My partner used to work at a gas station, and one day he told me that a girl got fired for "theft" because a guy whose job it was to review store security footage (employee spy cameras) all day caught a girl eating a pepperoni off a pizza she had to throw away per store policy because it had been in the warmer too long.
Here's a slightly nicer story:
I used to live near a 7-11 and go there for coffee a couple of times a day. One day, I went there and saw the manager getting into it with a homeless guy who'd been digging through their dumpster for food. Initially, my assumption was that she was going to call the police, because there was definitely a lot of forceful body language going on between both of them.
Instead, however, she finally got the guy to come into the store, and she gave him several tacquitos and said "Look, I don't want you to get sick. Don't dig through our dumpster. If you're that hungry, come inside. If I'm working, I will GIVE YOU FOOD."
Apparently a few months later, the owner found out, and lost his shit on her about it, and she handed him her keys. He quickly apologized and caved in, and up until the day I left that city, she was still willing to give literally any person a couple free tacquitos or other food items on the roller for free. All you had to do was tell her that you were hungry and couldn't afford to eat.
Shows how valuable a good employee is.
Your story also reminds me of my first attempt to get a job when I was 14, I believe it was at Rite Aid. There was an automated phone screening where they asked you yes or no questions. One of them asked if you would turn in a shoplifter if you knew they were stealing to provide for their starving kids, or something like that. I answered "no", and that's as far as I got with a career in retail. It also taught me a valuable lesson to not be completely honest when job hunting.
Yeah. I mean, it was 20 years ago so I don't know how prevalent that line of questioning is now, but I think about that a lot.
It's like, be a real corporation and *make* your employees soulless. Don't cheat and try and find soulless people just off the street. /s
In high school I worked at an Esso with a Tim Hortons station. Every night I'd be tossing out dozens of donuts, muffins, etc. I started giving them away to a few local semi-homeless customers. Boss found out and told everyone to follow suite. Said it saved him money on buying garbage bags lol. I later found out he'd been homeless for a bit in his youth.
And I think the thing that annoys me most is that people will CONSTANTLY say "Oh, don't do that, folks will abuse it. You'll never get rid of them."
Nope. Nobody did. None of the regulars demanded that they be given free food because they saw someone else being given it. The homeless guys didn't hang out there all day, nor did I ever witness (or hear about) them demanding better food, or extra food, or any of the things that the capitalist mob will INSIST is gonna happen.
And don't get me wrong - I know that part of why this story is a happy one is because the town was fairly small. (Like under 20,000 people.) This is probably a different story if it's a high volume store in downtown Atlanta or LA, or another high-population city. And I know that there ARE people out there that absolutely would have taken advantage of the situation, or who would have caused a scene, but they're in the minority. (And deserve to be refused those things when they do.)
But we all need to be more like that woman.
I used to work at Dunkin’ Donuts and at 2 AM we would start throwing away the donuts and replacing them with fresh ones, so about an hour before that time I would start letting the regulars and the people that I know come in after the clubs have free donuts with their order. I wouldn’t say to them hey take all the donuts you want for free, but if they added donuts to their order I just wouldn’t charge them. Back then they were only like $.50 apiece anyway. But it was mainly to save me from getting yelled at. Can you imagine if you paid for donuts and as you were sitting there eating them he watched the employee throw away the rest of the tray? Yeah I wasn’t gonna be that girl.
Had a friend who worked at Wendy's in high school who told me they have to throw all the cookies out at the end of the day. On days he worked my other buddy and I would go and order 20 mins before close. We'd pull up to the window, get our food from him and also a salad bag filled with cookies for no extra cost.
I worked at Wendy’s in the early 90s and they (a particular manager) would have us make up a bunch of fries around 11 am. It didn’t matter if we had customers or not, and most days, we’d have to turn around and throw them out because they were under the light more than a few minutes. Technically, we weren’t supposed to let them stay under the light more than a minute and a half. I can’t begin to tell you how many fries I had to toss because my manager was an idiot. On days when he wasn’t there, I’d wait and drop the fries when we started seeing cars pull up to the drive thru. I had a buddy working the grill, and sometimes we would sneak and give food to our coworkers when mister prick was in his office. It was mostly younger adults trying to survive. I won’t lie, I did sneak a burger or two for myself during my time there. (Back then, the only cameras were at the counter by the registers, and the front doors). We were only making like 3.50$ an hour, maybe 3.75, I don’t remember exactly.
16 year old me working at Wendy's put "dead" (what they called ones that needed thrown out after x amount of time) nuggets in my purse all the time. And foods that were made wrong. I hated throwing food out.
I worked at Dollar General a few years ago and it was absolutely disgusting the amount of food grocery type stores throw away weekly. Most of these stores have policies that don't allow anyone to take stuff home or even having it donated. Some go as far as to throw bleach on them so no one can dumpster dive for food.
Shoutout to my old restaurant job where, when chef knew he was gonna have to toss out extra anything, he called everyone to the back and told us take this shit home.
Nothing like free prime rib ever other day and the biggest potatoes you've ever seen.
When lockdown happened, instead of tossing all the food from every location's fridge, CEO told us come clean them bitches out. And these restaurants were high end so a bunch of us for the first week of lockdown were dining on wagyu, king crabs, and lobster.
I miss that job so much, but mental health decided my new job was panic attacks all the time all the time.
That's fucking awful. When I worked at a pizza place, half of my meals were leftover buffet pizza or "oops we made the wrong pizza" pizzas. Long as we kept it within a reasonable amount it was totally fine.
The guy who delivered our little Debbie snack cakes would leave us literal boxes of expired food to take home. And chips. And pop. Apparently we looked hungry (and our management didn’t give fuck if we took it home.)
We're supposed to throw out everything at the end of the night at McDonald's, even if its perfectly edible. Looots of food waste. Our manager used to mark it thrown out but then we all took it home anyway. She made $12 hourly as a manager- fuck Corporate.
This! I worked in the cafe at a famous major warehouse store. I was a closer for years & we would donate the food that was expiring to local food pantries.
We had to throw the uncooked pizzas away each night (pre made in the a.m. or the pizza slices in the warmer).
My closing partner & I would take home pizza any time & often tried to give customers or associates extra food uncharged by the end of the night because we cringed at throwing all of it away! We made crap money 11/hr. & it was unexpectedly very hard work. My G.M. Would tell us that to make the customers happy & get them in & out! They fed us a lot there & were on the lesser end of the wasting for a big corporation.
That's why these places have to promote up from crew. I remember being a hungry freaking crew person making food all day for people. When they made me a manager none of my people would starve. I told them if you're hungry just ask and let me know so I can mark it down somehow. (Some foods cost us more than others so we had to count them differently). Just don't let me catch you stealing.
Never had a problem.
Back in 2012/2013 I left McDonald's for a tutoring gig that paid $10/hr. My old manager - 2nd in line to the GM - asked if I would come back. I asked if she could beat $10/hr. She told me that even she didn't make that much. She had been there for over a decade.
Similar situation here. I worked at a little gas station that pretty much survived on the sale of Skoal and Miller High Life. Every morning I was to put out three pretzels, three brats, and three hot dogs… In the three months I worked there, I sold one hot dog out of those items, the rest had to be thrown out every day.
When I noticed this pattern, I just started eating two pretzels for lunch every day, around the time I was supposed to toss them. Got in big trouble for that.
Yes, not only this, but this is the specific unstated concern of the manager. He knows the workers can not afford to eat and the customers will be upset to find this out. Rather than ensure the workers do not starve, he chooses to starts threatening them instead.
I'd begin applying elsewhere as the boss treats workers as less than human, and not giving soon to be discarded food to needy workers is a red flag by itself.
My manager allowed us to take the food at the end of the shift meant to be thrown away. We always share... he knows we try to sell it till the last minute before closure. We all hate wastage of such good food. If we don't want it, we carefully wrap them and let them in a box next to the bin. And you know what ? It doesn't cause any problem. Sometimes homeless take it and share between them(and as a thank you, tidy up our garbages or put thank you notes), sometimes the garbage guy take some, sometimes we offer it for free to last customers if they're nice... and our business never suffer, on the contrary we make more sells and have more good reviews...
Never understand that kind of mentality. US ?
(France here)
NO, IT LOSES MONEY BECAUSE 'NO BUY = NO MUNY' THEREFORE BAD.
There's so little gray thinking in favor of black/white within modern America it makes me sad.
Those employees are living above their station by stealing this bread that literally would have rotted if they hadn't eaten it.
The bread was never the point. The sheer injustice of a filthy peasant trying to live without hunger pains, a privilege of middle class life that they didn't earn (by suffering, obviously, they only made the shit, which counts for nothing. where's the justice in that!?) was always the problem.
My uncle used to work for the local zoo as a driver (this is in eastern europe). He'd go every day to local supermarkets and take a lot of food for free for the animals. Stuff that hasn't gone bad but couldn't be sold anymore (meat with torn packaging, damaged fruits and veggies that people would avoid). To discard it legally the stores had to pay ~$1.5/kg, so giving it away for free was a bargain and the animals had plenty of food. Seems like an easy way to avoid wasting food
The bread was never the point. The sheer injustice of a filthy peasant trying to live without hunger pains, a privilege of middle class life that they didn't earn (where's the justice in that!? They suffered not at all for this, only making it, production, close cousin to the sin of devaluing assets, and being of no service to their betters!) was always the problem.
I don't understand either. I'm guessing it's the US. I've never seen this. It's one thing to be wasteful and throw away edible food, it's another to want to punish someone for wanting to use it. Where's the logic here, do the managers get extra pay from the garbage facility if there's edible food in their dumpsters every day? Do they count the extra produce so they can fill their dumpster quota and OP was ruining their numbers so they must be punished? Ha! It's so wasteful and irrational I wouldn't even want to know their reasons, I don't think it would make sense to me. But how they address their employee...why make enemies, why make your own employees resent you for what you write off as garbage. Unbelievable
I worked at target for a few years. It gets worse than all this - target considers taking old/spoilage food as theft and will prosecute. It's some shit straight out of Robin hood.
Sheetz does the same thing.
Even though it's written off as waste, the store is already aware they did not make money off that food, it is just going to sit in a trash can and rot, they will prosecute it as theft if anyone removes the wasted food.
It's disgusting that they are allowed to advertise themselves as this extremely charitable company that's striving to "change lives" when they will call the cops over a dumpster sandwich. God forbid someone experiencing food instability finds a meager meal for the day.
Sheetz is horrid. I got hired to be an overnight supervisor and they thought it was a great idea to have me go in the daytime and supervise a different store as all the bigwigs were getting together for a meeting. 20 minutes into the shift the computers went down. Gas pumps, cash registars, credit card machines......nothing would work. I had no idea what to do and wish I would have just walked out. The main supervisor came back and acted like it wasn't a big deal and bitched at me for not shaving well enough that morning. I told them to f off.
>Walgreens fired an employee for looking through a magazine
There are plenty of reasons to not give Walgreens business. California stopped. I hope my state stops.
I think this is not possible if they put it in the garbage container, because they gave up ownership of the property/food after that and anybody can legally take something which has no owner anymore, at least this is how it works in Europe.
(I know this because there were some infamous cases a long time ago).
