Isn’t it amazing how an experience can mess with our heads?

I once got food poison from take out Chinese food - pork wonton soup - and ended up in the emergency room. It took 8 years for me to try it again. I’m still very careful about what I order and it gets sterilized in the microwave first.

I also got 2nd degree burns from a cup of scalding tea. Started drinking coffee after that (the EMS worker made an off the side comment about how coffee is a few degrees cooler and wouldn’t have burned as bad. that stuck with me for a long time), and I didn’t drink tea for about 2 years. ( I love tea!)

I can’t blame you Trent. Roaches have to be one of the most disgusting things and to see a swarm of them, is just, well, blech! (i’m getting itchy)

I have to agree, when I have had a bad experience at a place I am VERY hesitant to go back, and it doesn’t matter how much other people like it, or think it’s great, if it’s something that doesn’t work for me I don’t bother to go back.

I’ve never heard of Aldi, is it a grocery store?But the underlying message of first impressions being important is very relatable. For me, as I begin my own computer consulting business, I will stive to make the BEST first impression I can, because it’s not too often someone is willin to give you a second shot.

My husband had an experience with a cup of noodles, you know those little kits for lunch that come in a styrofoam cup? He opened one up once and found a bunch of maggots. And even if he sees it in the grocery store, he’ll still cringe. I cringe now, too. Yuck.

Good lord, I can’t blame you for being averse. I would have screamed bloody murder.

Totally understandable. I will verrrrrrryy rarely eat at the East Side Mario’s chain of restaurants (only if someone else is treating and it would be a major social faux pas not to attend) because years ago I worked in the kitchen of one that was so unbelievably filthy that it tainted the whole place. It’s not really that big of a deal because the food is generally pretty bad anyways.

That said though, I worked in a LOT of kitchens and saw a lot of things that would turn your stomach. Not even people intentionally messing with food because despite popular opinion in my experience that’s relatively rare, just terribly unsanitary conditions. My girlfriend and some other friends were grocery store folk and they confirm that grocery stores are much the same.

I’ve only been in my local Aldi a couple of times, because it’s so far away from where I live. And I’m never entirely sure what I’m buying. I was in there with a friend once, and she nearly bought some onion rings, until I pointed out they were octopus.

I understand. My husband went with me to Aldi for the first time this past weekend. He has requested that I not shop alone there. Alas our two Aldi’s are in really bad sections of town and are not really safe. Consequently I rarely go and only do so to supplement our cupboards. I thankfully have not had your experience, gives me the willies just thinking about it. . .

It is entirely fair to forever abandon a business based on one horrendous experience. You don’t owe a business a second chance. They need to impress with quality, price, service, and cleanliness *every single time*. Cleanliness is especially important where the business deals with food. If you go to a new restaurant and the dishes are dirty and the food smells off, why would you ever go back? If a grocery store can’t keep hordes of cockroaches out of the store, why would you ever go back?

I got a rock in my uncle’s ben rice once, and it didn’t bother me at all. I called them to let them know there was an issue and they even sent me some coupons. I figure it was a freak accident. The customer service rep was more freaked out than I was, honestly.

I got a rather unidentifiable piece of “meat” in some styrofoam cup ramen once, and have pretty much avoided them since. It was chicken flavored but there wasn’t any meat listed in the ingredients.

I got moldy m+m’s once for halloween, and that definitely hasn’t stopped me from eating those!

So I think it depends entirely on the situation. I will say, in your defense that my mom used to shop at Aldi’s and it always just looked really gross to me. Just stuff stacked everywhere and in complete disarray. I always hated going there and if my current city had one, I wouldn’t shop there either.

After all of the hype I have been reading recently, I finally tried going to an Aldi this past weekend. I found the place to be disgusting. Most of the dairy had expiration dates of that day or the next, and half the produce was rotten. After seeing a cucumber so rotten it had blown up to almost football-size, we abandoned the attempt, ditched the food, and returned the empty cart. Never again!

That story should serve as a vivid warning to businesses: not only is a first impression extremely important, but a customer who has a negative experience will tell many, many others who will likely not use your business.

There was a nearby pizza delivery place that we had patronized for years, until they delivered a pizza with rotten meat on it- I can’t understand how they didn’t smell it, because the moment we opened the box, peeeyew! And the meat was greenish. We complained and got our money back, but we NEVER used them again. They didn’t seem all that contrite!

I had a similar experience while living in Philadelphia this summer. Two grocery stores in walking distance. The cheaper of the two with the better selection? I saw a mouse running around. Ugh.

So I spent more at the notably cleaner establishment with limited selection and felt nary a guilty pang.

I feel the same way trent but on a slightly less horrific scale.
I have in ingraned in me to not purchase anything cold from Aldi because of my parents. We would only buy canned and shelf stable food. When going past the meats often they were discolored (an image that will not go away ever). So often I hear how they have come a long way and that the cold foods are good and much better than they were 20 years ago, but I still can not purchase anything cold.

I once choked horribly on a particular brand of cookie (through no fault of the cookie). However, for a number of years after that, I avoided the cookies, though they had once been my favorite, for fear of choking. I eventually starting eating them again but am cautious to never repeat the scenario (walking around eating cookies) that caused the original incident.

That is incredibly gross. I don’t blame you for your ongoing reaction to the store.

I’ve had a few experiences with finding moths or their larvae in packaged food. There’s nothing like opening a new box and having something fly out of it!

I think it’s the store more than the manufacturer that contributed to this, in that the product probably sat for a long time on the shelf or in a warehouse.

Although when I think about it, the example you gave may very well have been a manufacturing issue. That is, the mats may have been made in a third world country and boxed and shipped over complete with disgusting additions. They were probably just taken out of the box all in a bunch and nothing was seen until you guys moved one. Yuck. Just thinking about it is grossing me out.

I don’t blame you at all Trent.

There was a vietnemese restaurant I frequented with co-workers for years, and then one day, there was a massive unidentifiable roach-like bug in the wonton soup to my left. We were horrified and even though the owener came over and apoligizes frantically and said that NEVER happens, I have never been back. I just can’t get over that image in relation to that restaurant.

It annoys me but it’s fascinating that the brain makes certain associations you can never get over.

One time I chipped a tooth on a no-bake cookie. I will never eat one ever ever again.

Just to chime in again, there is also a chain of low end grocery stores that I won’t buy anything perishible from. I once attended the “Grand Opening” event of one and there was meat for sale that was already past it’s expiry date. The meat was actually dated for the day before the store opened. I pointed it out to an employee and he just sort of shrugged and left it on the shelf.

Trent, I don’t blame you one bit. My husband and I have also had a bad experience with Aldi and will not shop there again. Should’ve used our better judgement in buying meat there, but we got sick!

The one problem I have with Aldi’s is not with any bugs; however, I purchased a bag of potatoes because they looked fine. Got them home to find they were leaking. The potatoes in the middle had rotted to liquid. I was wondering what the smell in the car was.

Now, when I get potatoes there (because they are cheapest even if I can find a sale at a regular store), I make sure to move the potatoes around in the bag to make sure they are ALL solid.

We go thru 10# of potatoes a week for a family pet (pot belly pig). Paying $0.50+ per bag every week at a regular store (that I wouldnt normally visit when I do my rounds) makes no sense.

~M

Now I’ve got the background music from the insect cave scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom running through my head (all those pizzicato strings). Creepy.

The worst experience like that I’ve had was while eating a Chicken Carver sandwich at Boston Market. I ate one half, then took a bite of the second half, revealing a (thankfully intact) HUGE bug. When I showed it to the manager, he offered me as much of anything in the store as I wanted (nice customer service), and explained that periodically a shipment of lettuce will come in that has a few bugs.

I love Boston Market food, but I haven’t had a Carver sandwich since then. Can’t quite get myself to bite into it. I stick with the cooked meals.

