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I want to know who narc'd on Joe.
That person deserves an ass beating.
A manager doesn't have discretion to dispose of out of date stock in any other way than putting it in the bin?
Why would you even have the position of Manager then?
The general corporate answer is that the misappropriation of waste is theft. They'll try to propose that Joe might hide boxes of cookies to take them, causing disproportionate waste. Giving them to the pantry instead of keeping them for himself is immaterial to their rules.
Realistically, some companies move near-out-of-date products to the sale rack and then offer them up to pantries after they pass their best-by date. They should easily be able to look at waste and sales here and make a judgment call. I'm betting someone local had a beef with Joe, didn't get their preferred day off, and turned him in.
Handled correctly, corporate would have donated a shit ton to the food pantry, taken a tax break, improved the community and told Joe to cut it out if they really cared.
Didn't Eskimos throw sociopaths off cliffs?
Why doesn't the conversation end there?
As far as I'm aware of, no.
and because capitalism
If you don't trust someone to appropriately handle waste, you don't trust them enough to be a manager.
Giving them to the pantry instead of keeping them for himself is immaterial to their rules.
This is prime executive laziness. In this case, that should warrant an investigation by upper management. If the regional director fired an otherwise productive manager for what really would amount to 'not getting a receipt for tax purposes,' one has to question whether they've been promoted beyond their capabilities. Rules are for people who aren't trusted to apply critical thinking to their job, i.e. relatively new minimum wage workers. Managers are supposed to be people with enough education, experience, and established trust to make decisions on behalf of the company. If they aren't trusted, they shouldn't have been made a manager.
If you don’t trust someone to appropriately handle waste
They trusted him for 10 years, presumably until someone turned him in.
This is prime executive laziness. ... not getting a receipt for tax purposes,
What if they were against giving the food away? what if their worry is that someone would hide the stuff till it expires to give more away. It's not a very neighborly line of thinking, but it's also not unreasonable.
. Managers are supposed to be people with enough education, experience, and established trust to make decisions on behalf of the company.
No way, in corporate land, the managers are there to enforce the rules. They're there to order the food, make sure the staff comes in, make sure the food gets thrown away if that's policy. Most managers don't get the discretion to break protocol when they feel like it.
If they aren’t trusted, they shouldn’t have been made a manager.
*Well they apparently solved that problem
edit* added a line
What if they were against giving the food away?
Then they're malevolent, and thus unqualified for their position. If someone are faced with the choice between giving something away in a way that can benefit them, and just setting the thing on fire purely to prevent someone else possibly benefitting, and they choose the latter, they are unqualified for any executive position. Even if one assigns no value to the potential of helping others, they are actively choosing to lose out on almost certain benefits (through tax benefits, PR, reduction of thefts of necessity, which are appreciably likely to come from their store's saleable stock rather than their waste) to prevent possible, but improbable, losses. That is actively choosing a worse outcome for the company they are ostensibly working to serve. Failure.
what if their worry is that someone would hide the stuff till it expires to give more away.
Then either:
A) The person is committing malfeasance and can be audited, as all managers should be anyway, and fired for actual harm, (which is still unlikely to cause enough damages to actually be a threat to the company, because if it caused an appreciable dip in profits, they'd fire them for incompetence without even needing a detailed audit)
or B) they can demonstrate to the management they are doing something that actually works out in the favor of the company, and the halfwits would be firing someone who found a way to turn trash into money.
It is idiotic mismanagement to throw away someone with years of experience because they might do something that most people wouldn't think of. Even an unpaid intern has enough access such that they might choose to misappropriate something of value. If you fire everyone who might take advantage of their access for misappropriation, there will be no employees, just a building stripped even of its copper wiring because you couldn't trust a security guard to have keys.
Most managers don't get the discretion to break protocol when they feel like it.
This is a statement of current failure, not a reason not to improve. I'm saying something like 'It's a bad idea to cut your hands with a knife,' and your response is something like, 'But in all the kitchens I've worked in, people cut themselves all the time.' Something bad doesn't become good just because it's common. If a job can be accomplished just blindly following a list of prescribed rules and procedures, that's a minimum wage job or a job in need of automation, not an executive position for a human.
When I was in retail, we were required to destroy anything we threw away.
If we had a warranty issue on a product, the manufacturer would usually just ship us a new one because it was cheaper than a repair, and we'd have to provide proof of destruction. My favorite was for kayaks. We had to mail back a portion of the body at least 1 square foot in area that included the serial number stamp.
Yeah, that's just how waste works.
Big Box retail, we used to have to ship most everything non-salable back to depot. The trucks would unload 10 pallets and load one back up every couple weeks. The depo would trash the stuff with proof and get the credits from the manufacturer.
I worked in fast food too, some of the managers would allow some waste to be taken, but it would have been their asses if the DM's caught wind. Slippery slope from accidentally cooking too much chicken to making enough to feed your family dinner. Had one manager once who traded food with Little Caesers and we all had pizza that night, it was awesome.
