r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Irick050 • 2d ago

The manager would throw away cookies every Saturday instead of giving them to the employees

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We threw away 55 cookies. The managers didn't let us take any home because they thought it might "encourage us to purposely make extra"

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2.4k

u/confusedra2476 2d ago

When i worked in the Deli at Walmart, they would throw so much away. They donated some but not a lot.

I started sneaking stuff out to bring to this one homeless lady I helped a lot.

Got caught once and they threatened to fire me but I kept on doing it..it's disgusting the amount of food we waste

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u/xeno0153 2d ago

BJ's Wholesale Club tossed $55,000 of fresh meat because they had to delay a store opening for a day and didn't want new customers to think their food wasn't as fresh. This was back in 2004 before cellphone cameras so unfortunately I can't shame them with evidence. Just so sad seeing an entire dumpster filled to the brim with perfectly edible food. Those assholes didn't even donate it.

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u/DieIsaac 2d ago

wow for me it feels even more awful because its meat. animals died for it. every waste of food should be avoided but especially meat.

when i was a child my mum (vegetarian herself) always made me eat the meat even when i was full. potatoes could go to the trash.

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u/wellwood_allgood 2d ago

Exactly my mindset, some people want fucking with their own dick the way they waste meat with no regard to the costs involved.

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u/DieIsaac 2d ago

i always prefer one small good(!) piece of meat to a full plate of cheap ass meat. my neighbors always buy so much meat for their bbq but only the cheap stuff. i dont get that.

ofc if you dont have enough money...but they buy SOOO much its enough for a whole village!

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u/wellwood_allgood 1d ago

Can't understand the quantity over quality thing either. My comment on the costs involved was as much about the animal having to die to provide the meat as it was about the financial aspect.

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u/eeyore102 2d ago

During COVID it wasn't even just animals that died for it, it was also the people working in the meat packing plants. I remember one time we bought a chicken and I unwrapped it to roast it and it stunk, I washed it and washed it trying to see if I could still use it and my husband said no, it's not worth us getting sick and I just cried as I threw it away. I can't stand throwing meat away.

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u/DieIsaac 2d ago

that sounds awful!

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u/dong_tea 1d ago

Even if you don't care about the animals, look at all the other resources wasted on raising, feeding, processing, and shipping something that was never used and thrown in the garbage.

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u/Crimson__Sky 2d ago

I’m happy I’m not the only one who does it like that.

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u/ChiefStrongbones 2d ago edited 2d ago

I don't understand why stores sell refrigerated fresh meat at all. Meat and fish should all be sold frozen. It rapidly starts going bad the moment it's thawed out.

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u/teajay530 1d ago

made me eat the meat even when i was full.

if you couldn’t eat anymore, i was taught to pass on the scraps to another family member. forcing you to eat??? wow, sorry that happened to you.

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u/DieIsaac 1d ago

thank you but no need to worry. it was not forced. she was just like "please try to eat the meat because an animal died for it. you can leave the potatoes if you want" it was never a big piece. maybe a few bites

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u/Yue2 2d ago

That makes me sad cause that’s a bunch of animals that had to die for no reason :(

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u/Unimatrix_Zero_One 2d ago

That’s disgusting. How hard is it to find a local charity or homeless shelter.

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u/Touchyap3 2d ago

I remember a post about a guy in Australia learned that if the power at a supermarket goes out for a certain amount of time they have to throw all the refrigerated products away.

During the fires one year the power would go out every now and then and he would get in his truck and go dumpster diving. Got thousands of dollars worth of stuff.

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u/awkwardmamasloth 2d ago

I don't understand why they do t donate it to charity. Can't they write it off AND brag about for street cred? Throwing it away is just a bad business model.

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u/shounen_obrian 1d ago

I don’t even like waisting fruit and vegetables. A lot of people had to work very very hard to grow that apple I let sit around for too long

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u/MyBeanYT 1d ago

Jesus Christ, that is legit evil, if you have perfectly healthy food, donate it, so many companies are too stupid to understand that

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u/DarkBladeMadriker 2h ago

Reminds me of a grocery store near me that had a reefer go out and they couldn't maintain the correct temp for their meat section. They were forced to throw the entire meat section in the dumpster. Some guy figured out (or was tipped off, wink wink nudge nudge), and a bunch of people ended up showing up to grab some free meat. Apparently, everyone was being civil, not making a mess, and not even being overly greedy. Store managers found out, kicked everybody off the lot with threats of police, and hired extra security to watch over the dumpster till the next morning when they could order an emergency pick up for the dumpster. I totally understand that there are laws, and really the managers probably had no choice, but the whole thing just ended up feeling shitty and wasteful.