I’ll never do business with Bank of America again. Their customer service put a bad enough taste in my mouth to never mess with them again.

I had a bad experience in college and gave them a 2nd chance 6 years later. There won’t be a 3rd chance.

I don’t blame you either. It took me more than one bad experiences with the local A&P (spoiled produce, boxes of cereal on the shelf that were over a year expired and seemingly arbitrary jacking up of prices for staples I buy–a $3 change in price over one week for no reason), but after I emailed A&P and got a really pathetic response, I’ll never shop there again even though their prices are better than the stop and shop.

The bad experience doesn’t have to involve food. Years ago I went to buy my first car and the American car dealers were uniformly rude to me (Ford was the worse: I still remember wanting to take the Mustang for a test drive to make sure the 4 cylinder had enough power for a long hill I drove every day: one of the sales folks told me ” Look, lady, either you want the car or not and I’m not going to get one out for you to test drive.” ) I went down the block and checked out foreign cars and decided on a Toyota; several years later I did test drive an American car and the spedometer was not working and several finish pieces were missing — and this was the car used to sell folks on the model! I’ve not looked back — I’m a Toyota or Honda customer for life.

My roach story:

One day I was helping some people move. We had their kitchen table upside down and were tilting it through the door in order to get it to fit. Suddenly, a swarm of little baby roaches comes pouring out of the center post that supports the table. We dropped the table and then larger roaches started flooding out.

Keep in mind, this is the kitchen table where they ate all their meals, where they fed their baby. I could not get out of that place fast enough.

Pretty much when I see anything crawling around in a restaurant (esp. if in my food!), I eventually stop going to that restaurant. I know it’s not exactly fair b/c bugs just happen sometimes, but I lose the desire to eat there anymore. Simple as that.

I have numerous places I don’t go to because of one bad experience. Yours was downright traumatic, and I don’t think anyone can blame you. It’s in our psychology as human beings to associate such things, and that negative association can have physical effects. You shop where you are comfortable, you have no reason to feel bad about that.

I used to live in Philadelphia in college, and there was a Wendy’s right down the street from me. I went there a time or two with friends, and then finals week ended up with the most vicious, painful food poisoning I’ve ever gotten.

That was four years ago, and I haven’t been to one since, nor do I plan to go again. Just not worth the risk.

But I was twenty three, then. I think impressions formed–of brand names and otherwise–in childhood are stronger, and are definitely likely to last no matter what evidence is given to the contrary later.

I completely understand. I got really bad food poisoning from a tuna melt YEARS ago and my stomach still turns and I feel green if I only smell tuna. I can’t be near it because I feel like I’ll get sick again. It isn’t the same as a store but I understand how one bad experience can really mess with you for the rest of your life.

Even though roaches are incredibly gross, I think that the age you were at the time of this experience contributed to how severely it affected you. You were at such an impressionable age, I can easily understand how it would have such an enormous impact.

The one time I was affected by a roach, I didn’t even need to see it. I had taken my two daughters to a Shoney’s restaurant in Mississippi and, up until then, it was my favorite chain…I loved their burgers. But while I was waiting for our check, a waitress came up to the man in the booth next to ours and apologized for the cockroach he had found in his spaghetti.

Now, even though I know it is almost impossible for any place to remain completely cockroach free in the hot and humid South, I just felt that the restaurant had not been vigilant enough and never ate at that Shoney’s again. Only now do I realize that I don’t think I have ever eaten at ANY Shoney’s since. I do think that is unfair of me, and yet….

Still, I think in the case you mentioned, had I been an adult, I believe that I might have assumed that - as Shevy mentioned above - the roaches were transported there between the mats and the store was not really responsible. On the other hand, a horde of cockroaches is a truly disgusting sight and even my adult self might have a difficult time buying something from the place where I encountered them.

It seems to me that this is truly the kind of psychological situation that changing our mindsets about money won’t really address.

Yes it’s fair. I tell you I am never going there.
This is an easy one. It’s risk management - companies tend to get worse over time - or at least stay the same (see Good to Great for the few exceptions). Why risk disease or the cost of therapy you will need as you try to bite down on something crunchy you bought there to give them a second chance - open markets solve it with better choices.

I won’t touch Dinty Moore beef stew after I got a large bone stuck in my mouth from a piece of meat. When my husband buys any kind of canned food I get nervous and usually won’t try it.

I agree with Trent on this matter. First of all, one should shop where they feel comfortable. Some of the time it might be customer service and other times, it might be the ambiance.

We have a Frys supermarket and a Safeway in the same general area. Frys just has a brighter and friendlier feel. The employees in both stores are great. The physical structure is just better at Frys and that is where I spend my money.

EEEWWWWWW the cockroaches!!!

My story is about bread. I normally do my grocery shopping at the grocery store but if I only have a couple items, I’ll get them at Walmart Supercenter. (it’s easier than getting the kids outta carseats again)

So I bought 2 loaves of Walmart’s Great Value bread. Put 1 loaf in the freezer when I got home. I was making grilled cheese sandwiches and needed that loaf. I used about 1/2 of it then I noticed weird shapes hollowed out of the bread… still partially frozen. As it turned out, I pulled out a piece of blue rubber tubing about 2 inch diameter about 3 inches long and some other smaller pieces. My stomach turned instantly and I couldn’t eat supper. Consequently, I couldn’t eat bread, period, for over a week. The Service Desk lady at Walmart about hurled over it as she gave me my $$ back. And yes, I got my $$ back. NOT another loaf in exchange!!!!! And I haven’t bought Great Value bread in probably about the 2 years since.
My stomach turns in the bread aisle at Walmart still.

wow, grocery stores are insanely regionalized! I have NEVER heard of aldi or fareway…

but I assume you guys have never heard of: ralphs, albertson’s alpha beta, lucky’s, safeway, vons. Maybe some of you have heard of smith’s but they left california awhile ago. (and technically alpha beta and lucky’s are gone, but still they probably never existed east of the rockies).

I wonder why grocery stores are so regionalized while place slike costco, sam’s club, target and walmart exist nationally? Is it a produce/fresh good supplier issue vs national distribution for dry/packaged goods?

We had an experience with a roach invading our booth at a Burger King when I was a kid. I didn’t return to Burger King for about 20 years after that.

My husband loved canned corn - was one of his favorite foods when he was a kid. When he was 7 or 8, he warmed up a bowl, then stirred it, only to have it turn red - something ‘extra’ had been in the can. He’s 32, and I still cannot serve corn in our house at mealtime. It makes him so sick he refuses to eat - he will not even fix himself something else to eat - just gets up and walks out of the room.

eewwww.

Okay now that that’s out of my system. I avoid Aldi’s in part because it just always felt dirty with questionable meat and fruits and veggies that never lasted more then a day out of the store. I avoid buying veggies at the IGA that’s literally across the street for the same reason. Sometimes places just don’t feel right and I’ve learned to trust that instinct.

I also had the experience one time of eating at a Thai restaurant. As we finished our food I looked over and saw a cockroach climbing the wall of our booth. After managing not to freak out I got our food for free and never went back.

I think its rational and fair. I think it would be irrational to continue shopping at a grocery store that you know had a roach problem. Should you give them a second chance? Why? If you’ve got a good store now then why abandon them for a store you’ve had a bad problem with in the past.

Brand loyalty means sticking to a brand that treats you right. Theres no good reason to leave Fareway. There was good reason to swear of Aldi.

Jim

If I remember my intro psych, that kind of experience is called learned aversion. Cognitive behavior therapy is probably best if someone needs to overcome such an experience.

I had a psych professor who had a great example of it - he had 21 vodka gimlets in one night. It was years before he could hear the name without feeling queasy and decades before he forced himself to have another one.

