Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

Flip

1 2 3 4

Original poster

Food bank faux pas??

86 replies

mydogishot · 08/09/2018 22:49

I was given (not sure why) a massive box of packs of incontinence pads and pants.
I've been trying to give them away.
No one wants them. I've tried hospices, hospitals, help the aged etc
Worst of all food banks. Russel trust person said and I quote "we don't take things like that!" And laughed whilst hanging up.

Now, I only asked because they've asked for personal items before.
I now feel like giving them nothing (stroppy)

Was I wrong to ask?

OP posts:

Fishywishyhead · 09/09/2018 08:41

I once saw someone put a tin of duck confit in the food bank at waitrose. Incontinence pants seem more useful and less insulting than that.

MrsMoastyToasty · 09/09/2018 08:41

Put them in your local supermarket's donations box for foodbank items. Donations don't have to have been bought in store.

Xenia · 09/09/2018 08:42

I had to throw all my father's out sadly as no time to find a home for them. There are absolutely loads. It felt like every time I opened a cupboard anywhere in his house there was a good chance a pack would be in there. it felt like a waste to be rid of them.

SuburbanRhonda · 09/09/2018 08:49

I once saw someone put a tin of duck confit in the food bank at waitrose. Incontinence pants seem more useful and less insulting than that.

Pads are only useful if you need to use them. What a strange comment.

daisychain01 · 09/09/2018 08:52

OP can't you just put them into the foodback containers in a Tesco store. Our store has a large cage where people have done their weekly shop and overbought, then put those extra items in with everyone else's.

daisychain01 · 09/09/2018 08:55

I have to say, my one experience of volunteering at a food bank left me feeling a bit like a spare part.

I'm surprised at that, hmm I thought they would have been grateful for all the help they could get.

CaptainKirkssparetupee · 09/09/2018 08:57

Post in the SN section of this site.

hmmwhatatodo · 09/09/2018 09:02

They were mostly all polite and friendly (there were definitely a couple who were a bit more ‘we do this all the time and this is our job and we’re just going to ignore you though). It’s just that there were probably too many people helping and it was a bit manic so a lot of the time I wasn’t really sure what I should or shouldn’t do. One of the volunteers told me that they used to come to sort food out but as there were too many volunteers they just came to do a different job now. They also said that there was regularly too much stuff like bread given from local bakeries that the volunteers were given it to take home at the end of their shift, seems a shame they can’t just give more of it out if there’s surplus.

bbcessex · 09/09/2018 09:04

Liv - I had suggested that - they couldn’t do that either.

My donation was multiples of the items on their wanted list.

OP - totally wrong that they made you feel stupid. Completely natural to think they may have been able to take them.

bbcessex · 09/09/2018 09:16

Happy - it’s such a shame to hear your experience too, I was hoping I’d be a one off.

The main food bank in our area is run by a City Centre church - no parking near enough to easily carry lots of bags / boxes etc in there either, (hence why I wanted to arrange a delivery).

Totally wrong that they made you feel awkward. Training needed urgently I think.

In relation to the OP..
The charity club I volunteer at occasionally gets donations.. we express super-gratitude, whatever it is, and check things out later. If we were offered something we couldn’t accept, we would handle it in an extremely pleasant way.

daisychain01 · 09/09/2018 09:45

hmm it seems they could use someone with organisational / project manager skills to give people some defined roles as it's a shame to have many willing helpers but nobody knowing where best to put their efforts. Then you get the more "forthright" personalities who create tension by sticking their elbows out and wanting to dominate the scene.

AamdC · 09/09/2018 09:50

I jave seen them in charity shops before now and as others have said nursing homes eould probably want them and special schools.

Cleanerswinagain · 09/09/2018 10:04

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

TacoFriday · 09/09/2018 10:06

Is there any sort of wildlife hospital near you? They go through a lot of puppy pads to line bird cages.

KnotsInMay · 09/09/2018 10:08

Was the box wrongly delivered to you? It sounds like a mistake.

I doubt the food bank person was laughing AT you.

“I now feel like giving them nothing (stroppy)” YABU .

Put them in your local Fb page. Peolle caring for relatives at home could be most grateful.

AlpacaPicnic · 09/09/2018 11:06

There's definitely a nice way and a nasty way to reject donations. We get people trying to donate books to our library all the time and we always try to turn them away nicely. My stock line is to thank them for thinking of us but we are unable to take donations at this time. I would never belittle anyone for doing a kind act.

The only person I was less than pleasant to was the chap I discovered dumping 12 binbags full of tatty paperbacks outside our front door. The bags weren't even tied closed and it was due to rain so basically he was dumping a dozen bags of Papier mache for us to dispose of because he couldn't be bothered to go to the tip.

TatianaLarina · 09/09/2018 11:26

Duck confit is ace.

Fishywishyhead · 09/09/2018 13:41

It was £18 a tin, I went back and checked on the shelf as I’m really that sad. That 18 quid could have bought so much more useful stuff for the food bank. Though I live in a city where students burn 20 quid notes in front of homeless people so who knows?

Fishywishyhead · 09/09/2018 13:46

Forgive me it was £11.99, I just googled to check. www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/duck-confit-confit-de-canard/366674-51574-51575

Point still stands, £12 for a tin of duck slop is shit for a food bank though doubtless there’ll be those who hoot about food bank users deserving it.

KnotsInMay · 09/09/2018 13:48

Actually, maybe at Christmas a Foid Bank client would like something other than tinned tuna and baked beans. You can’t put a turkey in the food bank.

Maybe it was duck confit given in a corporate hamper and they chose to donate it / don’t like it.

I am bemused by the mountains of tins of value beans and value dried pasta despite the polite notice on the front of the box that says that ‘due to the generosity of their supporters’ they have plenty of beans and pasta, and give other suggestions.

KnotsInMay · 09/09/2018 13:50

Fishy: and maybe that donor regularly puts in multiple tins of stewing steak / chicken in white sauce / carrots / UHT milk etc, but was happy to be very extravagant.

God, how poor people are subject to every judges view as to how they should be treated.

bbcessex · 09/09/2018 14:00

I imagine the Duck Confit was either a misguided attempt at putting in something special, or as a PP said, came from a hamper or similar.

I get a couple of corporate hampers most years - I suppose I could put Fortnums piccalilli in if I thought of it.

At Christmas I put in items like chocolate Father Christmas’s, Pringles and selection boxes etc. alongside standard stuff. Things my kids would like.

Completely shameful that we are in such straits that people have to use food banks so widely 😡🙁😡

TatianaLarina · 09/09/2018 14:03

They were most likely given the duck and didn’t want it.

I’d much rather have that than baked beans. Why should people have to eat shit food just because they’re poor?

It’s not ‘slop’ anyway, it’s duck legs.

AamdC · 09/09/2018 14:26

I think the point is if your foing to spend £11.99 on food then its prhaps better to get staple stuff like pasta and beans and pasta sauce etc, because it feeds more people , people shouldnt have to eat crap food, but you could feed a family of four for a few days with a bag of pasta and some jars of pasta sauce if you were desperate

TatianaLarina · 09/09/2018 14:59

The point that it was likely an unwanted gift has been made several times.

Flip

1 2 3 4

Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.

Join Mumsnet Log In

This thread is closed and is no longer accepting replies. Click here to start a new thread.