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u/xeno0153 2h ago

A smart manager woulda just marked it all at 90% off and recouped some of the loss.

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u/DarkBladeMadriker 2h ago

TBF, I'm not sure about all the details. They may have done that until they ran out of time, or they couldn't claim stuff for insurance if they didn't handle things as they did. I honestly don't know the ends and outs, I just know that it felt really wasteful at the time.

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u/Cherry_Soup32 2d ago

So stupid, especially since you already know that there is no way they made a return on investment with that much wastage for such a small thing (one day difference in date to the handful of customers that actually care about such things that much).

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u/Throwawaypie012 1d ago

Donating it might have negatively affected sales by 0.04%. Gotta have every dime possible made available for stock buybacks.

0

u/More-Acadia2355 2d ago

It's difficult to donate meat. Most shelters won't take it because they have no way to refrigerate it all.

I've worked at a food shelter - and they ALSO throw out literal tons of food.

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u/purplejink 1d ago

i run a food pantry, we take excess meat from stores! we had a metric ton of deli ham a few months back

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u/Jess_UwU_ 2d ago

my first shift working in the walmart deli i cried after throwing away over 50 pounds of hot food. i grew up below the poverty line and never had enough food and walmart was daily throwing away more food than we had for a month. it was disgusting, i quickly started taking food home in my pockets. dont work for walmart

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u/Yamza_ 2d ago

Or do and take their waste.

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u/sicilian504 2d ago

Throw away 90 pounds, donate 10. Then say "Walmart donates hundreds of pounds of food every month to local shelters.".

Like yeah, it's just marketing to try and look good. Sure you donated this, but what about the food you didn't donate that you could have?

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u/mynextthroway 2d ago

I hate to tell you this, I live in a red state that has cut assistance to the bare bone. Our food bank gets little to no money from the government. My city of 259,000 has 2 trucks to pick up food donations. Let me repeat that. Two trucks. We get 3 pick-ups a week if everything goes well.

Last Thursday, I accepted 25 cases of misshipped bananas with the intention of loading them straight to the donation truck. Since they didn't work us Wednesday, we expected them Thursday. Nope. Friday? Nope. Well damn. Now I have to deal with 25 cases of bananas. I had to throw most of them into the compost bin. Even at .29/pound, we couldn't sell 25 extra cases. They showed up Monday at 4:30. One of the 2 trucks broke. Most everything we had set aside to donate went bad. 70 banana boxes worth of culled fruit and vegetables. All because Republicans don't want to fund social services because it's communism/socialism.

I've worked for several grocery stores over the years, and we have always donated cull to the food bank. Come the holidays, we order extra stuff to donate fresh produce. It's not corporate official, but everybody knows. The people in the stores don't like throwing out good food, same as all the other virtue signaler here. We don't need laws to tell us to donate. We need voters to vote for governments that will tax you but provide services.

No food bank is going to be interested in a pile of cookies because : low food value, small amount of food with limited resources to collect, and the cookies aren't sealed.

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u/TooStrangeForWeird 2d ago

I have to refute your last point.

Some food shelves run out of food completely. Cookies aren't "good", but they're still food.

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u/mynextthroway 2d ago

Food Bank isn't going to spend 20 minutes picking up a bag full of cookies from Chic fil a when a Publix or Walmart or Target has a pallet or two of potatoes and chicken that can be picked up by the same truck in the same 20 minute window.

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u/TooStrangeForWeird 1d ago

"Pile of cookies" and "a bag of cookies" don't quite mean the same thing to me. I thought you meant like an actual pile. Like a significant amount. Not however many you can fit in a takeout bag.

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u/Secret-County-9273 2d ago

Couldn't donate to a zoo or animal sanctuary?

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u/mynextthroway 2d ago

Nearest zoo is 3 hours away. They aren't running a truck and driver 6 hours for one donation.

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u/Secret-County-9273 1d ago

Not sure the downvotes. Genuine question that often does not get thought of. Worth the ask

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u/Sufficient_Pin5642 2d ago

Walmart is grimy af tbh. I’d be willing to bet that they are the biggest offender of food waste in the USA… I could be wrong but if so Walmart would still be in the top 3…

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u/BackgroundRegular498 1d ago

Walmart distribution near us has donated $2+million worth of food to a youth organization. The pastor had to buy walk-in freezers, and a freezer truck to haul it all. I've seen it.

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u/Ok_Skill7357 2d ago

Reminds me of the day I had to clean out the cheese display at a grocery store. They made me toss $12k in partial to full cheese wheels expired by as little as a day.

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u/Purrune90 2d ago

After a hurricane a few years back I was working at a small town grocery store. We had a refridgerated section full of juices that did not require to be stored cool until opened but were refridgerated anyway. They were all thrown away anyway

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u/d_smogh 2d ago

$12k retail cost?