We had this substitute manager once, she was from a busy store. They always sent the chicken guy home at 7 to save cash and had the back line cook throw down another tray if things got low. Before they sent the chicken guy home, she had him put down two trays. That's 8 chickens worth of parts. On a busy night, we might maybe sell a half a tray between 7 and close.
hey, Rumba, can you tray up the chicken and finish cleaning if I send C home? Yeah sure. (C was always clean AF) I go back there and there were 2 fryers full. Ohhh SHIT.
End of the night we sold maybe half a tray. She came back all worried. Hey, we have kinda WAY too much chicken, I'll be here for a couple more days, any chance you can help me spread the waste out between now and Friday?
I got to take home a trashbag with 36 pieces. And just made almost exactly what we'd need for the next couple days. It was down to breading/cooking a few pieces at a time but we made it work.
Had one manager once who traded food with Little Caesers and we all had pizza that night, it was awesome.
Give the manager an "esprit de corps" account to charge the "loss" to. That way they can track the costs and decide if it's worth it.
Believe they can also get a tax write off for part of the cost.
Why would you even have the position of Manager then?
God DAMN that's a great question
Lots of rules like this in large corporate outfits.
If you think this is crazy look into musical instrument disposal policies. It's disgusting
I tried but got a lot of hits on positive sounding stuff. I believe you, I just don’t see what you’re seeing.
So the manager in the original post probably brought some day old baked goods that would have been thrown in the garbage. The gas station I worked at had a lock on the bin so people wouldn't easily rummage through the bins for things like day old goods. Because it causes problems downstream to clean up after people dumpster dive. The other thing that can happen is something dumb happens somewhere, and some senior management (maybe even VP) sends out a memo that bans anyone from doing anything but what is now written policy. Lowest common denominator situation.
Basically upper management doesn't trust boots on the ground so they make broad sweeping rules that they strictly enforce.
I'm no longer allowed to use a work vehicle when running errands and also stop by a drive through even though that exact process was described as "managers discretion" in the policy/procedure.
.... Because one person elsewhere got rear-ended in a drive through, all 250+ branches of my company can no longer allow it's delivery drivers to pick up food on the way back to branch.
I'm assuming the person in the original post has a policy in place that is exactly saying don't do what he did
Our society will not improve until we punish this type of disgusting behavior. The people responsible for firing others for things like this must be held accountable.
Everyone should call the number! The prompts to get you to a human are 2, 1. I just spoke with Stacy, and she literally wrote down my comment. Like with a pen and paper.
Casey's is actually one of the few ethical petrol stations and will actually listen to customer feedback.
Casey's is actually one of the few ethical petrol stations
The very fact we're in this situation kinda tells me otherwise.
Corporate≠regional management.
I don't know. I've been dealing with ai chat bots more than should be reasonable. It was nice to talk to a human.
hello - -
my name is joe - -
I have a wife - a job
and a fam-il-ee
and i work - -
in a cookie factory
one day - - -
my boss came up to me he said
hey joe are ya busy i said no
he said do this - -
so i did - - -
Joe should see a lawyer about a wrongful termination lawsuit.
The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act (pdf) brought to law in 1996 shields most liability for people donating food exactly like he did.
This may have been a knee-jerk reaction from the employer incorrectly assuming they could be liable if someone got sick. Though its also possible they've been looking for a reason to dismiss a long time employee to replace him with a cheaper one. Corporate ownership makes me leans towards the latter.
Liability if the food is bad. He was fired because the company perceives it as theft. The act does not cover that.
Same reason grocery stores toss perfectly good food in locked dumpsters in lieu of donating it.
The only chain place with fresh food that donates their extra at the end of the day is Panera.
And this is exactly why by law Italian supermarkets have to donate anything approaching its sell-by date.
Oh fuck. We need that law in the states.
They'll get there. The US is still working through the Italian playbook. They're up to the 1930s.
On the surface it seems like you're being encouraging. Too bad i've skimmed a history book at least once in my life.
Interesting, here in the UK they sell it at a discount, which greatly helps us poorer people afford food.
Ironically if it's all donated to food banks instead, I'd never see it and would struggle more - I may be poor but I can afford food so I don't want to take away from what others might need more than me.
The whole system is sadly broken anyway, so much food, yet so many hungry :-(
There’s a place near me that sells under-selling, damaged package, and past-sell-by-date processed food for a super steep discount. It’s priced like being in the 90s or early 00s. They buy it from grocery store distributors who collect items that are “returned” to them by the store, and it’s run by Amish which don’t seem bound by quite the same regulations..? Not entirely sure how they are allowed to do that, though there’s another place in the opposite direction that isn’t Amish and does the same thing, so maybe it’s just allowed here.