My friend was eating at Applebees and a salad was deliverd. The woman at the table next to her was kind of upset, and asked the waitress to see the manager. The manager walked up, screamed, apologized, took the plate away. What was it? A mouse in the salad.

When I was 7 or so, I LOVED iceburg lettuce, and much to my mother’s annoyance, I would sit and eat a half a head while watching TV for a little while. All was well until one day, I broke off a hunk and there sat a worm inside the lettuce. This wasn’t helped by her removing the worm and telling me to eat it anyway.

So I can’t eat iceburg lettuce without a VERY careful examination.

My brother will go to Aldi on his way to visit me (I’m in Canada) I’ve never had any complaints with the products, but ROACHES? That would do me in as well.

Take a job at any establishment that deals with lots of food and you’ll never again purchase food that isn’t sterilized and hermetically sealed. Vermin are rampant everywhere food is stored unless great pains are taken to contain or eradicate them.

I would bet those roaches arrived at Aldi’s already living in the floor mats, especially if they were a natural fiber or bound with an animal based glue.

After having 5 consecutive problems with multiple Sears stores and having them refuse to reimburse the full purchase price of an item because it was currently on sale my wife and I will never shop at Sears again, regardless of their prices. The straw that broke the camel’s back was awful customer service when we both tried to recoup the 11 dollars Sears stole from us and when getting a part under warranty took 6 transfers to other customer service personnel and nearly two hours!

I understand if a business or employee falls flat on its face in trying to serve you now and again, but repetitive failures or egregious events (like cockroaches in Aldi) are both completely valid reasons to (a) abandon that outlet, and (b) be vocal about why.

I forgot, insects seldom arrived with the produce shipments. Spiders, rodents and snakes took care of those pests; never a dull moment when unloading the trucks. The insects came along with the pre-packaged food items, they either were already living among the packages or soon hatched. Flour, sugar and cake mixes were the worst.

weird must be an east coast thing. This is my first time hearing the name Aldi.

But getting back on topic, experiences do shape how you view a store. I have purposely avoided a store because of a particular experience and actually get out of my way to convince others to do the same.

Jeezus! That story made ME cringe just reading it.

Don’t blame you a second for not going back. Savings aren’t everything, there’s a quality of life issue that needs to be considered. Peace of mind does have a value.

I think the only place I have actively boycotted just because of a bad experience was a “Super China Buffet” restaurant. The first time I went there I got some chicken stir fry only to realize when I bit it into the chicken, that it was practically raw.

Not going back. Nuh-uh. No way.

I think it comes down to the reason we are all in this personal finance boat - it isn’t for the money, it is for the peace of mind. We all want to feel comfortable and secure, so we can relax and enjoy ourselves. What is your time worth if you feel miserable shopping at a store were you had bad experiences? What is it worth if you distrust the food? I say that fair or not, you being comfortable where you shop is far, far more important than giving some store a second chance.

Insects scared you away? One single incident has you so frightened of a store is ridiculous considering the amount of time that has elapsed. If the insects caused bodily harm or landed on you I could see some reason for the long residual effect it has had. It’s time to move on and deposit .25 cents for your shopping cart and enjoy the good savings the store has to offer.

I have two experiences to share:

My husband found weevils (sp?) in his Mrs. Graff’s dried soup when he was a child. Many years later he tried the soup again at his mothers and (I kid you not) AGAIN he found dried weevils! I saw them this time and those little freeze dried weevils were gross, and no they were not parsley!

I became very ill with Rey’s syndrom when I was young and it was right after I had eaten a Charm’s blow pop. I didn’t eat one again for many years and when I finally did, I had a really icky anxious feeling in my stomach while I was eating it. I guess my brain was doing it’s job, desperately trying to protect me from doing something stupid :)

Wow that cockroach thing is gross. i hate shoppers becuase they seem to never have what i want, and they don’t take internet coupons (at least the one near me doesn’t). the cockroach thing is just crazy though!

Ewwwww, can’t blame you at all…very traumatic for a little kid! And too gross!

Like a poster above, I have not eaten Chinese food in years due to a food poisoning episode, and it used to be my very favorite. So I get where you’re coming from!

I am the oddball here. I’ve had visceral disgusting experiences with a number of things, but it eventually fades away and I’m back at it.

I’ve seen roaches in stores and restaurants and been back the next week (and as context, I cross the street if there is a roach on the sidewalk).

One time there was coagulated blood in my chicken noodle soup. Still eat soup (not chicken noodle, since I don’t eat meat anymore).

Maybe I will just never learn. :)

Aldi’s is actually a German grocery chain…they are all over Europe, and so imagine my surprise, after shopping at them for years over there, to move stateside, and find one had opened up in my hometown! If you check, the employees at Aldi’s make far more than their “American Store” counterpart, and they naturally have Sundays off…at least they did until recently.
Too bad about the cockroaches..I had a thing with chocolate mint cookies one time in college 25 years ago…still can’t eat a Thin Mint even though I’m a Girl Scout leader!

I think that sometimes it’s ok to let a bad experience spoil the chances of ever coming back. Sometimes, I might overlook it, but other times, I don’t. Customer service is HUGE. I am refusing to shop at Sears now because their Auto team sucked and had the worst service EVER. Yup, everyone else who was ever nice to me there will suffer because of the Auto team.

Wow,
I hope all aldi stores are not like that. That is horrible

Isn’t it facinating how the human mind works? I agree that your age was probably a big factor in this phobia.

My mom is a huge Aldi’s fan, but I can take it or leave it. The prices aren’t that great! I do much better building our meals around sales… And some items are actually more expensive than our local grocery store (bread, for example).

I empathize, Trent, ever so.

My story: Thanksgiving Day, 3 years ago. We stopped to get cokes at a gas station before getting on the road to drive to my parents. My niece wanted a fountain Sprite, so we were fixing it when ANTS came out of the dispenser with the Sprite. Hundreds of tiny, and probably dead, little sugar ants. UGH.

I told the store clerk and all she said was “huh!”and looked bored. We set everything down and walked out, and I have never been back there.

Separate gross event, that is funny to me now:
Back in law school, a live rat came up my toilet when I flushed it late one night. Completely freaked me out and for months afterward, I had this horrid fear of my bathroom and this dilemma — leave the lid up, and risk a rat coming up at any time? leave the lid down, and have to force myself to flip the lid up quickly whenever I went in there?

I told the super the next day, and he said something like “You in a ground floor apartment? Hunh. Yep, well, that could happen again. Probably won’t. Nothing I can do about it.”

I told him that he blew it, that this had been the perfect opportunity for him to lie to me and make me content to keep living there. Since there was nothing to be done, and sewer rats really aren’t that likely to swim back up the pipes and survive, he really should have said “Oh, that’s horrible! I’ll check into our plumbing right away. Rest assured — we’ll take care of this and I’ll do my best to make sure this will never happen again!”

If I have a bad experience at a store, or with a service provider, I have a 3 strikes rule. Sometimes an employee might be just having a bad day, or something might be out of the stores control, so i am (mostly, unless it is very bad, like your cockroaches, Trent!) happy to write off one bad experience to “bad timing”. Twice is an ugly coincidence, and if I get a third time, well thats it! I once found mould on the top of a pie! eww, gross. I have in fact eaten those pies again, but admitedly have always checked for mold first, and have not found a single spore. So am glad for my 3 strikes rule, generally. Perhaps I am too kind, but like to give stores and service providers the benefit of the doubt.

I won’t eat at a salad bar ever again after working a year in a middle school where the students would lean under the “spit guard” to spit into the salad bar, just for kicks. YUCK

I’d be the same with the roaches, but if you think about it, it’s completely irrational. For the few roaches you do actually see there must be thousands more that you don’t, in countless other stores and restaurants - it’s definitely a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’!