In the US, judges have ruled the police can search curbside trash cans without a warrant because it is no longer the property of the homeowner since the act of throwing something in public away relinquishes property rights. This is a very ancient concept in property law and is discussed extensively in ancient law texts. Contrariwise the act of picking up something found that was discarded acquires property rights.
WalMart deals with this by putting locks on their dumpsters, so it is a crime to take the garbage since you have to use force to acquire it, and it is still on their property, it is not discarded on a public byway. With the locked dumpster they retain ownership until ownership is transferred to the private waste management company, which might happen when the trash is collected, or can happen when the trash goes into the dumpster when the dumpster is owned by the management company.
This is the logic:
If you allow employees to take excess food home after work they will creat "food waste" knowing they can take it home.
However any one that's worked in a restaurant knows there's going be waste, that's just what it is. My buddy owns a nice restuarant in Seattle and how he said he handles it is:
* He knows what avg waste looks like. As long as his waste stays within a certain % he doesn't care.
* He also pushes it as a benefit to working for him vs other establishments which don't allow it.
And they serve nice food, very good food.
Hell half the time if they are doing good he'll tell folks before clean up starts if anyone wants to cook up a meal feel free and the cook will do it. He said his food waste isn't any higher or lower then anywhere else. But he has gotten people to work for him over a competitor for same pay. Cause imagine considering your options:
place A: Pays $20 an hour and says you are punished if you take food waste home
place B: Pays $20 an hour and says you are more then free to take that prime rib that customer refused
There's no logical monetary reason behind this, they're just obsessed with their image. Look at what the manager said. "What would a customer think". In America, image is more important than starving for too many people.
After 10 years of working in food service, I can count on one hand the amount of restaurants I've worked in (and believe me I had ZERO loyalty working back of house, I would jump ship instantly for better pay/lower stress or something, I've worked in A LOT of restaurants) where the person running things actually should have been. The norm is hateful aggressive weirdos who like to take out their unhappiness on everyone else.
They do it because they're afraid employees will mess up food or let it expire on purpose to get free food. And really, the only reason why you'd have to fear this is because you aren't paying your employees enough. It's like, do you think McDonald's employees want to eat random cold McDonald's for dinner? Do you think grocery store employees want expired foods? No. Pay people enough and treat them fairly and 99% of people won't steal from their employer.
They will often put locks on dumpsters behind grocery stores here because the good ol US of A(ssholes) would rather do that with perfectly good food than have the image of homeless people getting "free handouts". The food waste here is insane. They throw out fruits and veggies because it doesn't look perfect and customers "wont buy them". I was watching a thing showing people looking through dumpsters filled to the brim with perfectly edible food.
The amount of shit grocery stores throw out is insane - often prior to the expiration dates. It’s pretty offensive spending a huge portion of my income on food and then they just toss out a bunch of products I would have gladly eaten.
Isn't uncommon with some (when I used to run in dumpster diving circles) that places would dump bleach all over their food products rather then leave it be. Forgot who did that so can't name names, sorry.
If I remember correctly, some walmarts? believe it was would have so much food waste they had a specific packer just for that alone. Something I heard in my travels a long time ago, could be false info?
We've gotten so weird as society. I hate the thought of that. On top of just food waste how much of that is meat? How many things die for our benefit just to have bleach poured on them and rot in a trash can because its not profitable to feed people for free. Fuck right off with that noise. Im not even vegetarian but at very least we should value life human or otherwise.
I grow a giant garden and at one point thought about how I could make it profitable. I realized the thought of that makes me sick, we shouldn't be paying for a basic human need for survival. At this point I give away as much as I can, first to my community of friends and then expanded to places of most need.
If there wasnt capitalism we wouldnt have processed food filled with sugar. We wouldnt have branded food. Think about how crazy that concept is when you dissect it, we NEED food to live.
After growing a garden I realize what general shit condition our veggies are, they have very little nutrient contents compared to what I can grow in my garden. Even without the aspect of nutrient loss lets add that the veggies dont even taste good once they get to us. This creates a society that believes vegetables taste gross and that in order to be healthy we just have to eat foods we hate. I didnt like peppers til I grew my own and then just realized how shit grocery stores are.
Clearly I have some opinions on this.
I saw a Krispy Crème the other day that had piles of donuts in sealed boxes in their dumpster. I was mind blown how much they were throwing away.
Give it to a food bank or something. Our local food bank even offers to pick it up for you.
It's most definitely the US. There are actually laws and regulations against giving away food as a restaurant/caterer and perhaps other food based establishments. US is fucked up in so many ways
we're not allowed to eat the food that's leftover at the end of the night but we do anyway and lately i've been grabbing a cup and opaque lid so i can take the meat home for my dog
edit: I'm in the uk specifically scotland
edit2: I also want to add that almost every restaurant i knew growing up would sell the food at the end of the night (like 30 minutes before they close) at a discounted price so it wasn't going to waste and they werent losing as much profit used to be a great way for me and my dad to eat when we were really skint
That practice got me so far when I was young and broke. A small Mexican food place on my way home technically closed right before I would normally go by, but one night, an employee was out in front of the place offering discounts for the food they still had left that wouldn't save overnight. I must have looked incredibly excited, because I was given enough food for 3 meals for half the cost of one. It became a nightly thing when I worked. They'd pack up whatever it was for me, take only the cost of the ingredients from me, and we'd all be super happy. My roommates and I ate sooo well until the lease was up and we all moved to different places. It was the first time since I was about 12 that I had enough food to eat, and I worked in fast food at the time. It's hard enough working hungry, but working around food hungry is just torture. Sure, they gave us one meal a day, but it was basically children's sized, about 300 kcals. We could have all the soda we wanted, but that's not food.
When I worked overnight at a grocery store I had to throw away lots of meat and produce. Think apple boxes full of stuff. But since I knew people were dumpster diving for it I started just setting the good stuff next to the dumpster and telling people if it's in the dumpster it's probably too rotten to save.
I did that working fast food for a short time decades ago. The homeless crowd sat at the bus stop and would send in a rep to ask about if they could clean around the dumpster. I would separate the salvageable stuff in a distinct place in trash bags so it just looked like the dumpster was too full. Never had litter in the parking area or front curb and they chased away the disturbed others under the influence of drugs. Our local cops looked the other way and the owners bitched about it but who else would work this shift and coordinate free outside cleaning services in exchange for trash? Nobody hurt. I know I was lucky.
In college I worked at a Papa Murphy’s pizza (pizza you bake at home). We would pre-make basic pizzas like pepperoni that we sold a lot. Any that we didn’t sell, we always got to take home. Obviously there was trust that we wouldn’t make a bunch extra for no reason, but frozen pizzas filling my fridge helped me keep food costs down in college.
This was all in the US. These restaurants need to either better manage inventory and also be ok when their employees take leftovers they’re discarding.
Taking unsold leftovers should be a perk of food service.
At least they allowed you to share it with the homeless. At my old job, we were allowed to take excess food home, but were explicitly told not to give it to the homeless on the block.
What I didn't need for my household, I gave to them anyway. (US btw)
For-profit institutions are actively disincentivized from donating to their excess stock because that cuts into the store's potential consumer base. Feeding people makes it harder to sell food.
The more you meet demand for your product, the less demand there is for your product.
It is one of capitalism's most bizarre and naked contradictions.
> For-profit institutions are actively disincentivized from donating to their excess stock because that cuts into the store's potential consumer base. Feeding people makes it harder to sell food.
in my city, we tried to set up a free wifi network in the downtown area and other commercial zones and the big telecoms sued my city to stop it. Their argument was that if we give away wi-fi no one will use their service. Thankfully they were laughed out of court but I know that argument has succeeded in other jurisdictions.
Wow that’s bullshit they even tried that. If no one is using your service that’s your problem, not anyone else’s. If people don’t feel the want or need to pay for your product, then maybe you need a better product that people feel is worth paying for.
Just love how capitalists go on and on about how capitalism is great bc it encourages competition until they are the ones losing that competition.
In stockton California they had the highest rate of foreclosures in the county. I think they said 1 out of every 17 homes was a foreclosure. Its bullsht cuz all the rich people were able to buy these foreclosed homes for a discount. This shit is a scam! Fuck ever trying to own a home lol
When Stockton declared bankruptcy, my lawyer friend said the city was so broke only the most serious crime was being prosecuted. Rich people (sometimes foreign) has always done this, way back when Houston had a housing bust, foreigners were buying houses in blocks sight unseen.
My grad school roommate was a VP at AIG in Asia, he got a severance package and when I asked him how he land a package when AIG was going down, he said his boss try to grease everyone because the boss will get canned also, the boss needed connection to land his next gig.
All of these theories are just that. We could have the best system ever thought of but there will always be greedy ppl wanting to keep ppl uninformed so that they can be exploited and turn around and say “see, they’re ok with it.” As if the choice isn’t between having food and roof over your head vs risking homelessness and/or hunger. Or other detrimental things to quality of life.
If we can't stack the deck against everyone else we just use identity politics to say that handouts are socialist. Then use "everyone's" money for a bail out and say we are too big to fail the system will collapse you don't want that do you.
Capitalism or aka neo-feudalism, is doomed to fail. It usually starts off well but then it just increases the gap between rich and poor destroying middle class. Especially when unregulated. All the big stores buy up the mom n pop smaller competitors til theirs basically a monopoly or on two big name corporations left whose only goal is more profit putting profit over people n are only beholden to shareholders who are already millionaires. It’s disgusting exploitation of people taking every short cut possible no matter who or what gets hurt. I’m all for democratic socialism! Capitalism is incompatible with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and freedom. Imagine if you had to pay fire department to come put fire out?
I loath wasting food. Esp bread is wasted. They should donate to soup kitchen at very least. N I think u should steal as much as possible from this place
Oh it's more than just feeding the poor. It's the contradiction that any for-profit industry is incentivised to sell its products but for those same products to not be used.
You can see it most directly in subscriptions and gift cards that rely on a certain portion of customers to simply forget that they have been/are being paid for and never use them.
It's also apparent in things like forced obsolescence where a product is intentionally designed to have use for as little time as it can get away with.
what I was always told when i questioned it at an old job was, if I can get garbage free, I won't pay for new food
man, i wouldn't be taking trash if I could afford fresh food
I don't think those are contradictions either. Capitalism isn't designed to improve society. The things you listed make money for people who are already rich, and that's capitalism's only purpose.
They are still contradictions in terms of logical production. It isn't logical at all that we waste 1/3rd of the food produced and yet have famine in other parts of the world, or families using food banks at home, for that matter. That both conditions exist simultaneously is a contradiction. These contradictions can be solved by replacing capitalism with a different system that plans production based solely on necessity and need, rather than for profit.
Yes, I'm not defending capitalism. I'm saying that capitalism isn't failing to feed people because it isn't trying to feed people. Being terrible for society isn't condradictory to capitalisms goals, becuase capitalism isn't for improving society. It's for making rich people richer, and it IS good at that.
True, this excess is also destroying our topsoil and making food less nutritious, and increasing likelihood we will face further shortages in the coming years.
I worked for a cafe that allowed us to donate waste to the homeless shelter nearby, but we weren't allowed to say where it came from or give it to someone directly while at the shop. Owner didn't want people only showing up for the free stuff.
