To resent grasping behaviour in the supermarket reduced section?

[Catkinsthecatinthehat]

Being a disorganised spontaneous sort, I only tend to make it to the local supermarket (Waitrose - there's posh!) just before it shuts. They have a reduced corner for produce close to the sell-by date and pop stuff in there about half an hour before closing time. I love a bargain but the section seems increasingly to be dominated by those I call 'hoggers'.

I was in there on Sunday to be confronted by a married couple poised like Olympic athletes on the starting block for the 100m final. She was wielding a large trolley, which she was using to fend off any other hungry bargain hunters (think lion tamer with chair and whip). He - hands like Nosferatu - had a poor supermarket worker trapped in the corner of the chiller cabinet. She was ineffectually trying to repel him with her sticker gun. Every time she reduced something he literally snatched it out of her hands and threw it into his wife's trolley before it could be placed on the shelf and anyone else have the opportunity to take it. They cleaned out everything in the section (15 packs of pomegranate seeds, 8 pots of watercress, several litres of custard, 35 sausage rolls, soggy lettuce, a year's supply of coleslaw etc etc).

The staff member, eventually freed from their clutches, later returned with one item she'd forgotten to put in the reduced section. The husband jogged across the supermarket floor, grabbed it, and then triumphantly returned to his queen, carrying aloft with both hands a slightly manky head of reduced price broccoli muttering 'ha ha haaaaaaa bwahhhhhhhh bwahhhhhhhhh!' Seriously, he did. It's on CCTV.

Now either sausage roll with pomegranate reduction is Heston's current 'bizarre recipe of the week' at Waitrose, and Mr and Mrs Nosferatu have 15 starving children at home, or they are being greedy buggers who are willing to purchase a bizarre combination of food they won't be able to finish because it's got a reduced sticker on it and is therefore a bargain. Either they are addicted to mini quorn scotch eggs which for some unknown reason never sell at full price, or they are delighted because the hungry and resentful vegans behind them are too weak to wrestle the little orange marbles away from them.

AIBU in thinking it's not a bargain unless it's something you actually want and can form the basis of a balanced and nutritious meal?

DH loves a good 3 bean. He isn't squeamish either. If he didn't want to eat it it was defininitely off.

Are we thinking that the reduced items should be kept behind a finish line and that the waitees should be kept a certain distance away until the shelves are stocked. At which point the staff should then fire a start pistol and release the waitees, whilst ducking out of their way rapidly...?

There's always the man with 17 boxes of coleslaw and a mango. What on earth is he having for tea?
My best ever bargain was in Waitrose buying nice ham .
There was a trainee on the deli and she was utterly baffled by the meat slicer and the parma ham on the bone. It was only the end of the joint but she winged it in the bag with the tiny bits she'd weighed out and hissed 'just take it' under her breath. Cost me all of a quid and was utterly lovely!

grumpykat he is having 17 boxes of coleslaw for his tea.

the mango is for the cat.

I work in Tesco - and the 'Minky Bin' (as DH & I call it) has been the source of many scraps. Actual fisticuffs, fights, brawls etc. And its in a fairly nice area. Last Xmas I saw (and watched managers) break up 2 old ladies (grey, uber-permed hair, twin sets etc) attempting to duff up each other over...the last packet of sprouts and some cheese strings!
Love Xmas shoppers!

I love our local co-op (wee one not a Somerfield take over) especially on a Wednesday night. Most of the staff are very by-the-book "dont do anyone a favour" type. But Malc who works on a Wednesday evening is a lovely and v sensible chap. He says that he will have to bin things that evening so why not see if someone can make use of them and reduces everything that is out of date that day to 10p! I usually pop in on a Wednesday anyway on my way back from my friends house and he always steers me to things, and once gave me 4 huge bunches of flowers for nothing and they lasted well over a week!

As we are now mates he will even remember the things I have bought and put things by for me after he has reduced them!

Which I should say is totally different to Tesco near me, their reductions are crap and the shelf seems to be always covered by someone who angles their trolley so no one else can get near, looks at every single item and then leaves without taking anything :o

Bogeyface are you my mum???

I love a bargain me.

But there's always the same handful of older ladies hanging around the reduced chiller at all times of day. Saturday morning, Sunday before closing, weekday afternoons, it seems like they're always there whenever I go.

Unfortunately, one of them absolutely reeks of cat piss.

I mean she smells like you would not believe, you can't get close without your eyes stinging.

If I didn't feel so sorry for her I'd think she actually did it on purpose so people give her a wide berth and let her take the stuff. She honks to high heaven.

our tesco are really shitty with their first round of reductions, no one ever looks at anything with only one sticker on

they had sausage in there reduced to £3.45 today.....these are the ones you can buy four packs for £12

same with the flowers £3 gladiolis (BOGOF so two bunches for £3) were marked down to £2 for one bunch.

I can do maths you know and that is not better value.

Catsmamma you are spot on about tesco.