I refuse to shop at one of our local grocery chains for a completely different reason. Two months after we moved into a nice apartment with a vacant lot out the back, construction workers turned up and transformed the nice grassy section into a warehouse for processing fruit and veges for this grocery store - literally right below our bedroom window. Not only did we have to put up with months of construction noise, once the building was completed there were round the clock deliveries, complete with big trucks, forklifts, floodlights, shouting and very loud music. We called Noise Control on them several times but that just seemed to make it worse. Maybe we were just unlucky, but we moved out after a few months and I’ve never shopped at that store since.

Poor Trent! Ugh, I’m so sorry. There have been a few times that a particular food has been forever tainted for me because I was coming down with a sickness at the time I ate it - a Zone Bar is associated with nausea - not that I would eat a “meal replacement bar” these days anyway.

This topic is unfortunate, as I was just gearing up for my monthly Aldi trip tomorrow. I don’t know that stepping up to a more expensive store would make me feel more comfortable with the food though… Unless I went to a local farm or just out of my budget.

Roaches,yeah, I’m with you on this one. Living in Florida I have my fair share of Roach encounters and even though it seems we have every living creepy crawling bug living here, roaches freak me out. I grew up in Germany and there is an Aldi on every corner as long as I can think. Probably the same. Very cheap, they drive in pallets full of boxes with items. The stores are more like a whole sale place than a neatly organized store that caters to the beautiful shopping experience. I completely understand your feeling and I would challenge you to give Aldi another chance. Maybe and just maybe the experience will be the opposite and just like you can learn to overcome most other fears by slowly taking a closer look, I believe you can do so in this case. It is amazing how a bad experience can spoil the broth.

Scrambled eggs at Country Kitchen gave both my husband and I food poisoning and we haven’t entered one of their restaurants since. Although I do sometimes shop at Aldi’s, I completely get what your saying.

Also, Bank of America made my life a financial hell for nearly a year. I worked for a small art studio and my boss did payroll with company checks through Bank of America. Our credit union put a 5 business day hold on any BofA check - imagine going without pay for an extra week simply because your boss changed banks; they’d never had a problem when he was writing checks through Wells Fargo - and the BofA solution? Get an account with them and I could cash my check without any hassle. They promised.

Aggravated, we did, but every freaking time they required a pile of ID (which I provided), a fingerprint (which I gave), AND had to call my boss to make sure I wasn’t stealing his money. Of course he wasn’t hardly ever in the office, seeing as how the studio was closed. And I’d go to the same branch, see the same teller, yet every freaking payday was a huge hassle.

I will NEVER bank with Bank of America.

There is a popular grocery store in our area that is actually known for it’s cleanliness and quality, but I haven’t been there for at least eight years because of an experience I had there. I was buying some salmon and the checker picked it up to scan it and said, “did you look for worms?” I said, “uh. excuse me?” He said, “Ya, the other day I was scanning some of this fish and I looked down and there were maggots crawling all over it.”

I didn’t buy the fish and I haven’t gone back.

I won’t shop at Aldi, either. I was creeped out, but by totally different things. The Aldi we went to was an older store, back in the days when they took cash, and only cash,and I understand things are different now, but they made me feel so uncomfortable I have never wanted to set foot in another Aldi.

I felt like I was entering a prison, where I was assumed to be a criminal. First, there was a turnstyle you had to walk through to get to the carts. That was mildly irritating. Then, I looked up. The side walls of the store did not go to the ceiling, but up to a balconey level where no fewer than six people were stationed at various points, watching the customers. They didn’t move the whole time we were there, except when someone spoke into a two-way radio, and a customer up front was stopped and patted down. One of those watchers saw me looking at him and just stared back at me with the dirtiest look. I felt threatened. There were three more security people stationed between the cash registers and the door.

Yes, it was in a not particularly nice end of one of the larger cities in Iowa, but I never saw another store in that neighborhood do the same. I felt that they were just utterly hostile to their customers.

That and the rotten bananas covered with fruit flies piled in a special display in the aisle turned me off so completely I have never wanted to go back.

There’s a SuperFresh grocery in the area; when we first moved to that town I tried all the local grocery stores in the area. Walked in, walked out immediately because of the stench of rotting meat. Never went back. A local A&P in my hometown was okay until I ran into a friend who fixes freezers. The friend told me to never buy meat there because the refrigeration was always problematic.

Thanks to those who left comments about Bank of America; I’ve been considering changing banks and that one was on the list until just now! I’ll just set up account at the credit union.

Biting into a cherry and seeing a little maggot poke its head out put me off cherries for years.

BTW, I was told by a restaurant inspector that if you see a cockroach in the dining area of a restaurant you should leave - it means the kitchen is full!

We never eat at Taco Bell anymore. One time while traveling home from a visit to my husband’s parent’s house we stopped at one for lunch. Luckily he did not get really sick until we had arrived home. I was just glad that I missed out on the “fun” as I was pregnant at the time and that our son did not get sick either.

I think that the reason your view was tarnished so harshly and for the other people who have negative views on products or businesses is because we place trust in establishments or brands. When that trust is violated, you don’t want to go back to it. Brand marketing is about getting the consumer to trust that that brand will perform to your expectations every time. When it doesn’t, your trust is violated. Fair or not, it’s human nature.

I guess I’ll be the naysayer here. I think Aldi is a great grocery store, and my family shops there often. Personally, I have seen/purchased many disgusting things from many different supermarkets (food that turned out to be spoiled, etc.). It sounds like the Aldi store you went to was poorly managed and maintained. The Aldi stores I have visited have been extremely clean compared to some of the other grocery chains I have visited. I also buy many grocery items at dollar stores and Big Lots, which is cheaper than buying them at actual grocery stores, and they have always been fine.

On the other hand, I once got food poisoning from a chicken sandwich I purchased at Burger King. That was more than 20 years ago, and I’ve never been back to a Burger King since.

20-25 years ago a network news program did a story on Food Lion, a local grocery store chain, alledging some very unappetizing practices in their meat department. For many years I couldn’t buy meat there, when I was forced to shop there. Gradually I got over this, as it is a very prominent store and just to convenient to shop at on occasion.

I have been shopping at Aldi for about a year, since they opened one in our area. I love it not only for the prices, but for the quality of the goods. I can also get in and out of the store much more quickly than any other stores, because they streamline everything. You have to pay a quarter to release a cart (returned, when you return the cart), pay for bags (so I recycle them now), band bag your own groceries. So what, I’m saving time and money. The only down side is that they have a more limited selection than larger stores, so I do have to shop at other stores to fill in for the omissions in Aldi’s product line.

Ah, Aldi and Fareway.
My family only bought canned or dry foods there. Usually things we knew would be cheaper than HyVee, Cub Foods, or Fareway.
When I started working at HyVee in high school I began to figure out what was cheaper at HyVee or Fareway and didnt care if I bought it at Fareway as it was on my way home from work.
I always got stared at when I went into Fareway after work wearing my HyVee hat. :-)

None of those chains are out here on the west coast. We’ve got Safeway and then we have QFC and Fred Meyer, both owned by Kroger.
We also have Grocery Outlet, which has lots of canned and dry goods at low prices because the packaging is out of date- such as advertising a movie after the theater run is done.

I will not buy beef at the local WalMart. For 2 reasons:

-Meat comes prepackaged. No meat cutters there. (That’s one reason they can keep the prices low)

-The meat ‘guy’ that works there in the afternoon (the one that actually puts the meat out in the coolers) can’t read words or numbers (I know this to be a fact).

Its safe to assume that none of the posters above have ever grocery shopped in a third world country - you’d starve to death by the end of the first week :-)

That roach story is going to give me nightmares… Remind me not to read this blog before going to bed, lol!