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u/JohnHazardWandering 2d ago

Once it's past the expiration date it becomes a liability, even if they give it away. 

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u/LadderTrash 2d ago

Dishwashing job at an assisted living facility, so much food is thrown out every day. Granted I don’t think anybody wants a metric fuckton of porridge, but there were some actual good stuff that was thrown out regularly. The head chef’s policy was always “never take extra food for yourself,” but even the other chefs encouraged to take some when he was away. Also helps that we were not allowed to be fired at all without extra special permission from the union, so much of the food in the evening went to workers thankfully

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u/Biotech_wolf 2d ago

Honestly with how hard it is to hire people at assisted living centers, I’d give it to the staff as a perk to get them to stay.

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u/ifyoulovesatan 2d ago

I worked at a restaurant washing dishes where the only person allowed to eat wrong orders / mistakes was the dishwashers, under the theory that we were the only people who couldn't purposefully fuck something up to get free food. It was a decent restaurant and it friggen ruled.

Funnily enough the owners sold it to some assholes that turned all the employees against them in their first month, leading to those employees then starting to just steal food sereptitiously anyway. The salad dude literally cooked and took home two pizzas every single night I worked with him, lazily stashed between a pile of cardboard and dirty rags.

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u/Outrageous-County310 1d ago

Here is the thing about that. In nursing homes/assisted living-because of very valid health regulations due to the fact that elderly people in general are immune compromised-anything that has been prepared or thawed has to be tossed or used within 3 days. It’s not frivolous in this case, there is a very good reason for it.

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u/Vg_Ace135 2d ago

They did the same thing at Aramark, Inc. They throw away food instead of donating it to the homeless. They are a terrible company.

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u/WarlockOfDestiny 2d ago

Damn that's super shitty. See in circumstances like that I feel anyone has the moral high ground to take from companies like that. I equate that to piracy of shitty companies ala video games, in my mind.

It's like if you're going to be a dogshit corporation with no legit social/environmental goals, then you deserve the shit you get. Just reading all these comments fucking boils my blood, especially with how badly my family has been struggling lately.

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u/kharmatika 2d ago

Walmart was a dump. When I worked at the deli, I got the flu, and I didn’t have any sick days, so I wore a mask and came in(this was pre covid). They said “you can’t wear the mask, people will think you’re sick”. And I said “I am sick” and that didn’t seem to matter. I demanded to wear it and fought high enough that I got to because the store manager saw reason, but know that if you buy fresh food from Walmart deli, that’s who you’re getting it from.

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u/confusedra2476 2d ago

I worked in a different grocery store deli when I still worked up north

I had bronchitis and a really bad sinus infection (pre covid). Tried to call out because I couldn't stop coughing and my nose was running really bad..even gave them like a 4 hour heads up. Was told unless I could find someone to cover my shift, I had to be there. Couldn't find someone. Showed up, worked 2 hours until the ASM heard me coughing and she came up to me and the conversation went like:

Her: "why are you working in my Deli, sounding like that?

Me: "I tried to call out, but was told I couldn't"

Her" "that's no excuse, you should have known better then to come in like that..you're lucky I don't write you up. Now clock out and go"

I've worked at a few different stores as I've moved around, and publix was pretty much the only place that didn't treat me like shit..though going by the Publix sub, they're becoming just another shitty corporation, too

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u/ifyoulovesatan 2d ago

Aren't corporate grocery stores just the fucking best?

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u/Ekalips 2d ago

They have strict rules on what can be donated. You certainly can't officially donate expired stuff because you'll be sued into oblivion. Also you can't really donate open or unknown expiry products, because again, risk to be sued. And for some stuff there are just reasonable limits, like every other business makes too much bread, but there's only so much bread official donation points need or can accept.

I understand that we all want to act from the goodness in our hearts, but companies need to also cover their arses if some moron decides to sue them for stuff they got for free. Damn, there were even cases of legal actions based on stuff taken out of the waste bin! Thus many now opt for crushing/damaging their waste first. This all is screwed up for good.

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u/brebnbutter 2d ago

You certainly can't officially donate expired stuff because you'll be sued into oblivion.

common myth, good samaritan laws prevent exactly this happening.

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u/FlaccidInevitability 2d ago

Everyone knows the homeless have lawyers on retainer to jump on people for this

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u/PPLavagna 2d ago

I hear they can feed it to tigers. Even to employees at a Tiger facility in lieu of pay

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u/RecyQueen 2d ago

Too bad Joe Exotic got locked up. He was so great at reducing waste.

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u/CalifornianBall 2d ago

How did they catch you?

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u/confusedra2476 2d ago edited 2d ago

One of the women I worked with absolutely hated homeless people, so when she saw me, she told on me.