The halycon days of reductions were before the computerised tills got smart in Waitrose. I remember a 2 for £4 sausages offer where there were two packs reduced to a 50p each from £3 per pack. Amazing I thought. Even better when I got home and noticed they'd taken £2 off the total bill. As it was part of a larger shop, no-one including me noticed at the time that they had in fact paid me a quid to take them away!

I used to work on the checkouts for Sainsburys when I was at uni. One summer they asked me to work full time on produce and with that came an evening shift with the sticker gun. POWER! There was one woman who would come in every week without fail and follow me around asking me to reduce things that weren't even going out of date. She'd pick things up and ask "when are you going to reduce this? I'll come back in 10 minutes" and asking me to further reduce items. Usually stuff like pots of herbs, not even soggy lettuce!

oldsilver I think that would make an excellent game show!

I've never worked out why Tesco etc. never seem to grasp that if they put things that HAVE to be sold that night down to silly prices, they WILL go, even if for a tiny amount. But at least people will return and the good haven't been chucked. No-one's going to buy a rump stwak down from£3.50 to £3.10 at 10pm....but a 50p batgain makes everyone happy!

When I worked for Tesco we chucked obscene amounts of food away. I worked on the deli and was disgusted at the waste. At least until I came to my senses and made my mum come into buy the kilos of almost out of date fillet steak I had ticketed as braising steak and reduced to £1 or so per bag....

a "stwak" is obviously a "steak"... Sigh!

Cheryl - something similar happened to my dh, but he was only buying the reduced items (three bunches of flowers). The flowers were in a 3-for-2 offer, so went through the till at the reduced price, and then had the full price of one bunch taken off. According to dh, the till operator's face was a picture when the till told her dh's shopping came to -2p - in other words, Tesco owed him 2p for the flowers!

She called her manager, and they agreed he could have the flowers for nothing, and they kept the receipt.

I know two of these mould lovers, both men both retired with a lot of time on their hands. One goes to the local mini market every night. He knows the staff laugh at him but doesn't care. He also got a courtesy car from a garage last week and went on a four hour round trip day out rather than put the miles on his car. The other one scribbles the date out on ham in his fridge so you can't tell it's out if date. Though the clue is there.

When I worked in Tescos, staff could take away any unsold reduced bakery items on a Sunday for free. I once came home with 4 baguettes and 3 carriers full of rolls, sliced loaves, bagels etc. Freezer was full of the stuff for weeks

It can all kick off round the reduced item section where I live - there's always lots of jostling round the hot counter when it's near the end of the day and there are 20 or so rotisserie chickens to be reduced! Meanwhile the chilled reduced section is normally full of the over 60s asking the poor teenager doing the reducing if he can 'knock a bit more off that one, love' or if XYZ can go in the freezer/can they boil it/how do they cook it if not/what is it/can he pass stuff down from the higher shelves etc etc...

Can't beat a good reduction!
I nearly had a bout of trolley rage in Tesco's the other day, an old dear, stationed in front of the reductions chiller with trolley positioned for maximum blockage of other vulturesshoppers, poring over each and every item, clearly things she'd never buy (hummus etc.) before PUTTING IT BACK !!!

I do dislike it when they put the reduction sticker over the ingredients listing ~(vegan DH)

Mould lovers, LOL

The staff and other shoppers can laugh all they like at the 'mould lovers' Filofax.

I took my mum out shopping the other day, she bought a load of reduced stuff and I saw the chap behind her at the till rolling his eyes and making a snide comment to his wife as the assistant scanned the stuff.

Fact is, mum went home to a house that they paid for outright, and I've enough saved in my early thirties to not really worry about working should I choose precisely because of that sort of eye for a bargain.

I've just remembered:

Once our Asda was selling off the bags of potatoes cheaply - say 30p a bag. I picked up one. A man next to me took 10. I think he would have bought more but they wouldn't fit in his trolley. He must still be eating those potatoes now!

Hey Cheryl I don't think for one minute the majority of shoppers who like to regularly seek out reduced produce are doing it because they are totally skint and I love a bargain, we are just having a laugh at their determination. Can't say it isn't greener than binning the stuff either.

It's important to take a stand against trolley blockers - I usually grab the non-handled end of the offending trolley and yank it out of the way. Very few old ladies are strong enough to stop me.

I work in the waitose reduced section!!! omg its awful...you get people following you round harrasing you. i nearly fell into the cottage cheese fridge as a man rooted through trying to find stuff we'd missed-and saying your closing in a minute this salmons too expensive, come on girl... i was like, mate, its down from £4.99 to 39p, piss off ... although what i said was sorry sir the gun wont let me reduce it further (which is lies i have the power down to 9p!)

Easy to mock, but once upon a time Tesco yellow labels kept us from starvation.

I once came up against the kind of hogging that worries OP: spoke to management who explained to hoggers that reduced prices need nor be honoured at the tills, and thereby made sure reduced items were fairly spread. Try it.

I once had the Waitrose shop assistant who had marked some things down, stop me mid shop and offer the items to me before putting the rest of them of the shelves.

I know make sure I have put on servicable clothing and tidied my hair before I pop to Waitrose.