I mean, a little bug here and there won’t bother me no matter where I go, I’ll get that even in my own produce I grow at home. It happens. I hate bugs, but it happens, you can’t sterilize everything.

But that many roaches?!?!? I’d avoid at least that store like the plague… If it was a chain… eh… if the other stores seemed like they were in better shape I might keep going. A rational fear or not, I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to go in there again.

My dad has this thing with soda cans though, you’ve gotta clean the top of them off before you open them. He was doing some electrical work in a grocery store after hours and saw some workers pile up some cases of soda to stand on top of them to reach other stuff, and they had been walking through… let’s call it “chicken nature” before doing this. I suppose I wouldn’t worry about this if the sodas were in a 12 pack cardboard box, but when you get those uncovered flat cases…

So let’s just say that my dad and I both have this unconcious habit now of wiping off the top of a soda can before opening it.

I thought ALDIs had a different name in America? The short version of ALDIs is for what costs you a full trolley (shopping cart?) in a regular supermarket chain, you can get 2 or 3 trolley fulls for the same price at ALDIs.

Roaches and food do not mix well! I can see how that would impact you negatively. I do some mystery shopping and I am the same way when I see dirt/bugs.

One experience like that . . . ewwh, shudder! I currently live outside of the US and shopping can be occasionally problematic. Shopping takes twice as long because I’m inspecting the food carefully. One thing I always do is put the grains (rice, flour, pasta) into the freezer for at least 24 hours to kill anything so it won’t hatch and crawl around later (something about if you can’t see it, then it doesn’t but you). I keep open boxed products (after freezing) in the refrigerator because it has seals which the cabinets don’t. I don’t stock up on fruits/veggies unless they can also be kept in the fridge. The up side of all this? There’s so little room in my fridge, that nothing stays long enough to actually mold!

Like Jade, I always wipe the top of cans and sodas - even bottled ones - because you can never tell what has been dripped on them or if the storeroom was fumigated while they were sitting on the shelves.

Oops - I meant BUG you not “but you”.

Hi Trent,

I don’t consider your reaction “rational” but this does not mean it is not VALID. Firstly it is a branding phenomenon that causes you to link the past incident with the Aldi name and chain. The cockroaches have become an attribute that you assign to Aldi in your mind.

On the other hand, look at it from a pragmatic perspective. Time and distance are factors differentiating your current Aldi stores from the one you visited 20 years ago. The management of the store is different. Perhaps even the ownership, and the hygiene policies, of the Aldi chain has changed more than once over the years. Pest control technologies have evolved, etc.

In the end, I find your reaction emotional rather than rational. At the same time, I would not call it irrational. Given what you describe, it sounded terribly traumatizing, and human beings react to trauma in extreme ways as a form of self preservation. But if you can get your head around the whole issue, in all likelihood there is not much at your neighborhood Aldi which will cause you harm now.

I live in Germany & the Aldis here have great prices. Unfortunately, if you go to an Aldi here at the wrong time of day, you take your life into your own hands. Look out for pushy people with their shopping carts, you might get shoved out of the way! It’s like an Indy 500 race, and the store has just announced that it will run out of inventory in the next 5 minutes. Another turn off is that the clerks throw everything after they scan it. You’re lucky if it ends up in your shopping cart instead of on the floor. Finally, my pet peeve about Aldi has to be that the clerks will hand you your change before you even have time to consider how you want to pay. They always end the transaction by plugging in that you paid the exact amount in cash. I don’t understand how that can be legal.

I don’t shop at Aldi because I try not to eat a lot of packaged foods.

Although I did try their 2 minute noodles and thought “Hey these taste really good!” then I read on the pack it contained 50 grams of fat, yes 50!

The only bad experience I have had at Aldi is that no one ever shuts the freezer doors and they never clean up the spilt beans, peas and corn lurking at the bottom of the freezer.

Hey Trent,

My experience at AIDI’s is as follows:

First their prices are not really that great, a loaf of bread that was .59 cents at the begin of ‘08 has increased twice to .79 cents. That’s at the western PA location, other US location may be higher or lower.

There selections of so called fresh veggies, are not fresh and seems to riot after just another 3-4 days after purchase. This has not happen once but all 3 test trails of their fresh foods. Just because it’s cheaper, it’s not better!!!

Moving forward, my household shopping is done by purchasing all my fresh veggies @ super walmart, as well as my household items. Bulk rice, dog food, and other bulk staple food picked up from SAM’S CLUB. At AIDI’s we’ll just pickup eggs & bread in bulk and freeze it in our deep freezer, and that’s about every two months.

There might be 1 or 2 AIDI’s per state for example, these are not SUPER Walmart’s or Target’s. AIDI’s sells a very small selection of can goods, dried beans, cereal, milk, eggs, veggies, cold cuts, bread, and frozen convenience foods, a bunch of sugar crap sodas & snacks.

Since we cook 95% of our meals at home, there is no need to waste money on store brought convenience foods. Driving to our nearest AIDI’s uses two gallons of gas roundtrip. That’s driving our Toyota Yaris which gets 39mpg.

Driving to AIDI’s is now cost shared w/other family members.

I don’t shop at Best Buy. My parents bought their first computer in 1997 when I was 18 and the Best Buy guys got them set up with internet. They told my dad it was “good to go.” A month later when my dad got his phone bill for $1,100, we discovered that the dial-up connection was set to a long distance number. All of us in our household were essentially computer illiterate at the time and did not know enough to even check that. We took Best Buy’s word for it that everything really was “good to go.” Multiple calls and visits to Best Buy (and the phone company) and were told it was our problem and certainly not the fault of Best Buy. I felt then (and still feel) that my dad was screwed on that phone bill and I blame Best Buy for that.

I have issues with Aldi myself because of an experience my friend had when we were young. They got a can of corn that had half a roach in it. It’s always stuck with me that it was purchased at Aldi. EW.

Funny timing of this story - there is an Aldi about to open right up the street from me. It will be the first one in this area (one of the first in Florida).
I had a bad experience at BJ’s Club. Like any wholesale club they have canned items stacked high on pallets. I walked by some cans of Beef Stew and it smelled literally like poop. Turns out one can of stew had broken open during shipping, and the beef was rotten. Flies were flying in and out of the can (which was likely also filled with maggots). It had to have been there for quite some time. How did no one notice?

Obviously these are isolated incidents, but I don’t buy food at BJ’s anymore. I still shop there but for other things like diapers, detergent and toilet paper.
I agree with your point - some stores are better than other for certain items.

I will never be a Discover Card customer again. Terrible customer service. I’m currently using their 0% APR introductory card and will be transferring the balance when it’s over.
I will never shop at KMart because, when I used to work there, the backroom area was so disgusting and unsanitary (and unsafe) it was ridiculous. They were selling Halloween candy from 1-2 years ago — if they found it in the backroom, out it went. Some of their backroom soda was so old, it was eroding out of the can and corroding through the metal shelves they were on.
I’ve had two bad experiences at Kroger, so don’t shop there anymore.
Etc, etc, etc. I always give a place a second chance, because mistakes are always made. Like a previous poster said, that was likely a manufacturing issue with the cockroaches — the insects would move to the food if it was store neglect. But being traumatized messes with the mind. And there is some peace-of-mind shopping in a store you enjoy being in.

I buy my cereal, milk and eggs there. A $1.50 for 20 oz Raisin Bran is a really good deal. 1 gallong of milk is $2.49. They also have really good large cinnamon raisin bagels that I can never pass up for $1.39.

I would agree with the above posters that there vegetable selection isn’t the best.

The first and only time I went to Aldi’s, the cashier yelled at us for not putting the cart in the right place by the checkout aisle. Never been back. It’s also out of the way, and the store where I usually shop has good prices and a great selection, so going out of my way to save a few cents and get yelled at seems like a pretty bad deal.

