Lidl is the lowest functioning company you will likely ever come into contact with. It’s truly a wonder that they’re still in operation. If they were a publicly traded company, they would have shut their doors long ago. To help you navigate the “ever-evolving” and “unique” world that is Lidl land, we’ve broken down each dysfunction and incompetency by category. In the words of Lidl’s PR team, “it truly is an experience unlike any other”!
On Leadership
• Hires managers just to micromanage them, down to their hourly schedule.
• Promotes based on politics and favoritism, not merit, experience or work product.
• Brain washes employees into thinking they’re not entitled to a personal life and that all is positive.
• Moves people around the east coast, relocates and closes offices frequently, lays off full regions worth of people and asks people to do jobs they weren’t hired to do.
• Takes an employee survey asking how to improve morale and employee satisfaction and then proceeds to do the opposite of the results.
On Lidl’s International Presence in the US
• Lidl: How can we improve our lack of knowledge about the American market?
• Also Lidl: *Fires all Americans in leadership positions and replaces them with Europeans who barely speak English*.
• No one ever: “Wow, I am so excited to see my European counterpart and/or leader this week!”
• When it comes to dealing with the Europeans who have likely replaced your former American boss, it’s imperative that you do not have any independent thoughts.
• While there is a significant language barrier, it shouldn’t be an issue as long as you’re familiar with any of the following phrases: “Yes”, “Yes Sir”, “OK”.
• Be prepared to deal with the overwhelming fear culture, jump when you’re told to jump, and in the great words of Justin Bieber, never say never (or no for that matter).
• If you have experience of any kind, it’s important that you keep it to yourself. Leadership does not want constructive criticism or your thoughts on how to save the company money, do things more efficiently etc. They want to “Lidlize” you.
On Head Office and the Regions
• Head Office: How can we improve our relationship with the regions?
• Regions: No more useless fire-drills that will likely have to be redone in a week! Maybe that way, we could work on our core job functions!
• HO: Hmm, maybe if we give the regions more fire-drills each week they’ll feel more connected to HO!
On Lidl’s Money Management, Payroll, Expenses, Accounting, Finance, Treasury ( and any department that deals with money)
• The departments listed above arguably have the most inexperienced employees, who essentially feel they are playing with Monopoly money. In addition, the systems and software that they use has to be the most antiquated out there. Dealing with these departments is painful and we imagine working in one of them is worse.
• Lidl is best known for breaking their contractual obligations and therefore destroying their relationships and reputation amongst consultants, vendors, sellers, landlords, GCs, townships, counties etc. If you are a manager, be prepared to constantly defend the company and lie on Lidl’s behalf. “Don’t they know who we are?” is the mentality by which Lidl justifies these breaches.
• Lidl has a unique inability to cut checks within less than 120 days, frequently sends checks to wrong locations, issues incorrect or late payment to vendors and its own employees and even insists on paying ex-employees for months following their departure from the company. Prepare to beg them to pay you when you start working at Lidl and beg them to stop paying you when you ultimately quit. Alarming, we know.
• Leadership goes through phases in which they decide to “cut costs”, which causes them to question every miniscule cost incurred, making your job almost impossible. They’ll ask you to renegotiate contracts with your consultants who bend over backwards for Lidl. Meanwhile, they’re spending a fortune flying executives in and out of their homes across the country on a weekly basis, upgrading their cars, buying private jets and hosting useless “training events” that everyone must travel for. The fines and late fees incurred on a regular basis could pay your salary.
On the Real Estate Strategy
• Places stores in the middle of nowhere because the costs associated with locating in profitable markets are rejected. Lidl then wonders why stores perform poorly.
• Focus is on “opening as many stores as possible”, but Lidl only cares about the acquisitions phase of the process and assumes that development and construction will handle itself.
• There are few contracts that have not been renegotiated. Lidl ultimately gets sued in most scenarios.
• Lidl refuses to adapt. It will not use union labor, pay its GCs or work with developers in a timely fashion. This also typically ends in a lawsuit.
On the IT Department
• Pray you never have a technical issue. But who are we kidding, you will have a technical issue.
• If your computer is literally exploding, the ‘tech deck’ will ask if you’ve tried re-starting it. If you make it past this step in the process, it could take you weeks to get a resolution. You may not have the tools you need to do your job, and no one cares.
• When you submit a ticket for help, they’ll do nothing, wait about 4 days and then send you an email saying that “your issue has been resolved!”.
On the HR Department
• Employee Report: “Mr. X has made some very sexist, homophobic and racist remarks.”
• HR: *Does nothing. Promotes Mr. X immediately*.
• The HR department typically ignores any complaints against those in leadership positions and allows the good ‘ol boys club to remain in force. They’ve allowed plenty of wrongful terminations, which has ended as many other Lidl stories end, with a lawsuit.
On Interdepartmental and Vertical Communication
• Each department uses a different system and excel tracker to track the same information, causing lots of confusion and errors.
• Don’t even think about going around the chain of command. You cannot talk to your boss’ boss, even though they’ll likely be in your office every day, hold up in a conference room watching you.
• Lidl’s “four eye approach” ensures that anything you do will take 5 levels of approval and 3 months to accomplish anything. Good luck meeting external deadlines!
On Employee Satisfaction and Turnover
• Having 1 year of tenure at Lidl is a shocking accomplishment and you’re considered a “vet” if you make it to 3 years.
• People frequently quit without having another job out of desperation to escape.
In a few summarizing words, PROCEED WITH CAUTION.