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?

Humph my local Waitrose don't have anything as common as a reduced section! They just mark things down on the shelves so you get a nice surprise every so often.

Tesco on the other hand have not only a reduced chiller section (I think - can't really see for grey haired retired men who have made it their life's work to save 70p on a chicken Kiev) but the world's shittest reduced shelf with such delights as dented cans of special brew for 14p each, tins with no labels (presumably for games of cat food/soup roulette) and pre-opened boxes of cheese straws. And my personal favourite is the box of Gordon Ramsey chocolates dh and I once saw reduced from £5.99 to £4.99 that even had a handful of the chocolates still in it - as visible by half the front being torn off. Lovely.

at OP.

There are similar types in Sainsburys. There were five of them last night circling like vultures over near-date yoghurts. I won't laugh at them too much though because I went away with an apple and cherry pie for 65p and a pack of corn-fed chicken portions for £1.79. I did however find them in their normal places on the shelves rather than the scratty reduced corner. They are now in my freezer, which needs re-stocking after it needed an emergency defrost last week. That's my defence anyway!

The well observed op made me smile, :) but there's another side to it.
We depended on the reduced section before the sharp elbowed got interested and took over from those who really need it. We know who each other is, and try to share out stuff as best we can, but a new type of reduced section people are getting really grabbing and often treat the staff and others badly.

I'm in a wheelchair (no, not 'on' DLA) and often struggling to get anything when the locusts swarm, and admire the stinky who can repel just by existing. :D

So if you see me with 5 bags of spuds, and five of some strange fruit, that's because we don't eat meat and those spuds will have to form the main part of every meal for as long as twe can, and the fruit will eaten as fast as poss to get whatever vitamins remain. None of it will go to waste, we cook round whatever's available and the kids don't complain however wierd the combinations.

Re the 'mouldy bin': our Tesco bakery often sells produce that's mouldy. Yesterdays bread and basic current buns cost 48p and 24p, and we've had to pick green mould off both. The date was 12th so I assume they freeze and defrost and that's why they end up mouldy by last day of sale.

(before anyone starts, our internet dongle isn't a luxury, it's needed for education)

I was very bad in a previous life and as punishment worked as a shelf stacker in the local supermarket for a couple of months. Nowt wrong with that in essence, but the winter during which I paid my dues, it snowed. A lot. And there's nothing like a bit of a flurry to turn the British public into rabid, snarling, feral animals.

I had to physically separate two middle class and extremely well turned out women who were batting each other with their little umbrellas, both trying to win the grand prize of the last sliced white loaf.

It would seem that supermarkets send normally rational people utterly bonkers. DH is a copper and his first week on the job he was called to Sainsbo's because a couple of elderly and infirm men were having a punch up over some carrots. The scene of the crime? The reduced price section.

The supermarket is the modern day gladiator arena. I blame the fluorescent lights frankly. People become giddy with adrenalin and don't know how to otherwise channel it.

This thread is hilarious, and brings back fond vivid memories of my time working for Sainsburys as a student. Supermarkets really are a case study in human behaviour. Didn't realise reduced sections had cliques, suspicious of "undeserving" newbies...