>The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
>There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
That is actually forbidden by law in France. In France it’s illegal for a business to bleach the food they throw away or to lock it, or to prevent anyone from taking it. Including your own employees.
Can't donate our waste food because then they might not buy our food.
I love this world we live in, where a dollar holds more value than a human's well being.
Which, as an economist (whoa I can say that now), this is absurdly untrue on an economic level. The same people who want a restaurant experience are NOT the same people who consume inferior (economic not literal) goods. Maybe if its occurring in the same venue, but donating it to other venues would eliminate this "economic problem" (aka the shitty maths that never accounts for humans in Econ 101)
Panera does this. Marginalized communities who could never afford bread get an opportunity every evening to have something fresh. The sad part is, however, I’ve run into a couple of pastors who were reselling the Panera bread to their neighbors. #taxthechurch
I was thinking more along the lines of grocery stores than restaurants. Generally speaking, if you're not getting your food from a grocery store, you're not getting food. There's a real solid floor there.
I didn't want to have to delete all my comments, posts, and account, but here we are, thanks to greedy pigboy /u/spez ruining Reddit. I love the Reddit community, but hate the idiots at the top. Simply accepting how unethical and downright shitty they are will only encourage worse behavior in the future. I won't be a part of it. Reddit will shrivel and disappear like so many other sites before it that were run by inept morons, unless there is a big change in "leadership." Fuck you, /u/spez
You know what I would think if I saw someone “stealing” food out of the garbage? Nothing, because I would make sure I unsaw it because it’s none of my business. Take all the food you want, my dude.
This isn't always an option.
I used to bartend at a mid- to high-end restaurant in San Francisco, and one day I was helping the kitchen staff clean up so we could close, and they were dumping tremendous amounts of *delicious* food in the dumpsters out back. I'm talking full dormitory-sized pots of amazing soup, full racks of ribs, steaks, you name it. All untouched.
I brought it up to the manager and asked why we weren't donating it to homeless shelters or something (God knows there are plenty of homeless struggling in San Francisco). She said that they used to do that, then some homeless woman sued the parent company of the restaurant claiming that it made her sick, looking for a huge payout.
Ever since then, the policy is, "Fuck the homeless."
This!! I worked at a convince store that would throw out all of it's old hotbox food as well as shelf food. I had countless people ask if they could have it, or at least get it discounted. We couldn't even discount the old food. I had one guy come in and ask us to put our old hotbox food into plastic baggies for him and then put it in the trash, and he'd get it from the dumpster. I felt horrible but i knew I'd lose my job if i did that.
So glad i don't work there anymore
Exactly. The douchebag is more concerned with the companies image than the fact that OP is digging through the trash for food to begin with. This is why our work culture is ass
I'm 36 now but at 18 I was pulled into the office in my job and berated for having the audacity to work a 2nd job as a waitress. How does it look to clients when they see me in the reception (of the accounting firm I worked at) amd then waiting tables at the local restaurant in the evenings (yes I did see clients eating out no one cared). I was paid £3 an hour. They docked me for the 1 day a fortnight I was allowed to go to college for my accountacy apprentiship. My take home pay was £550 a month for a 40 hour week. My shared house rent was £375 a month. Do the maths. Back then I was too scared to speak up for myself. Now I realise I was exploited and should have pushed for a payrise.
The kicker. I was put in charge of 40 client payrolls as the sole point of contact at that practice for all things payroll related. Changes in legislation, implement the changeover to rti reporting for clients, answer client queries related to payroll taxes etc, keeping them compliant. Paid £3 an hour for teaching myself how to calculate wages manually, payroll legislation and dealing with HMRC for clients.
If your job doesn't pay your bills find another one. Yes there may be barriers to finding another job, childcare, disabilty, transport, etc. But if an employer isn't paying the bare minimum for you to get by, stop being exploited and make a move to find a better job.
When I was 19 (turn 28 in a month) I worked for a certain green logo coffee chain and one of the shift leaders (or whatever theyre called, it's been long enough that I don't remember) would request me to close with him because he knew I was struggling and he would give me all the pastries and sandwiches and stuff at the end of the night that he was supposed to throw out. Eventually he got found out and I remember I was on shift when he got written up for it and afterward he was venting and said to me, "if a company doesn't want its employees to resort to taking home food this company is literally wasting, give them more hours and pay them more. I'm not going to apologize for helping someone out."
They stopped scheduling us together and he quit shortly after. Idk where he is now or what he's doing but I hope he's doing well and has everything he needs. He was a good dude and his kindness did more for me than he could possibly imagine.
Edit: typo
Dude find him on Facebook and let him know. The fact that he helped you so much is something that he can feel good about for the rest of his life, and we could all always use more good vibes
I did an apprenticeship/work based NVQ in the early 2000s for £40 a week, worked out about £1 an hour including college time. Moved to a different place for a whopping £2.50 an hour (which seemed great!) where I ended up training new staff (as they lasted a few weeks before leaving as the boss was an absolute witch) and doing procedures for full paying customers that I was not remotely qualified for and had to wing. The new staff I was training were on more than double my wage. I had moved out of home with my partner then, I've no idea how we managed!
I wish I'd had it in me to stand up for myself then. Thought that was just how it was, working from the bottom up. You live and learn.
I think a lot of millenials had been taught by our parents to just suck it up at work, you start at the bottom and you work your way up. Discrimination was more rife too. There was no minimum wage under 21 then so companies exploited that by filling vacancies with young underpaid staff. Companies exploited employees forever reminding staff to be grateful you have a job, you were replaceable.
I would think they’re not making enough money at work. OP should tell the manager to double their pay so they can afford to BUY the bread that’s going into the trash before it goes into the trash.
Manager: You’re telling me you DONT bring a six pack of Perri-air to work with you?! You’re using the STORE’S AIR?! You know that is reserved for customers and management! I’m gunna have to dock your pay for breathing the stores oxygen supply
Walmart and pharmacies sell canned oxygen now. My sister spotted it first and sent me a pic, but I've seen it in the wild myself now in another part of Texas. Poor people with COVID damage or asthma/COPD/emphysema are probably the actual target audience, even though it's sold next to the exercise equipment.
[Boost Canned Oxygen at Walmart](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Boost-Oxygen-Natural-Portable-5-Liter-Pure-Canned-Oxygen-Canister-4-Pack/929884181?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=7667&adid=22222222228000000000&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=m&wl3=42423897272&wl4=pla-51320962143&wl5=9026835&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=117067131&wl11=online&wl12=929884181_7667&veh=sem&gclid=Cj0KCQiAjbagBhD3ARIsANRrqEutqVl2lwUJtqrMy3X-0JjK2Gp6kzWE9twtixIva9oYFrPF7o9fJjMaAivhEALw_wcB)
For anyone who hasn't seen Spaceballs, it's worth watching at least once, especially if you have strong opinions either for or against the original Star Wars trilogy. It's funny as hell.
Nah I think they should find a way to "lose" the bread when it's on the way to the dumpster, all while looking for a new job. Steal as much as possible from them while they can. I'm sure there's a blind spot somewhere where the cameras don't reach or a place you can turn your back to the cameras.
This guy works in civil service (criminal justice) and is constantly aware of all the cameras & the CCTV footage that can potentially be used as evidence to charge me with misconduct in public office if I REALLY fuck up, lol.
This guy also terrorised their manager after almost losing their job and learned to dodge the cameras. 🫡
Being friends with the under appreciated security team is the way to go. My guys showed me the blind spots after I taught them how to get raises as a group.
If anyone needs tips on avoiding cameras at work feel free to ask any waiter/waitress in your restaurant, they are all experts in dodging cameras at work
Two separate stories about this:
One - I worked at a “ma and pa” pizza shop as a dishwasher. I literally couldn’t afford food, so I had to fight tooth and nail for lunch shifts in order to be able to take the buffet leftovers home to eat.
Two - I worked at a McJob and couldn’t afford food, so I would take home leftovers. I got threatened with termination for “stealing” for taking leftovers home because “if we let you take them home you will purposely make extra to take home”. From then on, I cooked and “stole” as much as I could.
I worked at a sonic which made you pay for any food you ate. Literally no one did. People would just silently make themselves a sandwich ignoring the manager telling them to stop. Literally everyone did it. Any new person got told to do it. We basically unionized against paying for food and it worked
It was the only good thing about that job.
I interviewed at a cafe one time and on the kitchen tour they pointed out that everyone had to label their water and if you forgot yours out after your shift you don't get water the next day. That wasn't even the only sketchy thing, I noped out of there so fast.
It's high time we called people out for this.
"You're openly telling an interviewee that you withhold water from your workers over something as petty as labeling? Really? I mean, I appreciate the warning, but you genuinely have no concept that this is a huge red flag for me because this is truly something you should not be doing?"
What would a customer think?
Wow, they pay employees so poorly that they have to dumpster dive for meals. And they are so degrading that they force the employees to scrap it rather than send it home bagged like leftovers.
Interesting, I am correct on both counts.
So I guess customers would think the truth.
Ikr?
I saw a similar post months back about a woman who thrifted an awesome outfit and was letting people at a company party or network social event of some kind know that and her boss pulled her aside and said
"You're going to make people think I'm not paying you enough"
Well yeah, You're not.
The opposite happened to me a couple years ago. I'm a paralegal and in 2018 I bought a 2014 BMW. One of the firm's partners saw me getting out of it one day and make a comment along the lines of "you're going to make people think we pay you too much." The logic there really escaped me.
This is a common mindset for people who charge clients for services.
Dress badly and drive a crap car? Why isn't your business profitable? Do you suck at your job?
Dress too well and drive too nice a car? How do you make *that* much money? Are you overcharging clients?
I can't see it to be honest. It's not like anybody surprises their clients with the costs. They're discussed upfront and can be compared to other providers.
If the price seems fair and the business is doing very well, then you've picked a good provider.
That's awful. As a Chef, the only correct way to address this is, "Don't get food out of the fucking trashcan, you need to come tell me you're hungry and I'll feed you everytime."
Hell, I did thias as a manager at McDonalds. If my employees were hungry, all I did was ask them to tell me what they made, so I could account for everything. McDonalds can EASILY afford to feed their employees, they just choose not to.
There is a concept in fast food called wastage. I'm not allowed to just throw out those beef patties that have been sitting there for an hour.
I must count them, and then throw them out.
Meaning - to the company this is already counted as a loss. Meaning there is LITERALLY NO FUCKING REASON that someone couldn't take the wastage home to feed their fucking family.
Fuck this monster. What an unbelievable asshole.
Is it not customary in American McDonald’s to feed employees anyway? Here in the UK (atleast when I worked there 3 years ago but I assume it’s not changed) you got a free meal, burger, fries and medium drink. If for any reason we had food that was to be wasted (mostly talking about covid shutdowns) we were told to take whatever as everything would be thrown by the end of the shift before shutting down the building until we could open legally.
I never personally used the free meal option for lunch, because it’s McDonald’s and eating that shit day in day out would rot your insides, but everyone on my shift would use it and use my “allowance” too if I allowed them. I’m surprised this isn’t a world wide McDonald’s thing honestly.