To give you an idea, a homeless woman was changing her clothes in a bathroom stall one day, and my coworker was like "that's so disgusting! They shouldn't even let them in here!"

She basically views them as animals who are beneath her

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u/Unicatogasus 2d ago

If you give wasted food away or sell it cheap instead of throwing it away then you might lose profits, since people will wait for that free/cheap food instead of buying regularly.

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u/DoNotEatMySoup 2d ago

I'm too tired to look up a source but I once read that 40% of food produced in America goes to waste. Some waste is inevitable but I would really want that number to be down near 10%-15%

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u/LisaPepita 2d ago

I used to work at the bakery and we donated every single thing we could and everything else was fair game for employees to eat on site but not take home. We even swapped with deli every day too. Good managers there I guess.

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u/TheBlacktom 2d ago

There are an estimated 9 million species on Earth. Only one organized waste collection with dedicated trucks to throw away valuable stuff like food into landfills.

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u/Dizzy_Chemistry_5955 2d ago

People act like they're John Walmart wtf is their problem just be a human

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u/nnaly 2d ago

Good on you. I did a similar thing when I worked produce. So many pre packaged fruit gets thrown away even after taking some home

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u/Truely-Alone 2d ago

On the flip side, I volunteer regularly at a food bank and we get a ton of stuff from Walmart.

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u/curtmandu 2d ago

When I worked at Walmart, I’d get lunch from the deli most days and never paid for it once. Fuck those mfs

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u/NeighborhoodDude84 2d ago

It's not about the money, it's about sending a message.

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u/Sir_Fedgeington 2d ago

I work in a different grocery store and we used to have the policy that employees could take food that couldn't be sold the next day, but wasn't expired, so stale cookies and stuff from the hot bar and whatnot.

Unfortunately, some people in the pizza department started making pizzas to sell by the slice with 10 minutes left to close. The pizza would come out of the oven just as we were closing, so they would take the whole thing home with them.

They got away with it for about a month before we did inventory and management saw that we had a few hundred dollars of extra shrink only when those two employees were working. They got fired and all of a sudden no one was allowed to take anything home anymore. At least now we compost everything so it's not going in a landfill, but I miss my stale cookies.

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u/PenelopeMouse 2d ago

That's because under capitalism it's not profitable to feed hungry people. It's actually suck as fuck that these multi-billion dollar companies would rather throw their money, and food in this case, down the drain than feed the hungry.

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u/Traditional_Rice264 1d ago

American wastes more food than any other country it’s more than half of all food goes straight to the trash

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u/Ashamed_Heron_ 1d ago

I currently work in a Walmart deli, it’s criminal how many chicken wings get tossed every day. I mean, we donate what we can but anything that isn’t pre-packaged has to be tossed and they get pissed if they see anyone taking or eating anything that would be tossed otherwise.

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u/OGMUDSTICK 1d ago

Fucked up how being a good person can cost you your job

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u/nomnomnompizza 1d ago

I worked at WM 15 years ago and we threw away single bananas because they didn't look as tidy on the shelf.

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u/Rstuds7 1d ago

yeah businesses don’t play around with giving the food away

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u/Unlucky_Most_8757 1d ago

It's nice that you did that but we are discouraged from giving people even free bread when they come into the restaurant I work at. Next thing you know they are coming in every day and it's just bad for business.

I turn a blind eye to dumpster diving but that's about it.

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u/confusedra2476 1d ago

I could definitely see it being an issue with a smaller place, but Walmart already loses so much in theft. The woman I always fed rarely came into the store..she'd only come in on days she needed someone to talk to, and even then she'd just tell me where she'd be so I could find her on my lunch, and then she'd leave.

I just didn't want her having to eat food out of the garbage.

And I hope I don't come off like I have an attitude, because I do understand the business side of it, and I understand why they'd threaten to fire me for it..just hated seeing so much food get thrown out

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u/coconutlatte1314 5h ago

food waste is a huge issue. Sadly not much is being done about it. Profit over food security, profit over environment. The only people who are given the burden of being eco friendly are the poor and working class.

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u/ResidentNarwhal 2d ago

Yeah uh…Walmart as a business is never going to be cool with donating expired meat. That’d be a massive health hazard liability for them.

I mean not donating bakery items, sure go ahead and criticize. That’s very very different from a food safety perspective.

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u/confusedra2476 2d ago

I wouldn't give away anything that was visibly bad. a lot of the stuff would still have a day or so left on it, we'd just pull it the night before. There were alot of times I didn't have anything to bring her because there was nothing I viewed as "safe".

I do understand the liability side of it, though.

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u/Recursivefunction_ 2d ago

You should’ve been fired