Pretty much any and all stores where there is food, including restaurants, are going to have roaches and other bugs unless they actively work to *not* have them. The good ones do.

I think with the amount of choice we have, we’ll be easily swayed to another store or brand even if that means paying more to be more comfortable.

On the topic of bugs, I know restaurants in older buildings will throw food out in the morning to attract all the cochroaches and then kill them before the customers arrive.

Hi Trent, I wonder how do you feel about the wal marts and the Aldi’s of the world when trying to be frugal? Your story about the cockroaches reminds me of why I do not like to shop at Wal Mart. Mine isn’t really a trauma but rather it quality/principles issue. I do not like to shop at wal mart because I find the quality of food to be atrocious, the produce is seldom green and crisp, I can’t find a good loaf of bread unless I bake it myself, and the meat tends to go bad every once in a while. Add to that the implications that buying at wal mart gives more fuel to this economic tempest that we are currently in and one can’t help but figure a better way to shop locally and grow their own produce.

But sometimes, where else are you going to go to buy a 21 gallon container?

I don’t blame you Trent, that is pretty bad. I have a similar experience, but not quite as bad. While at our local Buffalo Wild Wings, I saw a little mouse run under one of the video games near our table in the bar area. I discreetly told our waitress who informed the manager. They were thankful we didn’t make a big deal about it and gave us a free round of drinks. I felt a little better since it wasn’t near the kitchen area, but it was still a little disgusting. I have been back to that restaurant a few times, though.

Oh dear. An Aldi just opened up here and I was sort of looking forward to checking it out.

Hopefully since it’s brand new, it won’t have roaches. :p

I don’t know what I’d do without Aldi’s. I think one statement you made is so true. That could happen in any grocery store chain. Our Aldi’s is well organized and clean. We certainly couldn’t make it without Aldi’s. Please consider giving them another chance.

Your letting one bad experience from 20 years ago control the decisions you make today? I’m normally open to giving anything or anyone a second chance. I guess the “out of sight, out of mind” thing must ring pretty true. There are always going to be insects everywhere you go, its just a matter of whether you can see them or not. I hope no house guests ever see a bug in your house. They might not ever come back.

I see more and more people making “choices” for the sake of “family safety”, when I think many of the decisions boil down to a pride, social status, “I deserve better” mentality.

One night after we first moved into our old neighborhood, my husband and I ducked into this tiny,classic looking diner up the street. The waitress who served us had an open, bleeding wound on her face. I said something to her about the blood dripping down her face and she clapped her hand over the wound and contuned to take our order. We have never been back there. You don’t mess with blood.

Once when I was about 5 or 6 I had a Snickers when I was sick and soon after threw up.

I have not been able to eat any food with peanuts in them since. I can eat the peanuts alone, or the food alone, but not when the peanuts are in the food. Even if I think peanuts are in the food my gag reflex starts.

Midsummer 10 years ago I got a Ceaser salad from a deli in downtown Chicago - I should have known better as I was sick for the next 3 days. It was 5 years before I could eat Ceaser salad again.

I ordered a burger from Burger King with Ketchup and Mustard, and being night in the drive thru was 1/2 way home and 1/2 way through the burger before I started feeling sick - it was covered in mayo, which I’m allergic to. It was 2 years before I could eat Burger King again.

I have to disagree with the earlier poster who said that if you work in any food job you will never eat there again - my first job was Portillos (a hotdog place here in Chicago) and they were very clean, and I still love their food. Everybody washed their hands, and it was very sanitary. Not every food service/grocery store is unsanitary.

As far as Aldi goes, there is one about 2 blocks from our place, and we buy most of our stuff there. It cuts my grocery bill in half. There is a Valli Foods right next door to the Aldi that we’ll get produce at, and a Mejeir 1/2 a mile from that we get our non-generic stuff. I can’t remember the last time I even walked into a non discount grocery store.

I agree that your choice to avoid Aldi’s is emotional, AND valid. You can get everything you want and need somewhere else with no loss to you. I also avoid eating lobster because I got so sick once from it (I was right on the coast, too, at a very upscale restaurant- very disapointing. Maybe I was on the wrong coast!)

I totally understand your reaction. I own a restraunt and am constantly on my employees about cleanliness. (The local health dept. considers us one of the cleanest restraunts in town.) However if one person sees one bug, they would tell minimum of 12 of thier friends, and they would tell thier freinds. This doesn’t even take into account blogs like yours. Then we are out of business.
I don’t go into any food establishment if I feel they are not meeting health code. I recently stopped eating at a fast food restraunt because they hired a former employee who was let go because he couldn’t seem to learn how to wash dishes correctly.
(Aldi’s is one of the places I don’t go. Ours smells funny)

We don’t have Aldi in CA, and my mom doesn’t shop at the one near her house (but my Aunt does).

There’s a restaurant nearby that I won’t eat at, since I found ground up glass in my sandwich. My friends still go there.

And there’s another burger place, that I used to go to once a month or so…that every, and I mean every, time I go, they lose my order. I go with 5-6 people, and I am left waiting 20 extra minutes because they lost my order (not a special order either!) I just don’t go there anymore either.

I like Aldi. In fact, it’s my favorite grocery store because of its fast turnover of product and cleanliness. The low prices are great, and most of the foods aren’t filled with high fructose corn syrup. We only have four or five Aldis in Wichita, and I like all of them. The managers are helpful, the stores are clean, and I’ve never had to bring food back. Plus, I like their environmentally friendly design and practice of encouraging customers to take a box with them instead of using a new bag, paying per bag, etc.

If I had seen a bunch of cockroaches, though, I would have more mixed feelings about Aldi. I feel safer about small grocery stores that do a brisk business because there are fewer gaps in cleaning, service, inventory rotation, etc. A huge Dillons or Sam’s Club has dozens and dozens of employees who may or may not tend to their aisles as they should. :-)

My boyfriend worked in a Kroger’s for many years. He is VERY picky about where we shop - not Kroger’s or any related store. His first job at Kroger’s, on his first day there, was stamping new expiration dates on packages. When he asked how they could do that, wasn’t it unsafe, he was told that expiration dates don’t really mean anything, they’re just a dumb legal requirement!

Here are my Aldi stories. 10? years ago there was an Aldi’s near our house. I go in with my significant other, and see they have chilidogs bundled together 2 to a pack, with a bunch of stickers on them, marked down from $1.50, to 75 cents, to 50 cents. They were still trying to sell those frigging things even though they were completely blackened on top from being so old. That disgusted me.

On a different occasion my hubby then goes again by himself to the store, and tells he was walking up the aisle, and a mouse is running along the edge of the hallway, trying to find somewhere to duck in. An old lady sees it and keeps yelling at my husband to “Step on it! Step on it!”. He says, no, he wasn’t go to do that, but informs a clerk. Needless to say he didn’t buy anything. The store ending up closing. It may be true that store may have been particularly bad, but it ended up forming my impression for the brand.

Sorry that happened to you. Disgusting! Go with your gut. If you’re not comfortable shopping there don’t!

Each store is different, they either care or don’t. I like my local Aldi’s - more for frozen things and non-perishables. My local Giant (large chain) has a rampant mice problem which they choose to deal with by laying down poison under the aisle shelves - I mean really?!!

I haven’t shopped at Food Lion since one of their suppliers warned me not to buy anything perishable there.

@Juliska:
Well, sort of. Of course, my experience is with restaurants, not grocery stores, at the one I worked for the expiration date was only related to how long it had been in its present container. For example, dressing comes in huge tubs. To dispense for the customer, we’d pour small amounts into those syrup decanter-type things and label those with an expiration date. In two or three days, when that ‘expired,’ we’d dump what was left and fill it up again from the SAME tub. The dressing itself was perfectly fine - we went though it fast enough for that not to be a concern, as it certainly keeps longer than a few days - but there’s a small chance that the expiration dates on a lot of things is just completely arbitrary. I go by the food itself, not the expiration date. Sometimes milk will last for days past its date; sometimes it’s spoiling a few days before.

