What's the real cost?

[sawyl]

Cheap things are always cheap for a reason. In some cases, the reasons may be obvious. In others, it may take a while for them to become clear. Take today's Guardian article about Lidl. It mentioned a manager called Adam and some of the stuff he had to put up with:

But the incident that made Adam realise he really had to get out occurred one morning at 3.30am with a phone call from his line manager. Only the most senior managers are issued with work phones, so the company had Adam's personal mobile number, which is why his phone wasn't switched off. When he answered it, he was woken with a torrent of abuse for not answering his phone sooner. There had been a break-in at a store in Grimsby, in which the store's glass front had been smashed. Adam's superior demanded that he get straight in his car, drive there and call the Lidl-preferred glazier (so that the firm wouldn't be liable for the more expensive police glazier).

Adam protested that it wasn't one of his stores, that Grimsby was a one-and-a-half-hour drive away and that by the time he got there the police would have secured the store anyway. But he was ordered to go, and, right enough, when he arrived at 5.30am, the police glazier had already been. There was nothing for him to do but sleep in his car until the manager showed up at 7am. Later on, he was walking around the Grimsby store like a zombie when a regular customer asked what had happened. On hearing what Adam had been made to do, he asked why he put up with that kind of thing. "I started wittering on about the pay, the great experience I was getting, the variety of the job, etc, etc, and when the customer pointed out that you could get all those things at firms who would never expect you to get out of bed at three in the morning to do something completely pointless, I resolved to leave."

So, I guess that's why Lidl are cheaper than their rivals: they've got Adam — or people like him — on the case.