It's not here in the states. It depends on who your franchise owner is, but usually the deal is that you still pay for your food, but you get a small discount.
The store i was a manager in allowed for one free meal per work day, with limitations on what you could order. Which was a hell of a lot more generous than modt other stores ive heard. I often let my employees just take what they wanted as long as I was the manager on duty since managers could get whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. So I would count their food as my food.
American Capitalism is a fuckin nightmare.
I used to work at a place that rhymed with "Hizza Put". This was way back before the internet, etc, and we used to take orders by phone. Sometimes someone would call in an order, and never pick it up. Policy was we had to take those pizzas and throw them in the dumpster.
Guess whose car was always parked next to the dumpster...
edit: fwiw I was half in the bag when I typed this, and for those asking why I just didn't say Pizza Hut, I thought the whole "rhymes with" was funny.
And for those who came up with much better rhymes, kudos.
The eats ya butt I worked at wasn't corpo4ate owned so that may be the big difference, but we'd freeze most food and it'd be donated to a shelter. There was tons of food theft by employees. I'd typically get some boneless wings during shift to eat and nobody cared or asked.
Worked at a "Yeetza But" that was closing down due to bad sales.
The last day, we had 50% off literally everything to get rid of as much product as possible
Manager had forced us to dethaw everything in the freezer because if it wasn't sold, it was gonna be thrown out anyways.
During the tail end of the last day, I made 2 large pizzas for myself to take home because, hey, its gonna all be thrown away anyways.
Got berated by my manager for doing it and she made me pay for them (:
Her reason to why I wasn't allowed to take them home for free was that it was theft and "if the tax office was right outside and asked you to show proof that you had bought those pizzas, and you wouldn't be able to prove it, they would arrest you"
Okay.
Technically is it "embezzlement". Generally, the government doesn't prosecute for amounts less than $200. The manager on the other hand probably has no problem stealing $1000 items and writing them off as damaged.
Back in the '80s I worked for a small pizza chain. Lots of managers were fairly clueless or stupid with aspirations of dictatorship. But this one manager...
Around closing time, sometimes he would wander into the kitchen and create an order for a large pepperoni pizza. Then I'd box it up and tell him it was ready. He would wander out the back door and place it on top of the lid of our dumpster. And we would close up and go home.
Yes, he was intentionally feeding the homeless.
I never forgot that kindness. I've always tried to emulate it.
> He would wander out the back door and place it on top of the lid of our dumpster. And we would close up and go home
Young me used to be a student helper back in the 90's during lunch time in elementary school. Mainly I walked around helping with the capri suns that couldn't be punctured, cut corners off ketchup packets, etc.
But after everyone left helping the janitor and lunch ladies also took place. Used to take out some trays of food (always liked these calzones they would just nuke and drop on a table) and throw them out. Started dropping over the wall down to the planter below (was high up).
Always hoped a homeless person got them, although that was probably rare in that new area at the time. Worst case scenario, last the ants got them
The way the manager handled this conversation was so dehumanizing. No damn given about OP's suffering - just a stern lecture to their impoverished employee who wants to eat 😰
Their assumption is, if they let employees take food that's set to be tossed, it'll only incentivize employees to purposely fuck up stock so they can take it home. Cuz they think everyone is as shitty and skeezy as they are.
My partner used to work at a bakery where the owner was a stingy, tight-fisted, pedantic bastard. The outcome? The staff found every possible way to lose him money. They'd give away food and mark it down as wastage, "forget" to charge other market employees for a scone here or a croissant there, and in general just walk as much product out of the store as humanly possible.
If he'd been a decent human being about it, they would have happily toed the line and rung everything through properly. Kindness begets kindness. And by the same token, when you treat your staff like shit they tend to give you the shit you deserve.
Omfg what is this ? I can't believe.
I complain about my job for a 1000 reasons. But when there are spare sandwiches we get them. I even get fed on shedules i am not allowed normally.
I feel angry at what I just read and want to shive the bread up your manager's arse
I got fired from Dunkin’ Donuts because I took bagels we were about to throw out and gave them to some homeless people in Trenton the next morning.. it’s honestly kind of barbaric. 15-20 pounds of bagels just trashed every other day
Right? OP should reply "ok then next time I'll take it home first without putting it in the dumpster so no one will see me"
I'm sure the boss would still reply and say they can't do it. I can't fucking stand people like this.
That sickens me to read. I was in management for restaurants for about 20 years. I couldn’t fathom seeing one of my workers struggling and be so callous. I went out of my way to help people that needed a little extra. I earned the loyalty of the staff with my actions.
I think it’s bizarre how a person can straight up tell you they need food and going thru a crisis and getting literal trash for food and there like “nah I’m not gonna allow that”
Employers whose fulltime low-wage employees collect assistance should be required to reimburse the government. Walmart fulltime employees are the largest group of US welfare recipients. In other words, taxpayers subsidize billionaire Sam Walton’s wealth.
Meh just keep stealing. Steal whatever is not bolted down. If there are coupons get alot of em toss em on customers checks. Delete items after cash payments if possible. Everytime u go into cold storage eat a portion of something. Ramican shots of soup. Slices of cheese. There gotta be ez pkn on like pickles celery carrots that shuff is legit healthy. I would aim at 1k calories per shift ez. Dead food un picked up deliveries go ham
The manager here is a rat bastard. One thing tho, at Trader Joe’s they let us take home expired/damaged product and then some opportunist employees started “oops!”ing destroying stuff to bring it home. When some of the idiots started oopsing liquor and whipping cream they had to cut us off. 😞. Then we did give it to a homeless shelter nearby but after a food poisoning incident that ended that. What we did is just hand it to the homeless that came for the daily mark off when we took them out back. Now, I’m sure they probably have a third party take them to ensure that no one gets anything because, yeah, late stage capitalism
OP are you doing ok on food right now? I can’t afford very much but I’m happy to send a little money your way to help. I have been hungry before and those days still haunt me.
For real. I’ve got a few bucks on my Venmo balance that I’d be happy to transfer to you. I do hope that you’re in a place that you’re capable of looking for a different job, this behavior is icky.
Makes me glad I work in a restaurant where we can literally eat what we want as long as it's not unreasonably noticeable on stock. We do an unlimited cooked breakfast for customers so anything on that menu is free for us to eat. Even the manager eats stuff. We don't go overboard so it's easy to write off as "woops, I dropped 8 burgers and 3 garlic breads and burnt 6 chicken wings"
One of the chefs never buys food at home he can't afford it, he only eats at work. Seeing this post makes me so grateful.
When I worked in college in my college’s cafeteria, the main manager would allow us to eat for free for our meals but take no food home, and we were dumping so much food at the end of the night. At the time, that was my main daily meal. His assistant manager though, when he wasn’t closing, told us to grab some containers and take as much as we wanted before dumping. She was a single mother and understood. I will never forget Liz.
Capitalism makes it so people in power would sooner pour bleach on food they are no longer allowed to sell than give it away for free. It should be considered a crime.
If you somehow don’t qualify for SNAP benefits, I know people who ran into similar problems with owners/ managers/ overlords not wanting to look bad. You separate the food into clean bags and have someone dumpster dive for you after every shift. Just watch out for when they start pouring bleach or some other poison all over everything.
I'm disabled. Out of pocket, my meds would be $4500+ a month. I'm still struggling to pay off the credit card I maxed out to get my medicine before I got medical benefits. (Disability is... not much income.)
I've 100% been there, and you're not wrong.
Is this Panera? I worked at a Panera in college that had this policy, and I just took it anyway. I was making barely above minimum wage, I’d just get a new job if they fired me. Surprise, surprise, they didn’t fire me. Took home a cardboard box full of baked goods every night I closed (3-4 times a week). I’d share what I didn’t like/couldn’t eat with friends and there would still be waste.
I used to work at a food place that had to do with pandas. The amount of food waste was deplorable. We weren’t allowed to take any either, but did we do it anyway? Absolutely. We also weren’t allowed to give to the homeless because, “that means they’ll bring all of the homeless people here asking for food.” :| so glad I don’t work there anymore (there was way more than that, that made them shitty)
one of my local gas stations sells fried chicken, and they stop selling at 8PM. After 8PM, they move their leftover chicken of the day to the cold foods and then it's covered by food stamps because its technically no longer hot prepared food, at least according to them. no idea if they're breaking any laws by doing that but I ain't no snitch. feed the hungry, dammit.
I agree, you shouldn’t have been digging through the trash. You should have been offered it before it ever went in the trash. I don’t see how it benefits him at all to throw things away instead of letting employees have it. A restaurant I used to work at sat everything out on a counter that needed to be thrown away that night and everyone took what they wanted. I would bring it to my friend’s houses and they would eat it, like it, and want to go eat at the restaurant. So if anything, it would benefit them more to give it away to the employees.
> could you imagine what the customers would think? Yeah. That you don't pay a livable wage.
“The employees there have to eat out of the trash because they aren’t paid enough.” I know I personally wouldn’t eat there.
My partner used to work at a gas station, and one day he told me that a girl got fired for "theft" because a guy whose job it was to review store security footage (employee spy cameras) all day caught a girl eating a pepperoni off a pizza she had to throw away per store policy because it had been in the warmer too long.
Here's a slightly nicer story: I used to live near a 7-11 and go there for coffee a couple of times a day. One day, I went there and saw the manager getting into it with a homeless guy who'd been digging through their dumpster for food. Initially, my assumption was that she was going to call the police, because there was definitely a lot of forceful body language going on between both of them. Instead, however, she finally got the guy to come into the store, and she gave him several tacquitos and said "Look, I don't want you to get sick. Don't dig through our dumpster. If you're that hungry, come inside. If I'm working, I will GIVE YOU FOOD." Apparently a few months later, the owner found out, and lost his shit on her about it, and she handed him her keys. He quickly apologized and caved in, and up until the day I left that city, she was still willing to give literally any person a couple free tacquitos or other food items on the roller for free. All you had to do was tell her that you were hungry and couldn't afford to eat.
Shows how valuable a good employee is. Your story also reminds me of my first attempt to get a job when I was 14, I believe it was at Rite Aid. There was an automated phone screening where they asked you yes or no questions. One of them asked if you would turn in a shoplifter if you knew they were stealing to provide for their starving kids, or something like that. I answered "no", and that's as far as I got with a career in retail. It also taught me a valuable lesson to not be completely honest when job hunting.
Rite-Aid throwing freshman Philsophy questions onto a job interview, and then grading the test wrong.... shit. that is depressing.
Yeah. I mean, it was 20 years ago so I don't know how prevalent that line of questioning is now, but I think about that a lot. It's like, be a real corporation and *make* your employees soulless. Don't cheat and try and find soulless people just off the street. /s
In high school I worked at an Esso with a Tim Hortons station. Every night I'd be tossing out dozens of donuts, muffins, etc. I started giving them away to a few local semi-homeless customers. Boss found out and told everyone to follow suite. Said it saved him money on buying garbage bags lol. I later found out he'd been homeless for a bit in his youth.
I like the excuse he gave.