Oops. “expiration dates…are just completely arbitrary.” Dang it!

I think you are well within your rights to avoid any brand after a bad experience. I do not go to Pizza Hut because the one in my home town I because I have heard so many stories from former employees and customers alike about roach problems. In fact, there was a story in the local paper about roaches in pizzas. I can’t even see a Pizza Hut commercial without feeling grossed out.

Yeesh. I don’t blame you a bit and wouldn’t worry about leaving it as an “emotional” reaction that you’d rather not trigger. We do things for logical *and* emotional reasons, ’cause we’re humans, not Vulcans. :)

I’ve only been inside an Aldi once and I wasn’t impressed. Processed boxed and canned food, and questionable meats. Very cheap and poor quality.

I won’t eat at Friendly’s, but not based on one particular experience. They smell like sour milk, and I can’t stand the idea that I may be sitting in leftover ice cream drippings. Ew!

Aldi’s always kinda creeped me out, but I’m just not sure why. I want to shop there for hte prices, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. :shrug I guess the roach thing is exactly what I an expecting…

Here’s my nasty food service story. I was eating on the “patio” (really a backyard garden) at a great vegetarian restaurant in Chicago that has an alley right next to it. Suddenly, there is murmured commotion among the servers near the drink station — apparently a DYING RAT had wandered in to, um, die in peace, I guess? We *were* outside, and we *were* next to an alley, and Chicago *does* have a horrendous rat problem in the alleys, but ew. We don’t eat outside at that place anymore.

It was funny listening to the servers trying to figure out what to do, though. Can’t kill it - it’s a VEGETARIAN restaurant! What would the customers say? :lol

Forty years ago I was refused service at a Big Boy restaurant in Raleigh NC. They didn’t say anything; they just ignored me and never came over to take my order. It was more than 35 years before I went to Big Boy again. Even then I only did it because I was short of options on that particular late night.

I think others have said similar things. Your experience was emotionally traumatizing. I think that’s much less common than people who refuse to patronize businesses because of poor customer service. It doesn’t sound like you blame Aldi, but you’re traumatized, and the store brings back all those negative feelings.

A nightmare experience I’ve had was with the Uncle Ben’s instant rice bags, that you just open and put in the microwave. I bought one once, (my first buy, since I usually don’t buy premade foods like that) and after microwaving it, it was a disgusting mass of dark brown, naseous-smelling, unfamiliarly chunky, terrible smelling half liquid half chunks… it in no way resembled rice, or even food for that matter. The smell of the kitchen nearly made me vomit. A colleague suggested there had been a hole in the bag which ruined the preservation process or something.
No reasonable knowledge could ever change my automatic reaction to the Uncle Ben’s rice packs. My personal experience has changed me forever. I understand your experience with Aldi, and how it can have an effect! It’s something we can all think about reasonably, but maintain our distance from all the same.

I normally never order meat salads (tuna, chicken, etc), or meatloaf, as I always think it’s leftover meats from the day before. Meatloaf sounded sooo good to me a few years ago at HOPS Restaurant, so I ordered it. I had the worst case of food poisoning. I cannot imagine eating at another HOPS and will never order meat salads or meatloaf again! A few years ago I also got the wrong prescription at CVS, and didn’t realize it until I took the first dose and was horrified to realize it was the wrong one (even though it had my name on it). Luckily it wasn’t damaging to me, but I’ll never use CVS pharmacy again. Bad experiences have stayed with me, so I truly understand your feeling.

***Okay, fair warning this could be gross***
When I was about 10, my mom was helping a friend of my grandpa by driving him around and helping with some housework. He came over to our house for dinner once or twice a week during this time. He was an elderly gentleman and very hard of hearing and with poor eyesight.
One evening, he was over for dinner and my mom had made chicken and rice of some sort. Just as we were all sitting down, my mom made a half-scream noise from the kitchen and said that there were maggots in the jar of rice. Gross. Worse, this elderly gentleman was already digging in and commenting on how “scrumptious” dinner was. She couldn’t tell him, he never knew and cleaned his plate, maggots and all.
I still can’t make myself eat rice and may never be able to.

I don’t blame you Trent, things that happen like that at a young age have a way of sticking with you. Bugs used to never bother me but one summer, I woke up in the middle of the night to pee and a roach ran out from behind the toilet and ran into my bare foot. I hated roaches- seeing them, especially stepping on them- until I was in college. My school was very close to the water and “water bugs” aka bird-like roaches that fly-were unavoidable- so it was a fear that I needed to get over.
My mom doesn’t buy milk from Sam’s Club anymore because it goes sour before the date stamped because they leave the freezer doors open too long, causing the milk to sour prematurely.

I do think those things that happen to us when we’re young tend to stay with us. My son will soon turn nineteen and he still is frightened by spiders because of an incident when he was seven or eight.

I shopped Aldi’s long ago for just a couple of months. I soon came to realize I could get far superior quality of my favorite items by checking the Sunday sales inserts for great sales and then stocking up when those items are on sale. Even the store brands were better than Aldi’s. Just our own taste in food, I guess.

Aldi’s could have gotten much better since then but I don’t shop there, even though there is one not too far from where I live.

A friend of mine was a health inspector for the county, and she could always be counted on to direct us away from restaurants that could be a health risk. A good friend indeed!
That aside, I often wondered how she could EVER trust going out to eat after seeing some of the atrocious conditions she’d find in some restaurants. She was mentally tuned as a health inspector every place she went. Once she told me about going grocery shopping with her sister and spotting a mouse run from behind a freezer. She ended up chasing it around the store and then fetching the manager to make him aware of its route.
I think she grew to accept that germs are a way of life and all you can do was actively protect your own health & well-being in preparation of inevitable assault from the big, bad, unsanitary world.

We have an Aldi and it is pretty nasty. While I love a good bargain, I find shopping there depressing and only go when forced to if our PTO is having some big event.

Any type food from any store can have spoilage or a bug infestation. Reading about the legally allowable levels of bugs.rodent hairs,etc. in foods will make you SICK… Flour and rice are allowed to have a certain amount per pound. This is considered normal. I think one bug in my food is one too many!

Unfortunately the bacteria that promote spoilage are not necessarily the same ones that promote illness… This means that food can make you ill long before it smells bad. I always worry that cheapo stores have poor refrigeration, raising the risk of foodborne illness. Yet I admit I have no proof of this.

I’ve only been in an Aldi once in Michigan about 15 years ago. The food was stacked on pallets on a cement floor. The store wasn’t very clean and there wasn’t really much there. Hated the cash only, BYOBag thing. Wasn’t impressed at all. I’m amazed at the hoards of shoppers in our 99c only store. I guess they are trying to save on food since more money is being spent for gas. There is a large food section but the food is close to the expiration date or passed the date in some cases. I’m not willing to take the risk!

I don’t think it’s an unreasonable reaction. Several years ago, I bought a package of Safeway-brand (store brand) hot dog buns, took them home, opened them up, and they were moldy. I decided then to never buy Safeway-brand bread again. (Now I buy organic bread anyway, to avoid HFCS, but that’s a different story.)

One time I ate too many Bugles (snack chips brand) as a kid, and I’ve never been able to eat Bugles since.

I think most people could cite a story in their lives that is similar. Rational or not, negative associations stick with us for a LONG time.

-Erica

My wife has been a health inspector for several years now, her speciality is food service establishments, and we hardly ever eat out now. The things she tells me, even about “upscale” restraunts, will make your skin crawl.

