I love this bewildered recounting of what is (or at least used to be) the standard German shopping experience :) FWIW their "knock-off" brands frequently, but

I love this bewildered recounting of what is (or at least used to be) the standard German shopping experience :) FWIW their "knock-off" brands frequently, but not always, are the same thing as the premium brands. They sell cheaper stuff to ALDI and use a (purposefully bad) design so as not to dilute the brand. This is more common for single-ingredient products like flour or oats than processed food. And the cashiers at ALDI used to be the best-paid in the sector in the times before barcodes: every ALDI product had a different price, which they knew and punched in extremely quickly. They wouldn't bag anything for you (no supermarket in Germany does), but it tended to go rather fast (too fast for most people to keep up). I said "used to", above, because they have drastically changed in the last decade, now selling fresh vegetables and occasionally even installing lights in their shops.