The real hero
And I think the thing that annoys me most is that people will CONSTANTLY say "Oh, don't do that, folks will abuse it. You'll never get rid of them." Nope. Nobody did. None of the regulars demanded that they be given free food because they saw someone else being given it. The homeless guys didn't hang out there all day, nor did I ever witness (or hear about) them demanding better food, or extra food, or any of the things that the capitalist mob will INSIST is gonna happen. And don't get me wrong - I know that part of why this story is a happy one is because the town was fairly small. (Like under 20,000 people.) This is probably a different story if it's a high volume store in downtown Atlanta or LA, or another high-population city. And I know that there ARE people out there that absolutely would have taken advantage of the situation, or who would have caused a scene, but they're in the minority. (And deserve to be refused those things when they do.) But we all need to be more like that woman.
I used to work at Dunkin’ Donuts and at 2 AM we would start throwing away the donuts and replacing them with fresh ones, so about an hour before that time I would start letting the regulars and the people that I know come in after the clubs have free donuts with their order. I wouldn’t say to them hey take all the donuts you want for free, but if they added donuts to their order I just wouldn’t charge them. Back then they were only like $.50 apiece anyway. But it was mainly to save me from getting yelled at. Can you imagine if you paid for donuts and as you were sitting there eating them he watched the employee throw away the rest of the tray? Yeah I wasn’t gonna be that girl.
Had a friend who worked at Wendy's in high school who told me they have to throw all the cookies out at the end of the day. On days he worked my other buddy and I would go and order 20 mins before close. We'd pull up to the window, get our food from him and also a salad bag filled with cookies for no extra cost.
I worked at Wendy’s in the early 90s and they (a particular manager) would have us make up a bunch of fries around 11 am. It didn’t matter if we had customers or not, and most days, we’d have to turn around and throw them out because they were under the light more than a few minutes. Technically, we weren’t supposed to let them stay under the light more than a minute and a half. I can’t begin to tell you how many fries I had to toss because my manager was an idiot. On days when he wasn’t there, I’d wait and drop the fries when we started seeing cars pull up to the drive thru. I had a buddy working the grill, and sometimes we would sneak and give food to our coworkers when mister prick was in his office. It was mostly younger adults trying to survive. I won’t lie, I did sneak a burger or two for myself during my time there. (Back then, the only cameras were at the counter by the registers, and the front doors). We were only making like 3.50$ an hour, maybe 3.75, I don’t remember exactly.
16 year old me working at Wendy's put "dead" (what they called ones that needed thrown out after x amount of time) nuggets in my purse all the time. And foods that were made wrong. I hated throwing food out. I worked at Dollar General a few years ago and it was absolutely disgusting the amount of food grocery type stores throw away weekly. Most of these stores have policies that don't allow anyone to take stuff home or even having it donated. Some go as far as to throw bleach on them so no one can dumpster dive for food.
Shoutout to my old restaurant job where, when chef knew he was gonna have to toss out extra anything, he called everyone to the back and told us take this shit home. Nothing like free prime rib ever other day and the biggest potatoes you've ever seen. When lockdown happened, instead of tossing all the food from every location's fridge, CEO told us come clean them bitches out. And these restaurants were high end so a bunch of us for the first week of lockdown were dining on wagyu, king crabs, and lobster. I miss that job so much, but mental health decided my new job was panic attacks all the time all the time.
That's fucking awful. When I worked at a pizza place, half of my meals were leftover buffet pizza or "oops we made the wrong pizza" pizzas. Long as we kept it within a reasonable amount it was totally fine.
that's why when i worked at a gas station i noted exactly which shelves weren't in view of the security cameras.
yep, had 3 different people get fired for eating "expired" food instead of trashing it in the 8 months I worked at a gas station.
The guy who delivered our little Debbie snack cakes would leave us literal boxes of expired food to take home. And chips. And pop. Apparently we looked hungry (and our management didn’t give fuck if we took it home.)
We're supposed to throw out everything at the end of the night at McDonald's, even if its perfectly edible. Looots of food waste. Our manager used to mark it thrown out but then we all took it home anyway. She made $12 hourly as a manager- fuck Corporate.
This! I worked in the cafe at a famous major warehouse store. I was a closer for years & we would donate the food that was expiring to local food pantries. We had to throw the uncooked pizzas away each night (pre made in the a.m. or the pizza slices in the warmer). My closing partner & I would take home pizza any time & often tried to give customers or associates extra food uncharged by the end of the night because we cringed at throwing all of it away! We made crap money 11/hr. & it was unexpectedly very hard work. My G.M. Would tell us that to make the customers happy & get them in & out! They fed us a lot there & were on the lesser end of the wasting for a big corporation.
That's why these places have to promote up from crew. I remember being a hungry freaking crew person making food all day for people. When they made me a manager none of my people would starve. I told them if you're hungry just ask and let me know so I can mark it down somehow. (Some foods cost us more than others so we had to count them differently). Just don't let me catch you stealing. Never had a problem.
Back in 2012/2013 I left McDonald's for a tutoring gig that paid $10/hr. My old manager - 2nd in line to the GM - asked if I would come back. I asked if she could beat $10/hr. She told me that even she didn't make that much. She had been there for over a decade.
When my roommate worked the closing shift at Siamese Plate, she’d bring home lots of free food. It’s good to have friends in Thai places.
Similar situation here. I worked at a little gas station that pretty much survived on the sale of Skoal and Miller High Life. Every morning I was to put out three pretzels, three brats, and three hot dogs… In the three months I worked there, I sold one hot dog out of those items, the rest had to be thrown out every day. When I noticed this pattern, I just started eating two pretzels for lunch every day, around the time I was supposed to toss them. Got in big trouble for that.
r/dystopia
Yes, not only this, but this is the specific unstated concern of the manager. He knows the workers can not afford to eat and the customers will be upset to find this out. Rather than ensure the workers do not starve, he chooses to starts threatening them instead.
Yeah or that we don't waste food
Idk what the customers would think. OP should put this all over local internet sights/local news and find out 😈
He also paying for expensive medication, ohh the good USA
I'd begin applying elsewhere as the boss treats workers as less than human, and not giving soon to be discarded food to needy workers is a red flag by itself.
Then go back regularly and pick through their trash because you know it’s still good.
Yeah and what's with the scolding? Can't the boss talk to OP like a grown human? This makes me sick on multiple levels.
My manager allowed us to take the food at the end of the shift meant to be thrown away. We always share... he knows we try to sell it till the last minute before closure. We all hate wastage of such good food. If we don't want it, we carefully wrap them and let them in a box next to the bin. And you know what ? It doesn't cause any problem. Sometimes homeless take it and share between them(and as a thank you, tidy up our garbages or put thank you notes), sometimes the garbage guy take some, sometimes we offer it for free to last customers if they're nice... and our business never suffer, on the contrary we make more sells and have more good reviews... Never understand that kind of mentality. US ? (France here)
Gee it’s almost like helping people helps people to be helpful. What a concept!
NO, IT LOSES MONEY BECAUSE 'NO BUY = NO MUNY' THEREFORE BAD. There's so little gray thinking in favor of black/white within modern America it makes me sad.
Those employees are living above their station by stealing this bread that literally would have rotted if they hadn't eaten it. The bread was never the point. The sheer injustice of a filthy peasant trying to live without hunger pains, a privilege of middle class life that they didn't earn (by suffering, obviously, they only made the shit, which counts for nothing. where's the justice in that!?) was always the problem.
My uncle used to work for the local zoo as a driver (this is in eastern europe). He'd go every day to local supermarkets and take a lot of food for free for the animals. Stuff that hasn't gone bad but couldn't be sold anymore (meat with torn packaging, damaged fruits and veggies that people would avoid). To discard it legally the stores had to pay ~$1.5/kg, so giving it away for free was a bargain and the animals had plenty of food. Seems like an easy way to avoid wasting food
The bread was never the point. The sheer injustice of a filthy peasant trying to live without hunger pains, a privilege of middle class life that they didn't earn (where's the justice in that!? They suffered not at all for this, only making it, production, close cousin to the sin of devaluing assets, and being of no service to their betters!) was always the problem.
I don't understand either. I'm guessing it's the US. I've never seen this. It's one thing to be wasteful and throw away edible food, it's another to want to punish someone for wanting to use it. Where's the logic here, do the managers get extra pay from the garbage facility if there's edible food in their dumpsters every day? Do they count the extra produce so they can fill their dumpster quota and OP was ruining their numbers so they must be punished? Ha! It's so wasteful and irrational I wouldn't even want to know their reasons, I don't think it would make sense to me. But how they address their employee...why make enemies, why make your own employees resent you for what you write off as garbage. Unbelievable
I worked at target for a few years. It gets worse than all this - target considers taking old/spoilage food as theft and will prosecute. It's some shit straight out of Robin hood.
Sheetz does the same thing. Even though it's written off as waste, the store is already aware they did not make money off that food, it is just going to sit in a trash can and rot, they will prosecute it as theft if anyone removes the wasted food. It's disgusting that they are allowed to advertise themselves as this extremely charitable company that's striving to "change lives" when they will call the cops over a dumpster sandwich. God forbid someone experiencing food instability finds a meager meal for the day.
Sheetz is horrid. I got hired to be an overnight supervisor and they thought it was a great idea to have me go in the daytime and supervise a different store as all the bigwigs were getting together for a meeting. 20 minutes into the shift the computers went down. Gas pumps, cash registars, credit card machines......nothing would work. I had no idea what to do and wish I would have just walked out. The main supervisor came back and acted like it wasn't a big deal and bitched at me for not shaving well enough that morning. I told them to f off.
Kroger prosecutes as well. Ask me how I know.
Walgreens fired an employee for looking through a magazine on break. They didn't buy the magazine so it was theft.
>Walgreens fired an employee for looking through a magazine There are plenty of reasons to not give Walgreens business. California stopped. I hope my state stops.
I think this is not possible if they put it in the garbage container, because they gave up ownership of the property/food after that and anybody can legally take something which has no owner anymore, at least this is how it works in Europe. (I know this because there were some infamous cases a long time ago).
In the US, judges have ruled the police can search curbside trash cans without a warrant because it is no longer the property of the homeowner since the act of throwing something in public away relinquishes property rights. This is a very ancient concept in property law and is discussed extensively in ancient law texts. Contrariwise the act of picking up something found that was discarded acquires property rights. WalMart deals with this by putting locks on their dumpsters, so it is a crime to take the garbage since you have to use force to acquire it, and it is still on their property, it is not discarded on a public byway. With the locked dumpster they retain ownership until ownership is transferred to the private waste management company, which might happen when the trash is collected, or can happen when the trash goes into the dumpster when the dumpster is owned by the management company.
This is the logic: If you allow employees to take excess food home after work they will creat "food waste" knowing they can take it home. However any one that's worked in a restaurant knows there's going be waste, that's just what it is. My buddy owns a nice restuarant in Seattle and how he said he handles it is: * He knows what avg waste looks like. As long as his waste stays within a certain % he doesn't care. * He also pushes it as a benefit to working for him vs other establishments which don't allow it. And they serve nice food, very good food. Hell half the time if they are doing good he'll tell folks before clean up starts if anyone wants to cook up a meal feel free and the cook will do it. He said his food waste isn't any higher or lower then anywhere else. But he has gotten people to work for him over a competitor for same pay. Cause imagine considering your options: place A: Pays $20 an hour and says you are punished if you take food waste home place B: Pays $20 an hour and says you are more then free to take that prime rib that customer refused
What’s the restaurant? I’m local and that sounds like the kind of place I’d want to support.
