “use a quarter to get your cart,” and the store does not bag groceries. She said cashiers scan items and put them into the cart, so people move fast.
She said she was about halfway done when “this woman comes up and she just starts adding her stuff to the end of the belt.” Allison said there was “maybe like this much room left” and that she kept having to push the other woman’s items back so she could add her own. She said the woman put the divider down as if her order started there.
Shopper says her usual cart setup did not stop the next customer
Allison said in a follow-up TikTok video, captioned “Replying to @Kayla Smith my usual tricks did not stop this woman,” that she had already kept her cart at the very back of the belt while she unloaded. She said the other woman still reached over the front of that cart, where Allison had bags, bread, and chips, to set items down.
She said the woman “did have that little like silver, um, ledge area that’s not part of the belt that moves.” Allison said the other shopper “didn’t have a ton of stuff, like heavy things,” and that if she needed a place to set items, that ledge was available. She said she would guess the woman was about her age, “maybe a couple years older,” and that she was not elderly and was not a teenager.
Allison said this was the second time the same kind of thing had happened to her. She said she almost asked the woman to wait or stop but decided not to, because she did not want to “start something or come off like a Karen.”
She said the other woman was putting down “cabbages and ranch dressing and pork chops and s–t” while Allison was still unloading, and that the woman could see how much she still had left. Checkout-line tension is a recurring frustration, as seen when a Charlotte woman realized a stranger was placing items on the Aldi belt behind her.
She described what she believes is the usual order at the register: the person unloading finishes, puts the divider down, and moves up, and that is the signal for the next person to start. She asked, “Am I crazy?” She also said she found it strange that both times it was a woman, adding, “Like, we have this unwritten code of how we behave in a grocery store, and this isn’t it. Stop stressing me out.”
Allison also said a lot of people were upset that she did not speak up, and that she was upset with herself as well. She said it was 9 in the morning and she was trying to keep the peace and wondering if she was misreading the situation. She said it was “legitimate” and promised that next time she would say something.
Viewers described similar checkout friction. One commenter wrote, “I swear every time i go grocery shopping it’s everyone else’s first day on earth.” Another wrote, “I hate when the next customer is lingering near me by the credit card machine.”
Some said they try to block space on purpose. One wrote, “That’s why you keep your cart at the end and block the way… rude but keeps it from happening.” Another wrote, “Put your cart behind you and unload from the front of it.”
A third commenter wrote, “This has happened to me too many times. Now I block the aisle with my cart and put it between me and anyone else in line.” One commenter told Allison, “You are correct, not crazy!” Checkout-line tensions can take many forms, as when a Missouri woman at Aldi had an unsettling encounter while trying to help an old lady.
Published: Sep 21, 2026 07:20 am