Dear Aldis…
Why are you like this? I show up to buy ramen noodles, and I can’t find them. So I think “Did they move them? There’s not an empty space on the shelf where they used to be. Either they moved them, or they no longer carry them.”
So I ask a person, who’s stocking shelves with a look on her face that tells me she’s now 3 hours behind schedule and worried about being tied to the rack after her shift and whipped mercilessly. That mixture of anxiety and fear make me even hesitant to break her concentration. So I ask another employee who’s seemingly having a staring competition with a milk carton. I can’t tell if she’s winning or losing. Either way I’m fairly sure she’s high as balls. I ask her if they’ve moved the ramen noodles. The response I’m met with is “Oooooh, yeah, maybe.”
…ok? Can you maybe point me in the right direction?
“Well, they’re probably getting ready for valentines day. They sometimes change the packaging to be holiday themed”.
At this point, I’m thinking she misheard me? Because when the fuck have you EVER seen valentines day themed ramen noodles??? I’m not talking about fancy shit. I’m talking those little tiny packs of noodles you get for like 50 cents each. The cheap shit!
So I ask “No, I’m asking about RAMEN noodles.”
and she replies back like I’m stupid “Yeah, we’re probably waiting on the valentines day packaging.”
Now, I’m fairly sure since I asked twice, and made sure to enunciate clearly the second time, I’m fairly sure she didn’t mishear me, but there’s still SOME miscommunication going on. I just have no idea what…so I don’t know how to move this conversation along. My brain is really struggling to even comprehend what a valentines day ramen noodle would be. Like, is it just pink packaging with hearts? Are the pre-cooked noodles shaped like a heart instead of a square? Is it a special flavor? I’m totally lost by what we’re discussing at this point.
Just then another guy walks by dragging a big cart behind him to stock shelves. And she says over to him “Hey, are we still waiting for the valentines day ramen?” and he says yes. He just agrees with her.
I’m fairly sure they’re messing with me at this point. I don’t know what is happening or even what to envision with valentines day ramen noodles.
WHAT THE HELL IS IT???
I just googled it, and I’m finding stuffed animals from 5 below in the shape of ramen noodles…which, just in itself…what?
I’m finding etsy products where they take ramen noodle imagery, and valentines day imagery, and make a pink wrapper for the noodles…again…what?
But I’m not finding official products from any ramen noodles producer that seem to be real. So. What the hell just happened???
Then I go over to where the hot chocolate packs are. I buy 1 pack every 2 weeks in the winter. The space where they’d normally be is totally empty. So I sigh, and walk away. That week our current temperatures were negative 5. I can fully understand why hot chocolate sold out that week.
Next week I go in. Temperatures are now 25 degrees. Still not warm, but not nipple hardeningly cold as it was. Still though, it’s been almost 2 weeks at this point since I had hot chocolate. Still none.
Last week I go. Still a bare shelf. At this point I want to ask an employee if they’ve stopped carrying it, or if there’s some manufacture issue. But that didn’t exactly go great last time, and my sanity isn’t exactly my strong suit right now. I’m not sure I could handle being told some random bullshit like Marty McFly came back from the distant future year of 2015, and took them all. This was almost a month ago, so I don’t think the new tariffs, even if they would be affected, would be in place yet.
And I can’t even call Aldi’s before I leave my house to go get hot chocolate. I’d love to just call and ask “Hey, is it on the shelf right now? It’s not? Well that saves me 45 minutes coming out there for something you don’t have! Thanks!”
Instead, I just gotta roll the dice, possibly waste my day off, and don’t talk to anyone. That’s what obtaining hot chocolate has come to. I’m legitimately considering going to Walgreens…but then I remember that they always have the same cashier, who always wants to talk your ear off. And I’m sorry, but I don’t give a shit about your kids. I don’t care what award he won in 3rd grade. I don’t care about his peanut allergies. I’ve never met your kids. I have no interest in doing so. I’m just here to buy whatever handful of items you happen to carry that are hard to find elsewhere. Which apparently no longer includes DVD-R’s. I wanted to buy a small bundle of maybe 10. I understood I’d be overpaying, but fuck it. I just wanted to get home, use 1, and throw 9 in a drawer to never be used again. But no. Walgreens doesn’t even carry them anymore. They’ll carry a USB stick of 8gb for $30, but no DVD-R’s. In fact the cashier didn’t even know what I was talking about. She used the excuse “DVD what? Like the players?” “No, these are like the discs, except they’re blank. You can write data to them.” “No, we sell some DVD movies that nobody ever buys…” and points to a bin of movies that nobody should ever buy. Why are these here? Why do these even exist at all? Who is ever going to buy a Tim Allen movie called “Restless for the holidays”? See you’ve never heard of that movie, and don’t know if I just made it up, but it serves the example of the level of movies they’re carrying in the Walgreens $5 dvd bin. All that to say that no, these dvd’s are not DVD-Rs. And she says to me “Oh…I don’t know what they are. I’m too young for that.”
Was NOT angry before she said that. I was disappointed. THAT comment brought me to “NOW LISTEN HERE YA LITTLE SHIT!!!” levels of anger internally. Holy shit. I have a good poker face, so she never even knew I was mad, but oh my god.