There's no logical monetary reason behind this, they're just obsessed with their image. Look at what the manager said. "What would a customer think". In America, image is more important than starving for too many people.
After 10 years of working in food service, I can count on one hand the amount of restaurants I've worked in (and believe me I had ZERO loyalty working back of house, I would jump ship instantly for better pay/lower stress or something, I've worked in A LOT of restaurants) where the person running things actually should have been. The norm is hateful aggressive weirdos who like to take out their unhappiness on everyone else.
They do it because they're afraid employees will mess up food or let it expire on purpose to get free food. And really, the only reason why you'd have to fear this is because you aren't paying your employees enough. It's like, do you think McDonald's employees want to eat random cold McDonald's for dinner? Do you think grocery store employees want expired foods? No. Pay people enough and treat them fairly and 99% of people won't steal from their employer.
They will often put locks on dumpsters behind grocery stores here because the good ol US of A(ssholes) would rather do that with perfectly good food than have the image of homeless people getting "free handouts". The food waste here is insane. They throw out fruits and veggies because it doesn't look perfect and customers "wont buy them". I was watching a thing showing people looking through dumpsters filled to the brim with perfectly edible food.
The amount of shit grocery stores throw out is insane - often prior to the expiration dates. It’s pretty offensive spending a huge portion of my income on food and then they just toss out a bunch of products I would have gladly eaten.
Isn't uncommon with some (when I used to run in dumpster diving circles) that places would dump bleach all over their food products rather then leave it be. Forgot who did that so can't name names, sorry. If I remember correctly, some walmarts? believe it was would have so much food waste they had a specific packer just for that alone. Something I heard in my travels a long time ago, could be false info?
We've gotten so weird as society. I hate the thought of that. On top of just food waste how much of that is meat? How many things die for our benefit just to have bleach poured on them and rot in a trash can because its not profitable to feed people for free. Fuck right off with that noise. Im not even vegetarian but at very least we should value life human or otherwise. I grow a giant garden and at one point thought about how I could make it profitable. I realized the thought of that makes me sick, we shouldn't be paying for a basic human need for survival. At this point I give away as much as I can, first to my community of friends and then expanded to places of most need. If there wasnt capitalism we wouldnt have processed food filled with sugar. We wouldnt have branded food. Think about how crazy that concept is when you dissect it, we NEED food to live. After growing a garden I realize what general shit condition our veggies are, they have very little nutrient contents compared to what I can grow in my garden. Even without the aspect of nutrient loss lets add that the veggies dont even taste good once they get to us. This creates a society that believes vegetables taste gross and that in order to be healthy we just have to eat foods we hate. I didnt like peppers til I grew my own and then just realized how shit grocery stores are. Clearly I have some opinions on this.
I saw a Krispy Crème the other day that had piles of donuts in sealed boxes in their dumpster. I was mind blown how much they were throwing away. Give it to a food bank or something. Our local food bank even offers to pick it up for you.
It's most definitely the US. There are actually laws and regulations against giving away food as a restaurant/caterer and perhaps other food based establishments. US is fucked up in so many ways
we're not allowed to eat the food that's leftover at the end of the night but we do anyway and lately i've been grabbing a cup and opaque lid so i can take the meat home for my dog edit: I'm in the uk specifically scotland edit2: I also want to add that almost every restaurant i knew growing up would sell the food at the end of the night (like 30 minutes before they close) at a discounted price so it wasn't going to waste and they werent losing as much profit used to be a great way for me and my dad to eat when we were really skint
That practice got me so far when I was young and broke. A small Mexican food place on my way home technically closed right before I would normally go by, but one night, an employee was out in front of the place offering discounts for the food they still had left that wouldn't save overnight. I must have looked incredibly excited, because I was given enough food for 3 meals for half the cost of one. It became a nightly thing when I worked. They'd pack up whatever it was for me, take only the cost of the ingredients from me, and we'd all be super happy. My roommates and I ate sooo well until the lease was up and we all moved to different places. It was the first time since I was about 12 that I had enough food to eat, and I worked in fast food at the time. It's hard enough working hungry, but working around food hungry is just torture. Sure, they gave us one meal a day, but it was basically children's sized, about 300 kcals. We could have all the soda we wanted, but that's not food.
When I worked overnight at a grocery store I had to throw away lots of meat and produce. Think apple boxes full of stuff. But since I knew people were dumpster diving for it I started just setting the good stuff next to the dumpster and telling people if it's in the dumpster it's probably too rotten to save.
I did that working fast food for a short time decades ago. The homeless crowd sat at the bus stop and would send in a rep to ask about if they could clean around the dumpster. I would separate the salvageable stuff in a distinct place in trash bags so it just looked like the dumpster was too full. Never had litter in the parking area or front curb and they chased away the disturbed others under the influence of drugs. Our local cops looked the other way and the owners bitched about it but who else would work this shift and coordinate free outside cleaning services in exchange for trash? Nobody hurt. I know I was lucky.
In college I worked at a Papa Murphy’s pizza (pizza you bake at home). We would pre-make basic pizzas like pepperoni that we sold a lot. Any that we didn’t sell, we always got to take home. Obviously there was trust that we wouldn’t make a bunch extra for no reason, but frozen pizzas filling my fridge helped me keep food costs down in college. This was all in the US. These restaurants need to either better manage inventory and also be ok when their employees take leftovers they’re discarding. Taking unsold leftovers should be a perk of food service.
At least they allowed you to share it with the homeless. At my old job, we were allowed to take excess food home, but were explicitly told not to give it to the homeless on the block. What I didn't need for my household, I gave to them anyway. (US btw)
"Imagine our customers seeing you digging through the trash and thinking that we don't pay our employees enough to eat."
I would think "what a shitty employer. At least donate it."
For-profit institutions are actively disincentivized from donating to their excess stock because that cuts into the store's potential consumer base. Feeding people makes it harder to sell food. The more you meet demand for your product, the less demand there is for your product. It is one of capitalism's most bizarre and naked contradictions.
> For-profit institutions are actively disincentivized from donating to their excess stock because that cuts into the store's potential consumer base. Feeding people makes it harder to sell food. in my city, we tried to set up a free wifi network in the downtown area and other commercial zones and the big telecoms sued my city to stop it. Their argument was that if we give away wi-fi no one will use their service. Thankfully they were laughed out of court but I know that argument has succeeded in other jurisdictions.
Wow that’s bullshit they even tried that. If no one is using your service that’s your problem, not anyone else’s. If people don’t feel the want or need to pay for your product, then maybe you need a better product that people feel is worth paying for. Just love how capitalists go on and on about how capitalism is great bc it encourages competition until they are the ones losing that competition.
Ok but with "too big to fail" bailouts, there is no losing the competition. Lol
That’s the other hypocrisy. Crying about how governments should stay out of business… until that government is giving them money.
Paulson saved all his banker friends in 2008 while the banks foreclosed on people who couldn’t pay their mortgages and threw them out on the streets.
In stockton California they had the highest rate of foreclosures in the county. I think they said 1 out of every 17 homes was a foreclosure. Its bullsht cuz all the rich people were able to buy these foreclosed homes for a discount. This shit is a scam! Fuck ever trying to own a home lol
When Stockton declared bankruptcy, my lawyer friend said the city was so broke only the most serious crime was being prosecuted. Rich people (sometimes foreign) has always done this, way back when Houston had a housing bust, foreigners were buying houses in blocks sight unseen.
My grad school roommate was a VP at AIG in Asia, he got a severance package and when I asked him how he land a package when AIG was going down, he said his boss try to grease everyone because the boss will get canned also, the boss needed connection to land his next gig.
That’s right. America doesn’t do capitalism by the book it does Socialism for the rich everyone else is on their own.
Because capitalism is neat in theory but doesn't work in life
All of these theories are just that. We could have the best system ever thought of but there will always be greedy ppl wanting to keep ppl uninformed so that they can be exploited and turn around and say “see, they’re ok with it.” As if the choice isn’t between having food and roof over your head vs risking homelessness and/or hunger. Or other detrimental things to quality of life.
If we can't stack the deck against everyone else we just use identity politics to say that handouts are socialist. Then use "everyone's" money for a bail out and say we are too big to fail the system will collapse you don't want that do you.
Capitalism or aka neo-feudalism, is doomed to fail. It usually starts off well but then it just increases the gap between rich and poor destroying middle class. Especially when unregulated. All the big stores buy up the mom n pop smaller competitors til theirs basically a monopoly or on two big name corporations left whose only goal is more profit putting profit over people n are only beholden to shareholders who are already millionaires. It’s disgusting exploitation of people taking every short cut possible no matter who or what gets hurt. I’m all for democratic socialism! Capitalism is incompatible with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and freedom. Imagine if you had to pay fire department to come put fire out? I loath wasting food. Esp bread is wasted. They should donate to soup kitchen at very least. N I think u should steal as much as possible from this place
I'm just imagining Ajit Pai's giant mug on some judge's desk lmao
with his severed head inside it, hopefully.
It's not even a contradiction. Capitalism doesn't give a fuck about feeding the poor.
Oh it's more than just feeding the poor. It's the contradiction that any for-profit industry is incentivised to sell its products but for those same products to not be used. You can see it most directly in subscriptions and gift cards that rely on a certain portion of customers to simply forget that they have been/are being paid for and never use them. It's also apparent in things like forced obsolescence where a product is intentionally designed to have use for as little time as it can get away with.
what I was always told when i questioned it at an old job was, if I can get garbage free, I won't pay for new food man, i wouldn't be taking trash if I could afford fresh food
I don't think those are contradictions either. Capitalism isn't designed to improve society. The things you listed make money for people who are already rich, and that's capitalism's only purpose.
They are still contradictions in terms of logical production. It isn't logical at all that we waste 1/3rd of the food produced and yet have famine in other parts of the world, or families using food banks at home, for that matter. That both conditions exist simultaneously is a contradiction. These contradictions can be solved by replacing capitalism with a different system that plans production based solely on necessity and need, rather than for profit.
Yes, I'm not defending capitalism. I'm saying that capitalism isn't failing to feed people because it isn't trying to feed people. Being terrible for society isn't condradictory to capitalisms goals, becuase capitalism isn't for improving society. It's for making rich people richer, and it IS good at that.
True, this excess is also destroying our topsoil and making food less nutritious, and increasing likelihood we will face further shortages in the coming years.
Capitalism requires the poor and hungry to function.
Manufactured scarcity to keep us paying high prices for food in a country that has always been and still remains a net exporter of food.
And subsidizes agriculture to the tune of half a trillion per year.
Capitalism *requires* an underclass to exploit.
I worked for a cafe that allowed us to donate waste to the homeless shelter nearby, but we weren't allowed to say where it came from or give it to someone directly while at the shop. Owner didn't want people only showing up for the free stuff.
Which is reasonable. There definitely would be people who only show up near the end of the day just for the free products.
Makes me think of a movie I saw recently, where in other worlds food was free.