I’ve only ever been to Aldi once and didn’t have a bad experience. But I say go where your comfortable. If you save a few cents but can’t eat the food you just bought, what’s the point? Not to metion the trauma of just walking in the door.

I haven’t eaten pork or pork products for about 8 years now. My father-in-law cooked up a bacon sandwich for me, insisting that the bacon was cooked all the way, and I very foolishly ate it. I can’t prove it was the bacon but since it was the last thing that I ate before I was hospitalized for 2 days, I can’t bring myself to even try it again. I doubt I ever will. Irrational? Probably. But you know what? It’s my body and my choice, as it is with you Trent.

We lived in the tropics when I was a young child. My mother used Noxema face cream in the dark blue jars. My brother used to catch cockroaches in the empty jars.

To this day I cannot drink out of dark blue glass containers and the smell of Noxema makes me queasy!

I would be so horrified if I saw all those roaches! I don’t blame you one bit!

I will no longer eat a certain cereal just because I got sick after eating it. (I’m sure I was already sick and the milk made it worse) But it was on the day of my cousin’s wedding! I was supposed to be the flower girl but I couldn’t because a vomiting flower girl isn’t exactly acceptable. I still (unfairly) blame the cereal for making me miss that wedding. Silly, I know, yet still…

And I’m glad to see I’m not the only person who has sworn off Bank of America… I currently have a credit card with them that will soon be paid off and closed! I was overcharged for something and when I called customer service they were extremely hateful and acted as though it was MY fault or as if I was trying to ’steal’ something. The lady on the phone actually yelled at me! I’ve never been treated so badly by someone who was taking my money. I am taking my business elsewhere.

Boy, maybe we should all just stay home, and grow our own food. Oh wait, the bugs get into the fresh vegetables in the garden too! However, the cockroaches are awful!

We were moving my MIL out of her house into an apt and when I opened a cupboard to start cleaning it out, there must have been a million or so, cockroaches that hadn’t seen the light of day in the 40 years she lived there! It wasn’t nice!

She lived through the depression,and saved every butter container, pickle jar, etc. for years! They were all in her cupboards. Yuck! I hope my kids don’t find stuff like that when they clean out my house! LOL!

I don’t think you are missing anything. Their prices compare with Super Walmart. I trust Walmart’s products more too. I’ve had no experiences like yours. I’m still cringing.

While in college I worked for a pest control company. I saw lots of cockroaches, rats, and mice in supermarkets and restaurants. My job was to kill them, of course, but we never ran out of work. A common place to find roaches was among the paper bags. You could even take them — or their eggs — home with you this way. The worst situations were in stores with slow moving stock, especially where they never threw out the canned goods that never sold. Another attraction for pests was the damaged goods pile in the back room.
In one warehouse there were even mice inside the walk-in freezer, with thick arctic fur.

My sister worked at a Price Chopper grocery store & reported one of the teenage help being told to stir the deli salads, so they wouldn’t form a skin on top. That sweet child walked down the aisle stirring a salad then licking the spoon, stirring the next salad, licking again, stir, lick, etc., etc,

I haven’t bought a deli made salad anywhere since the day I heard the story - about 6 years ago.

As an occassional Aldi’s shopper, I have to say that I think the store has improved over the years and the selections and quality have as well. It is a bit of a haul to get to the store but it seems to be worth the gas money to stock up on needed supplies. Our local grocery store on the other hand often has outdated merchandise in the dairy section and nothing disgusts me more than realizing a product is expired. I can not and will not eat food past the date stamped. It’s a thing I have.

I think people who shop at Aldi’s or are interested in checking it out should at least try some items. There are some things I will not eat from there- such as Bar-B hot dogs (yuck!) but the frozen pizzas are great and half the price of brand name pizzas!

I haven’t eaten a Dunkin’ Donut for 20years. We bought a box of Blueberry Donuts for a treat and we ALL were horribly ill. One bathroom. 5 people. I think I’ve made my point.

I walked into a Piggley Wiggley when I was pregnant and the smell of rotten meat made me extremely ill immediately. I tried other stores in that chain at different times and different years and they all stank of rotten meat. It isn’t just my imagination, they do stink. I finally quit trying to buy from them.

Angie: I cannot get past your story - totally grossing me out……..

ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

My personal feeling is to get over it. I have found bugs crawling in a bag of beans I just bought. I found a fly (fortunately before I ate) in my pudding based dessert at a restaurant. I know of other restaurants with mice or rat infestations, generally where buildings are connected wall to wall, roof space to roof space. If you want to know more, just check to see where local health inspectors have handed out citations. If these things affect you that much, and you can’t get over it even when companies fix the problem, then you have a bigger problem. Mice, insects, and even “dirty, or unwashed hands” by employees cause a number of citations all over the place. I can’t think of one single business where they would let a situation exist knowingly, because health inspectors drop in regularly, yet unannounced.

When I was small I used to hate the sound of a Ford door closing.

I’ve now bought about 6 different cars in my lifetime - but would never consider a Ford.

Scientology claims it can cure negative associations like yours with the roaches, Trent, but it’ll cost you a lot more than shopping at upscale grocery stores. Can’t blame you for avoiding a traumatic memory like that!

I hated Aldi’s as a kid because the checkers were rude, throwing merchandise into carts, denting cans and smashing loaves of bread. The Aldi’s I’ve been to in the last 10 years were on par with other grocery stores. Sometimes they’re handier to shop in because their smaller size makes finding staples quicker. Food quality and cleanliness have never been a problem, and some of their products (divine European chocolate) are superior to American equivalents.

They truly are the cheapest source for food as long as you don’t mind trying something besides name brands, and they offer a double-your-money-back satisfaction guarantee. Maybe you could send your wife to shop there without you and only buy canned goods or thoroughly sealed packages. No floor mats, obviously. Cringe!!!

For most of my life I have been careful about foods, overly careful. I wonder if the hotdog relish I opened two weeks ago is still good, if Mayo will be OK once I open it, if meat I cooked on a Thursday will be good on a Saturday. Mostly I end up tossing it out, wasting TONS of money. I am a single person and it is awful. Part of this comes from my upbringing - only M&D and me - and mom cooked enough for two meals which were eaten two days apart. We ate at home and it was predictable that the leftovers would get eaten. But life was simpler 35 years ago. Almost everyone ate at home, hardly anyone had meetings, ball practice, work, etc, so a predicatble evening meal was normal. But I can count the days I am home on a regular schedule on one finger! So, I never learned what “keeps” and for how long.

I wish someone who is NOT asociated with the food companies would make a list of jarred foods an how long they can last in the frig. Like salsa, mustard, horseradish, jellies, ketchup, etc. so that people who do not eat these quickly do have to wonder.

Finally, I have become a bit less fearful about what I eat - mostly after watching TV shows like Bizarre Foods and No Reservations. Also, reflecting on the fact that the truly poor - those in third world countries eat a bunch of stuff that we would consider “pests” as their regular diet. Or that those who crossed our oceans on ships ate potatoes with spots, breads that were moldy!

The Aldi’s I shop at in Northeast Ohio, is very clean, and the employees are much friendlier than the clerks at the popular chains. The location of the store matters quite a bit as well. I have been in large chain stores that are located in less than desirable areas, and they are incredibly filthy with rotting produce, etc.

Aldi’s partners with brand name manufacturer’s using a private label, so the difference you are getting by purchasing name brands from well-known chains is actually having more expensive trash.

By the way, for all the snobs who would never think of shopping at an Aldi’s, you may be interested to know the German company who owns Aldi’s also owns the popular store Trader Joe’s
which appeals to wannabees.

So, psychology does play a part in choosing brands, stores, etc….but usually it has more to do with the ego.

I suppose I’m in the ‘get over it’ camp. I do appreciate it was a disgusting experience, but it strikes me that so much of your financial journey has been of an emotional nature and that you have re-learned how