That would also explain why Aldi in the UK also has these while other stores don’t.

I’m not entirely sure how cheques work being that I’ve not used one in about 15 years, but I’d imagine they give a cheque from an account with no money. Because cheques are awful the money will appear in your account for a time period by which you are given the illusion of getting legit money. They ask you to buy something like jewellery or gift cards and ask for it back at the end, maybe letting you keep a bit of it for yourself. A while goes by and the cheque bounces, which means you’re then on the hook for the cost of everything you purchased and the scammer gets a ton of free items that they can then sell on.

Also the same, but both ears. I think I’ve had it since I was about 10 after an ear infection and only relatively recently learned not everyone has stupidly high pitched ringing in their ears all the time.

Money.

Every one of these companies has the exact same target, which is to make more money for their shareholders than the previous quarter at the expense of everything else.

When a company is small and not making as much it’s easier to make little changes to increase capital, but as the company gets larger and they run out of avenues to extract cash from they start getting more and more desperate and their tactics get more and more obvious.

I’ve just left a company for this exact reason, as their little cash grabbing exercises were starting to impact employees and they were making cuts all over the place in order to keep up the illusion of growth.

These CEOs don’t think about the impact that new policies make, they just see more money not being extracted.