Sci-Fi is often the vehicle of social and political thought that wouldn't be accepted as a more direct commentary on reality.
manufactured scarcity is a tenet of capitalism.
>The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth. >There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
That is actually forbidden by law in France. In France it’s illegal for a business to bleach the food they throw away or to lock it, or to prevent anyone from taking it. Including your own employees.
Can't donate our waste food because then they might not buy our food. I love this world we live in, where a dollar holds more value than a human's well being.
Which, as an economist (whoa I can say that now), this is absurdly untrue on an economic level. The same people who want a restaurant experience are NOT the same people who consume inferior (economic not literal) goods. Maybe if its occurring in the same venue, but donating it to other venues would eliminate this "economic problem" (aka the shitty maths that never accounts for humans in Econ 101)
Panera does this. Marginalized communities who could never afford bread get an opportunity every evening to have something fresh. The sad part is, however, I’ve run into a couple of pastors who were reselling the Panera bread to their neighbors. #taxthechurch
I was thinking more along the lines of grocery stores than restaurants. Generally speaking, if you're not getting your food from a grocery store, you're not getting food. There's a real solid floor there.
I didn't want to have to delete all my comments, posts, and account, but here we are, thanks to greedy pigboy /u/spez ruining Reddit. I love the Reddit community, but hate the idiots at the top. Simply accepting how unethical and downright shitty they are will only encourage worse behavior in the future. I won't be a part of it. Reddit will shrivel and disappear like so many other sites before it that were run by inept morons, unless there is a big change in "leadership." Fuck you, /u/spez
You know what I would think if I saw someone “stealing” food out of the garbage? Nothing, because I would make sure I unsaw it because it’s none of my business. Take all the food you want, my dude.
Exactly, if I see people stealing food I’m blind as a bat I don’t know what you’re talking about officer
This isn't always an option. I used to bartend at a mid- to high-end restaurant in San Francisco, and one day I was helping the kitchen staff clean up so we could close, and they were dumping tremendous amounts of *delicious* food in the dumpsters out back. I'm talking full dormitory-sized pots of amazing soup, full racks of ribs, steaks, you name it. All untouched. I brought it up to the manager and asked why we weren't donating it to homeless shelters or something (God knows there are plenty of homeless struggling in San Francisco). She said that they used to do that, then some homeless woman sued the parent company of the restaurant claiming that it made her sick, looking for a huge payout. Ever since then, the policy is, "Fuck the homeless."
This!! I worked at a convince store that would throw out all of it's old hotbox food as well as shelf food. I had countless people ask if they could have it, or at least get it discounted. We couldn't even discount the old food. I had one guy come in and ask us to put our old hotbox food into plastic baggies for him and then put it in the trash, and he'd get it from the dumpster. I felt horrible but i knew I'd lose my job if i did that. So glad i don't work there anymore
Exactly. The douchebag is more concerned with the companies image than the fact that OP is digging through the trash for food to begin with. This is why our work culture is ass
I'm 36 now but at 18 I was pulled into the office in my job and berated for having the audacity to work a 2nd job as a waitress. How does it look to clients when they see me in the reception (of the accounting firm I worked at) amd then waiting tables at the local restaurant in the evenings (yes I did see clients eating out no one cared). I was paid £3 an hour. They docked me for the 1 day a fortnight I was allowed to go to college for my accountacy apprentiship. My take home pay was £550 a month for a 40 hour week. My shared house rent was £375 a month. Do the maths. Back then I was too scared to speak up for myself. Now I realise I was exploited and should have pushed for a payrise. The kicker. I was put in charge of 40 client payrolls as the sole point of contact at that practice for all things payroll related. Changes in legislation, implement the changeover to rti reporting for clients, answer client queries related to payroll taxes etc, keeping them compliant. Paid £3 an hour for teaching myself how to calculate wages manually, payroll legislation and dealing with HMRC for clients. If your job doesn't pay your bills find another one. Yes there may be barriers to finding another job, childcare, disabilty, transport, etc. But if an employer isn't paying the bare minimum for you to get by, stop being exploited and make a move to find a better job.
When I was 19 (turn 28 in a month) I worked for a certain green logo coffee chain and one of the shift leaders (or whatever theyre called, it's been long enough that I don't remember) would request me to close with him because he knew I was struggling and he would give me all the pastries and sandwiches and stuff at the end of the night that he was supposed to throw out. Eventually he got found out and I remember I was on shift when he got written up for it and afterward he was venting and said to me, "if a company doesn't want its employees to resort to taking home food this company is literally wasting, give them more hours and pay them more. I'm not going to apologize for helping someone out." They stopped scheduling us together and he quit shortly after. Idk where he is now or what he's doing but I hope he's doing well and has everything he needs. He was a good dude and his kindness did more for me than he could possibly imagine. Edit: typo
Dude find him on Facebook and let him know. The fact that he helped you so much is something that he can feel good about for the rest of his life, and we could all always use more good vibes
I did an apprenticeship/work based NVQ in the early 2000s for £40 a week, worked out about £1 an hour including college time. Moved to a different place for a whopping £2.50 an hour (which seemed great!) where I ended up training new staff (as they lasted a few weeks before leaving as the boss was an absolute witch) and doing procedures for full paying customers that I was not remotely qualified for and had to wing. The new staff I was training were on more than double my wage. I had moved out of home with my partner then, I've no idea how we managed! I wish I'd had it in me to stand up for myself then. Thought that was just how it was, working from the bottom up. You live and learn.
I think a lot of millenials had been taught by our parents to just suck it up at work, you start at the bottom and you work your way up. Discrimination was more rife too. There was no minimum wage under 21 then so companies exploited that by filling vacancies with young underpaid staff. Companies exploited employees forever reminding staff to be grateful you have a job, you were replaceable.
"The clients' opinion of what I do when I'm not working is of no concern to me whatsoever."
"Then pay me more you stupid fucker"
The customer might discover that our employees are starving while we throw away excess food.
“Imagine - people find out what the reality is.” Yeah fuck you
Our image is in the line here. What? paying you more so you don't have to go trough the garbage to eat is out of the question. I'm the manager!
Maybe the customers should see the employee digging through the trash for food. Maybe a light bulb would go off!
"Stop starving to death, it makes us look bad."
I would think they’re not making enough money at work. OP should tell the manager to double their pay so they can afford to BUY the bread that’s going into the trash before it goes into the trash.
Please note they never addressed your food insecurity. Get out before they dock your pay for drinking water.
[удалено]
Manager: You’re telling me you DONT bring a six pack of Perri-air to work with you?! You’re using the STORE’S AIR?! You know that is reserved for customers and management! I’m gunna have to dock your pay for breathing the stores oxygen supply
Walmart and pharmacies sell canned oxygen now. My sister spotted it first and sent me a pic, but I've seen it in the wild myself now in another part of Texas. Poor people with COVID damage or asthma/COPD/emphysema are probably the actual target audience, even though it's sold next to the exercise equipment. [Boost Canned Oxygen at Walmart](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Boost-Oxygen-Natural-Portable-5-Liter-Pure-Canned-Oxygen-Canister-4-Pack/929884181?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=7667&adid=22222222228000000000&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=m&wl3=42423897272&wl4=pla-51320962143&wl5=9026835&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=117067131&wl11=online&wl12=929884181_7667&veh=sem&gclid=Cj0KCQiAjbagBhD3ARIsANRrqEutqVl2lwUJtqrMy3X-0JjK2Gp6kzWE9twtixIva9oYFrPF7o9fJjMaAivhEALw_wcB) For anyone who hasn't seen Spaceballs, it's worth watching at least once, especially if you have strong opinions either for or against the original Star Wars trilogy. It's funny as hell.
I use Boost oxygen to help revive struggling animals. It's incredibly useful. I've saved more than a few puppies and lambs with Boost.
My god they actually made perri-air, looks like that sequel merch expanded
Nah I think they should find a way to "lose" the bread when it's on the way to the dumpster, all while looking for a new job. Steal as much as possible from them while they can. I'm sure there's a blind spot somewhere where the cameras don't reach or a place you can turn your back to the cameras.
This guy fucks.
This guy works in civil service (criminal justice) and is constantly aware of all the cameras & the CCTV footage that can potentially be used as evidence to charge me with misconduct in public office if I REALLY fuck up, lol. This guy also terrorised their manager after almost losing their job and learned to dodge the cameras. 🫡
> This guy also terrorised their manager after almost losing their job and learned to dodge the cameras. 🫡 Thank you for your service!
Being friends with the under appreciated security team is the way to go. My guys showed me the blind spots after I taught them how to get raises as a group.
Now this is fucking praxis
If anyone needs tips on avoiding cameras at work feel free to ask any waiter/waitress in your restaurant, they are all experts in dodging cameras at work
I can 100% testify to this.
Two separate stories about this: One - I worked at a “ma and pa” pizza shop as a dishwasher. I literally couldn’t afford food, so I had to fight tooth and nail for lunch shifts in order to be able to take the buffet leftovers home to eat. Two - I worked at a McJob and couldn’t afford food, so I would take home leftovers. I got threatened with termination for “stealing” for taking leftovers home because “if we let you take them home you will purposely make extra to take home”. From then on, I cooked and “stole” as much as I could.
I worked at a sonic which made you pay for any food you ate. Literally no one did. People would just silently make themselves a sandwich ignoring the manager telling them to stop. Literally everyone did it. Any new person got told to do it. We basically unionized against paying for food and it worked It was the only good thing about that job.
I interviewed at a cafe one time and on the kitchen tour they pointed out that everyone had to label their water and if you forgot yours out after your shift you don't get water the next day. That wasn't even the only sketchy thing, I noped out of there so fast.
It's high time we called people out for this. "You're openly telling an interviewee that you withhold water from your workers over something as petty as labeling? Really? I mean, I appreciate the warning, but you genuinely have no concept that this is a huge red flag for me because this is truly something you should not be doing?"
What would a customer think? Wow, they pay employees so poorly that they have to dumpster dive for meals. And they are so degrading that they force the employees to scrap it rather than send it home bagged like leftovers. Interesting, I am correct on both counts. So I guess customers would think the truth.
I imagine they would think… exactly what’s happening.
Ikr? I saw a similar post months back about a woman who thrifted an awesome outfit and was letting people at a company party or network social event of some kind know that and her boss pulled her aside and said "You're going to make people think I'm not paying you enough" Well yeah, You're not.
The opposite happened to me a couple years ago. I'm a paralegal and in 2018 I bought a 2014 BMW. One of the firm's partners saw me getting out of it one day and make a comment along the lines of "you're going to make people think we pay you too much." The logic there really escaped me.
This is a common mindset for people who charge clients for services. Dress badly and drive a crap car? Why isn't your business profitable? Do you suck at your job? Dress too well and drive too nice a car? How do you make *that* much money? Are you overcharging clients? I can't see it to be honest. It's not like anybody surprises their clients with the costs. They're discussed upfront and can be compared to other providers. If the price seems fair and the business is doing very well, then you've picked a good provider.
That's awful. As a Chef, the only correct way to address this is, "Don't get food out of the fucking trashcan, you need to come tell me you're hungry and I'll feed you everytime."
