Is this Facebook post reasonable or rude and ungrateful?

Valid point, clumsily put. So I’d give them the benefit of the doubt.

Yep! I know someone who runs a food bank and has people dropping off stale bread and overripe bananas acting like they are Jesus with the loaves and fishes. It is unusable and they have to pay to throw it out

The point is valid. However ,The way it's been put is rude. It could have been written something like "To Whoever is leaving this food I/We can see your intentions are good. However we do not accept these items because ............"

I used to work in a charity shop and I lost count of the number of times we had to post reminding people not to dump stuff.

If it’s come from Tesco I doubt it very much. It would be more hassle to take it there, waste is given to charities and they pick it up every evening and anything that’s left goes to animal feed and is put in a different colour bag then sent back on the delivery lorry. Dragging it from the store to wherever this charity operates from is definitely the harder way to dispose of it.

A few small tweaks would make the message appear less rude. Rather than 'dumping' to describe what's been done, use the neutral 'leaving', and don't include 'whoever you are' as that sounds like something a teacher would say to a class of naughty schoolchildren. Instead of that ending, say 'To be clear, we unfortunately can't use donated sandwiches or bread, so please don't leave these on our doorstep'.

You've just conjured up those "other mechanisms" in your own mind. Keep it simple and stick with the information that's been provided.

Fresh food isn’t the issue; no one here is suggesting that stale food is better. The issue is that it’s not fresh after it’s been dumped on a door step goodness knows when and the charity has to pay to get rid of it. You have to have been beamed in from another planet not to be aware that you’re helping no one by shoving leftovers onto a charity’s doorstep.

But it's not about whether fresh food is better than tinned at all - would you rather have a tin of beans that had been left outside your door for hours or even days, or a carton of milk?

To be honest, even tins or jars left outside would likely give them pause for thought when they discovered them, as they have no way of knowing of their provenance or how they could have been tampered with/spoiled by the giver, a passer-by with ill intent, an animal or the weather.

Even if you ordered an online food delivery from the supermarket that only included non-perishable, non-ambient items, would you be happy for the delivery person to just leave it unannounced on the street outside your house at some point, rather than knocking during the agreed slot and actually handing it to you?

Exactly. The first rule of giving something to somebody is to make sure that they will get it, and in an acceptable and manageable state.

Not one person on this thread would leave an envelope of cash on the ground outside the bank overnight and consider that they had actually 'paid it in' - and be surprised when it didn't ever hit their account.

Did they really donate in good faith, though? Any adult knows that perishables should be refrigerated - and certainly not left out overnight; and if it was children, who had somehow got hold of a lot of supermarket sandwiches, their parents would have said that it was a lovely idea, but not something that actually helps them.

Personally I think fresh food is better than tinned so there is thought put into it. They've just not realised it would go to waste. I don't see why anyone has to be rude in letting people know something they were unaware of before.

Totally reasonable. No one shoulf be "grateful" for someone's unthinking and inappropriate actions that are costing the "recipient" time and money. There is no generosity here, the "donor" is acting selfishly to feel good about themselves without putting any thought into what is needed. The food is going to waste, no one is benefitting from it. They need to stop and they need to be told to stop bluntly.

also dumping fresh food at doorstep makes it unsafe and unusable even if they had fridges.

The point they make is valid but it’s poorly worded. They can make the point while also saying how much they appreciate the thought that someone has given to them.
BUT going forward please just send these items as we cannot accept those items for these reasons.

It’s not that difficult to be polite.

Taken out the good stuff and dumped the rest.

I haven't had a collection like that so wouldn't have known it's an evening thing. But someone has collected it to donate it then?

No one can say what the person's intention was, but it could have been someone who really thought they were helping and would be embarrassed/upset seeing such a rude post. The (FB) OP could have kindly put her point across.

Or even better, kindly posted about it the first time it happened so it didn't keep happening. Put a sign up or whatever.

It’s not always what you say but how you say it. The delivery was too brusque and rude. Wouldn’t have cost them to be nicer about it.

OK seems it’s more of a dump than a donation so maybe they’re sick of explaining.

Exactly

Quite reasonable, not rude.

From the facebook posts it looks like it is an Olio collection from Tesco (collected in the evening) that is then dumped outside the food bank while they're closed.
The volunteers then have to bin it all as it's out of date and has been left outside!

No one is actually donating this food to the food bank, it's being dumped outside for the volunteers to find whenever they are next in.

The message is ok but the wording sounds a bit stroppy. Would have been better to message after one week of sarnie dumping, when less exasperated.

I am voting 'understandable'. You often see signs outside charity shops 'please don't leave donations'. Or people who dump 'donate' grubby dirty books to the library. No one is going to borrow them. There isn't the people power in these organisations to process and sort out other people's junk. It's frustrating and actually feels like the donator is sticking two fingers up to the organisation. Have a think about how useful your donation is going to be, how it will be added to the system and how it will get to the end-user. Perishables such as sandwiches require immediate distribution. It's very high-handed to think volunteers have the time and resources to respond so quickly. And indeed that people are going to want to eat sandwiches left in bags on the pavement.

Yep this. ^ The village my cousin lives in had a community hub - an old bus shelter - that was turned into a community place where people could leave books and DVDs and video games and jigsaws...

People soon started bringing other stuff like electrical goods they didn't want as they'd got a new one (the other one still worked but was shabby, and potentially dangerous.) Also, lots of old clothes and shoes and shabby toys and dolls kept appearing, and 100s of bits of lego that made nothing, as the bits weren't matching.. They were just random. Then there was a broken 6 ft high bookcase, knackered pictures in chipped picture frames, old and used dish drainers and bowls for the sink... Also a huge ugly fire surround, a rusty fireguard, and a really worn, dirty, manky armchair..

It resulted in the people running the hub having to go and do skip runs every other week. It got completely out of hand, and the shit hit the fan when someone dumped 3 old quilts, and 6 sets of knackered, faded bedding/duvet sets, and 3 bagfulls of manky clothes, odd socks, and old pillow cases! No-one was going to have them. Even the charity shops would not have had them, as no-one would have bought them!

It was shut down because of the idiots fly-tipping!

It could have been worded much more nicely! Just a reminder about what can and cant be donated, and the cost of having to dispose of waste impacting the charity, but it sounds like it was written by someone who has forgotten that the bread donator was acting from kindness even though mistaken!