Since most packaged food is still good well beyond the sell-by date, this means I can buy dry goods, shelf-stable microwave meals, and condiment sauces, and fill my car trunk/boot for about $100. It’s pretty out of the way, so I only make it there every few months, but I stock up heavily when I go. I’d probably have needed food assistance or just starved if I hadn’t found that place. (I prefer not to use it since my understanding is that it’s not a forever benefit even if you need it forever, and circumstances may warrant use later)
Have to be super careful about what sorts of things you buy, some of it goes stale or separates a lot faster than other things, but it’s all still edible, and if I get stuff that’s not tasty to me, my chickens eat it and poop out eggs, so it’s not really a loss.
I worked in a grocery store that had a little pizza making section. End of the day they'd throw out a lot of pizza. Management absolutely did not want employees to grab some at the end of the day.
Well, I was friends with the guy who worked there so he'd "throw it out" into my possession. I had a lot of free pizza back then.
Nowadays there's an app "too good to go" where you can get cheap food at the end of the day from places. Not as good as free, but like four slices of pizza for $5 isn't bad.
It absolutely sucks, but from a company perspective it's not about greed, it's about legal liability. If they provide food to a charity and someone gets sick from it, they are responsible for it. So the legal danger of giving away your "close to be expired" food is fraught with corporate danger.
Does it suck. Yes. Absolutely. But Joe opened them up to a potential lawsuit.
In the US they're already shielded from liability by the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act (and have been for 30 years)
So Joe didn't open them up to anything.
The real reason they do this is because there's always going to be some employee who abuses the system, so it's easier to do a blanket ban than police their employees.
Not equally enforcing the rule for everyone would actually be what opens them up to a lawsuit, because the fired employee can say, "but you let Bob do it once so you're discriminating against me." The employee probably wouldn't win, but winning a lawsuit is expensive.
Indemnity agreement, done.
This really should be the first go-to.
Old goods? Assign liability to the food bank and let them handle sorting.
Tossing perfectly edible food in the trash because it's no longer pretty and (acknowledging) I won't buy it, it is just insane.
I try to buy bruised food when I can because I know others won't. a wrinkly bell pepper, cucumber, or zucchini will be exactly the same once I chop it up and put it in my meal.
I absolutely agree. I wasn't trying to defend the company's practice. Just explaining why they make those kind of decisions.
In the US, both the business and the food bank are already shielded from liability. It's been that way for 30 years.
Everyone misses this point. Lawyers have turned into leeches of society sucking the empathy and fun out of everything so everyone is scared to get sued. On the flip side its so god damn easy for corporate lackeys to say 'no cuz lawyers' just to make their job incrementally easier rather than actually doing it. Its a shitty cycle and I've seen it too much in corporate America.
You should let the pantry know as well. They can be a force that could change this. They can let folks that go to the pantry know not to go to those kind of gas stations and also have them call corporate.
I mean the food pantry is apparently called creston food pantry in illinois if that helps
Big chains do stuff like that. They usually got on trouble once, or got some employees trying to game the system. Stuff with a damaged package can be taken by workers? There's always one guy that 'accidentally' drops the good stuff and then takes it home, and does that every day. Expired stuff can be taken home? Some things somehow end up in the back and are forgotten until one day over expiration. And then there are the idiots that find some stuff weeks expired, take it home, and then sue the company for giving them bad stuff. Usually management finds that it's easier to just outright outlaw taking things home instead of dealing with a few idiots, and that ruins it for all other people handling in good faith.
I'm not accusing you of making excuses for them, because all you're giving is a reason, and you're right. And at first it does feel like an excuse. But "management finds that it's easier" deserves more of our focus and pressure. If they're big enough that it's hard to manage basic employee rules/discipline on the ground, they're probably also big enough to be pocketing loads of profit. It's reasonable to expect that they'd to allocate some of those spoils to finding better solutions than "throw all the food away." For instance, if you pay people what their work is worth, they're less likely to risk termination by taking your old cookies.
And most people would think it's a huge waste of trashing stuff that's still usable, but companies don't care unless forced by regulations. Hell, a bunch of companies go out of their way to make stuff unusable.
This is very much wrong, and something I've always disagreed with.
The reasoning behind it, is 'conflict of interest' (I'm just passing on the reason I was told when I worked for 7-11). The employees in the store look at a 'product forcast', decide how many cookies to make (heat up some pre-made dough) and package for sale. If they are permitted to keep or donate expiring product: they may intentionally make more than needed, ensuring they get free stuff. This goes for all of 7-11s 'made in house' (assembled as best, usually just re-heated. Fried Chicken was the closest to 'fresh' they sell) products. Cookies, sandwiches, hot food, etc.
I get that viewpoint; but I think they should punish abuse of the system, not outright prohibit saving perfectly good food, if nearly expiring/expired, for good causes like the needy/homeless.
It’s not too hard to look at stores and see that there’s a consistent overproduction. Instead they punish people.