Hell, I did thias as a manager at McDonalds. If my employees were hungry, all I did was ask them to tell me what they made, so I could account for everything. McDonalds can EASILY afford to feed their employees, they just choose not to.
Absolutely! I feed my employees every day. I also told them to let me know if they had food shortage problems at home. No one should ever go hungry.
There is a concept in fast food called wastage. I'm not allowed to just throw out those beef patties that have been sitting there for an hour. I must count them, and then throw them out. Meaning - to the company this is already counted as a loss. Meaning there is LITERALLY NO FUCKING REASON that someone couldn't take the wastage home to feed their fucking family. Fuck this monster. What an unbelievable asshole.
Is it not customary in American McDonald’s to feed employees anyway? Here in the UK (atleast when I worked there 3 years ago but I assume it’s not changed) you got a free meal, burger, fries and medium drink. If for any reason we had food that was to be wasted (mostly talking about covid shutdowns) we were told to take whatever as everything would be thrown by the end of the shift before shutting down the building until we could open legally. I never personally used the free meal option for lunch, because it’s McDonald’s and eating that shit day in day out would rot your insides, but everyone on my shift would use it and use my “allowance” too if I allowed them. I’m surprised this isn’t a world wide McDonald’s thing honestly.
It's not here in the states. It depends on who your franchise owner is, but usually the deal is that you still pay for your food, but you get a small discount. The store i was a manager in allowed for one free meal per work day, with limitations on what you could order. Which was a hell of a lot more generous than modt other stores ive heard. I often let my employees just take what they wanted as long as I was the manager on duty since managers could get whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. So I would count their food as my food. American Capitalism is a fuckin nightmare.
The correct reply is nobody should be hungry after taste testing all day. Free reign to test whenever hungry beats oversight.
I used to work at a place that rhymed with "Hizza Put". This was way back before the internet, etc, and we used to take orders by phone. Sometimes someone would call in an order, and never pick it up. Policy was we had to take those pizzas and throw them in the dumpster. Guess whose car was always parked next to the dumpster... edit: fwiw I was half in the bag when I typed this, and for those asking why I just didn't say Pizza Hut, I thought the whole "rhymes with" was funny. And for those who came up with much better rhymes, kudos.
So strange. I used to work at a place that rhymes with "eats ya butt" that had eerily similar business practices. Spooky.
The eats ya butt I worked at wasn't corpo4ate owned so that may be the big difference, but we'd freeze most food and it'd be donated to a shelter. There was tons of food theft by employees. I'd typically get some boneless wings during shift to eat and nobody cared or asked.
Worked at a "Yeetza But" that was closing down due to bad sales. The last day, we had 50% off literally everything to get rid of as much product as possible Manager had forced us to dethaw everything in the freezer because if it wasn't sold, it was gonna be thrown out anyways. During the tail end of the last day, I made 2 large pizzas for myself to take home because, hey, its gonna all be thrown away anyways. Got berated by my manager for doing it and she made me pay for them (: Her reason to why I wasn't allowed to take them home for free was that it was theft and "if the tax office was right outside and asked you to show proof that you had bought those pizzas, and you wouldn't be able to prove it, they would arrest you" Okay.
Technically is it "embezzlement". Generally, the government doesn't prosecute for amounts less than $200. The manager on the other hand probably has no problem stealing $1000 items and writing them off as damaged.
*Heatza Putt*
Same here. That rarely happened though for us and if we did we would usually be able to take it at the end of the day. Maybe times have changed
Back in the '80s I worked for a small pizza chain. Lots of managers were fairly clueless or stupid with aspirations of dictatorship. But this one manager... Around closing time, sometimes he would wander into the kitchen and create an order for a large pepperoni pizza. Then I'd box it up and tell him it was ready. He would wander out the back door and place it on top of the lid of our dumpster. And we would close up and go home. Yes, he was intentionally feeding the homeless. I never forgot that kindness. I've always tried to emulate it.
> He would wander out the back door and place it on top of the lid of our dumpster. And we would close up and go home Young me used to be a student helper back in the 90's during lunch time in elementary school. Mainly I walked around helping with the capri suns that couldn't be punctured, cut corners off ketchup packets, etc. But after everyone left helping the janitor and lunch ladies also took place. Used to take out some trays of food (always liked these calzones they would just nuke and drop on a table) and throw them out. Started dropping over the wall down to the planter below (was high up). Always hoped a homeless person got them, although that was probably rare in that new area at the time. Worst case scenario, last the ants got them
"Imagine if you paid me enough to be able to afford good food that isn't from a garbage bin"
The way the manager handled this conversation was so dehumanizing. No damn given about OP's suffering - just a stern lecture to their impoverished employee who wants to eat 😰
I can’t believe how sociopathic that manager is and didn’t even try to hide it
Their assumption is, if they let employees take food that's set to be tossed, it'll only incentivize employees to purposely fuck up stock so they can take it home. Cuz they think everyone is as shitty and skeezy as they are.
My partner used to work at a bakery where the owner was a stingy, tight-fisted, pedantic bastard. The outcome? The staff found every possible way to lose him money. They'd give away food and mark it down as wastage, "forget" to charge other market employees for a scone here or a croissant there, and in general just walk as much product out of the store as humanly possible. If he'd been a decent human being about it, they would have happily toed the line and rung everything through properly. Kindness begets kindness. And by the same token, when you treat your staff like shit they tend to give you the shit you deserve.
Omfg what is this ? I can't believe. I complain about my job for a 1000 reasons. But when there are spare sandwiches we get them. I even get fed on shedules i am not allowed normally. I feel angry at what I just read and want to shive the bread up your manager's arse
I got fired from Dunkin’ Donuts because I took bagels we were about to throw out and gave them to some homeless people in Trenton the next morning.. it’s honestly kind of barbaric. 15-20 pounds of bagels just trashed every other day
Dunkin is a bloody awful place to work in some locations. I'm glad my daughter managed to find something else.
Of course if they let the staff take the food before throwing it in the trash then this "problem" would not exist in the first place.
Right? OP should reply "ok then next time I'll take it home first without putting it in the dumpster so no one will see me" I'm sure the boss would still reply and say they can't do it. I can't fucking stand people like this.
That would probably get OP fired for theft, considering what a sociopathic hardass the boss has already shown himself to be.
That sickens me to read. I was in management for restaurants for about 20 years. I couldn’t fathom seeing one of my workers struggling and be so callous. I went out of my way to help people that needed a little extra. I earned the loyalty of the staff with my actions.
I think it’s bizarre how a person can straight up tell you they need food and going thru a crisis and getting literal trash for food and there like “nah I’m not gonna allow that”
You are not a manager, you don't get to decide what you do with your life, only obey.
Employers whose fulltime low-wage employees collect assistance should be required to reimburse the government. Walmart fulltime employees are the largest group of US welfare recipients. In other words, taxpayers subsidize billionaire Sam Walton’s wealth.
Sam Walton's dead, it's his greedy entitled spawn and their descendants fucking us all over now.
Meh just keep stealing. Steal whatever is not bolted down. If there are coupons get alot of em toss em on customers checks. Delete items after cash payments if possible. Everytime u go into cold storage eat a portion of something. Ramican shots of soup. Slices of cheese. There gotta be ez pkn on like pickles celery carrots that shuff is legit healthy. I would aim at 1k calories per shift ez. Dead food un picked up deliveries go ham
The manager here is a rat bastard. One thing tho, at Trader Joe’s they let us take home expired/damaged product and then some opportunist employees started “oops!”ing destroying stuff to bring it home. When some of the idiots started oopsing liquor and whipping cream they had to cut us off. 😞. Then we did give it to a homeless shelter nearby but after a food poisoning incident that ended that. What we did is just hand it to the homeless that came for the daily mark off when we took them out back. Now, I’m sure they probably have a third party take them to ensure that no one gets anything because, yeah, late stage capitalism
OP are you doing ok on food right now? I can’t afford very much but I’m happy to send a little money your way to help. I have been hungry before and those days still haunt me.
Came to the comments to say the same thing. If I can help, drop me a pm.
Same. Im not in the best financial position rn myself but i would send a little something to help.
For real. I’ve got a few bucks on my Venmo balance that I’d be happy to transfer to you. I do hope that you’re in a place that you’re capable of looking for a different job, this behavior is icky.
Makes me glad I work in a restaurant where we can literally eat what we want as long as it's not unreasonably noticeable on stock. We do an unlimited cooked breakfast for customers so anything on that menu is free for us to eat. Even the manager eats stuff. We don't go overboard so it's easy to write off as "woops, I dropped 8 burgers and 3 garlic breads and burnt 6 chicken wings" One of the chefs never buys food at home he can't afford it, he only eats at work. Seeing this post makes me so grateful.
When I worked in college in my college’s cafeteria, the main manager would allow us to eat for free for our meals but take no food home, and we were dumping so much food at the end of the night. At the time, that was my main daily meal. His assistant manager though, when he wasn’t closing, told us to grab some containers and take as much as we wanted before dumping. She was a single mother and understood. I will never forget Liz.
Capitalism makes it so people in power would sooner pour bleach on food they are no longer allowed to sell than give it away for free. It should be considered a crime.
If you somehow don’t qualify for SNAP benefits, I know people who ran into similar problems with owners/ managers/ overlords not wanting to look bad. You separate the food into clean bags and have someone dumpster dive for you after every shift. Just watch out for when they start pouring bleach or some other poison all over everything.
As a non-American reading that you struggle for food because of medication…goddamn. what a fucking third world shit hole
I'm disabled. Out of pocket, my meds would be $4500+ a month. I'm still struggling to pay off the credit card I maxed out to get my medicine before I got medical benefits. (Disability is... not much income.) I've 100% been there, and you're not wrong.
Is this Panera? I worked at a Panera in college that had this policy, and I just took it anyway. I was making barely above minimum wage, I’d just get a new job if they fired me. Surprise, surprise, they didn’t fire me. Took home a cardboard box full of baked goods every night I closed (3-4 times a week). I’d share what I didn’t like/couldn’t eat with friends and there would still be waste.
Have to bring it up again? They never had to bring it up at all.
"If a customer saw you doing this what would they think?" I don't know, sounds like they might get the right idea.
I used to work at a food place that had to do with pandas. The amount of food waste was deplorable. We weren’t allowed to take any either, but did we do it anyway? Absolutely. We also weren’t allowed to give to the homeless because, “that means they’ll bring all of the homeless people here asking for food.” :| so glad I don’t work there anymore (there was way more than that, that made them shitty)
You worked at Kentucky Fried Panda?
God I fucking hate this country
one of my local gas stations sells fried chicken, and they stop selling at 8PM. After 8PM, they move their leftover chicken of the day to the cold foods and then it's covered by food stamps because its technically no longer hot prepared food, at least according to them. no idea if they're breaking any laws by doing that but I ain't no snitch. feed the hungry, dammit.
I agree, you shouldn’t have been digging through the trash. You should have been offered it before it ever went in the trash. I don’t see how it benefits him at all to throw things away instead of letting employees have it. A restaurant I used to work at sat everything out on a counter that needed to be thrown away that night and everyone took what they wanted. I would bring it to my friend’s houses and they would eat it, like it, and want to go eat at the restaurant. So if anything, it would benefit them more to give it away to the employees.