All of this entire post just to say, that I’m cold in my apartment, and instead of using my new electric kettle I got in December, I’m sitting at my desk in a sweater! A SWEATER!!! LIKE A PLEB!!! ARE YOU HAPPY ALDI’S??? YOU DID THIS!!!
Love how ya write. May I talk to myself?
Let’s take age comments in stride. These friggin’ kids, bless ‘em, gotta learn ‘em up on Ye Olden Wayes as our forefathers did before us.
Yes, you’re at least five years too young for DVDs, maybe a decade. Quick question: are you familiar with the word “rewind“?
My wife works at the local library. She got a DVD back the other day with a “please rewind media” sticker on the inside of the case.
So there are people in the world with no concept, and then there’s that.
I think that was someone just being hilarious.
Well, maybe you can take some comfort in the fact that I think this is is one of the most well-written and entertaining rants I’ve read on Lemmy.
Hey friend. Hope this finds you well. The Ramen I got from aldi’s on my last trip is definitely valentine’s themed, there’s hearts all over the package, and a “to: from:” spot on it. I don’t know if that will bring you any comfort or if it will just make you more frustrated, but I do hope it makes you feel a lil better ♡ (struggling to upload a picture of it, I’ll see what i can do about that)
Damn! I hope you get that picture uploaded. I want to see this. What flavor is it? And are the noodles still just a square?
You’re Soup•er Lovely
It’s the regular chicken flavor and there’s nothing different about the individual packages, its the wrapper around the 12 pack. I’m going to try to send it to you directly because i can’t seem to upload it into this thread.
Edit: I couldn’t message you directly, here’s an imgur link to it
By the way, you can inline images to render them on right here on Lemmy by doing:
Here they are (in a spoiler tag):
The Ramen images
Did you do this on a lemmy website? I’m using the sync app for lemmy.world and it’s got the option to upload an image from my gallery or take a new picture, but they both failed to upload no matter which way I tried to do it.
Didn’t mean to hijack this thread for a tutorial! I appreciate the advice, I’ll try it that way!
I used the Thunder client, though I still had to manually copypaste the links.
Expanded Tutorial
The way Lemmy embeds images into comments (from my understanding) is almost identical to links and seems to follow the Markdown syntax. For example:
[A link to the Markdown Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown)turns into:A link to the Markdown Wikipedia page
The same applies to images, except you put an ! before the square brackets:
becomes:
You can optionally put alt text into the square brackets which appears when hovering over the image or when using a screenreader:
turns into:
Try to find the alt text, Thunder displays it when clicking on the image for instance. You might need to do a long press instead.The image upload function just uploads images to your instance’s [i.e. lemmy.world] picture storage server and places the resulting URL inside the
syntax automatically.So what I did was just what the app would’ve done, had your image upload succeeded.
Well I’m upvoting all of you. You for teaching a new thing to those who don’t know it, parody for uploading an image, and cokeslutgarbage (great username btw) for uploading an image and for learning something new.
Today is going to be good. I got sleep. People are helping other people. It’s good.
Same nonsense where I’m at, I have a 6 pack cup o noodles with day of the dead theme. I was incredibly disappointed that the actual cups didn’t look like the sugar skull cup printed on the box.
wtf, how is this a thing
You buy a couple servings of hot chocolate occasionally? Like why not buy a season’s worth at once? It’s not like it takes much space.
My only question:
Did they have Valentine Ramen your next two trips? I’m pretty invested in this now, and I think I have to go to Aldi…
Marty McFly came back from the distant future year of 2015, and took them all
Psst, that was Lister and his Vinddloo.
Asking for help at Aldi’s is generally a one way ticket to a frustrating time. But one thing I will give Aldi’s props for is their checkout lines. No chit chat, no bullshit, no infuriating slow and inept workers. Once you’re in that line, you’re part of the machine, and you WILL be checked out as soon as possible. The only frustrating part is when you have an old lady in front of you buying a full cart, and then she waits until everything is rung up to pull out her check book and take the next 20 minutes trying to write a check. Seriously lady, did you forget what happens after they scan all of your shit? The machine doesn’t have time for lollygagging.
This post reads like a good cozy book (or an annoying online recipe with an insanely long backstory to a ramen recipe). Bravo!
Username checks out
If you buy sugar and cocoa powder you can make hot chocolate whenever you want to, and also save money in the end.
Actually, here’s a proper recipe!
2 part powdered sugar
1 part cocoa powder
2 part powdered milk
1/8th part instant coffee
Add all ingredients in a sealed container and shake until combined. About 60 servings per batch.
You can use non dairy powder creamers instead of powdered milk for preference, this also makes it easier to add flavors. The instant coffee isn’t there for flavor, a small amount coffee heightens the chocolate flavor making the cocoa more rich without adding more powder and changing the mouth feel. Lastly it’s important to use confectionery sugar as it contains cornstarch, which works as I binder to hold the non soluble cocoa in suspension, and it dissolves more readily than granular sugar.
Add in between a couple drops to an “oops” of vanilla extract. Almond extract can also be good, but is less universally liked.
I’m aware this is not the point, but: what’s a hot chocolate pack? Don’t think we have those here. Do you mix it in hot milk? Please explain.
It’s a small box that has 12 individual packets of powder in them. You boil some water, and mix the powder in the water. You CAN use hot milk if you want. The powder contains powdered milk, and chocolate. So even if you only use water, it still contains milk once prepared.
