AIBU to be livid at Clintons?

[FilthyforFirth]

Popped into town today and got a few Disney bits as they had a sale on. The member of staff said she was pleased when someone bought it as they have been told all Disney merch will be going to the landfill on June 1st.

I was pretty horrified and asked couldnt it be donated to a charity shop or given to a childrens ward etc. She said no as Clintons didnt want to be sued if anyone injured themselves using something donated.

In this day and age where people are a lot more conscious and trying to be environmentally friendly AIBU to be pissed off at this from Clintons?

I have tweeted at them, not that I imagine it will do much...

I agree with plastering it over social media - what an utter waste of stuff, to say nothing of the landfill aspect of it!
Donate it to bloody foodbanks, chazzers, whatever - if stuff is in a chazzer and someone buys it, and then it causes them an injury (really though Clintons? What kind of injury are you thinking of here, a papercut?) no one sues the chazzer, do they! So that sounds like a shitey load of bollocks of an excuse because they can't be arsed to actually do something beneficial.
Maybe they should have looked into the tax benefits of donating, eh. Might have gee'd them up a bit to donate rather than bin.

How do you know it was a checkout assitant?! For all I know it was a store manager. I think it's a weird thing to lie about.

I don't. But you said they told staff, so I thought that meant all staff, which would include checkout assistants. It could well have been a manager, I don't know, I was just commenting on the telling of staff.

It is a weird thing to lie about, but often shop floor level staff have no idea what is happening. They could well have been told it is being withdrawn, and presumed as they haven't been told further that it is being binned.

In the petrol station the other day I heard one of the staff members telling a young driver about tyre pressures, they had no idea what they were talking about but the person was listening and assuming they were correct. I left the shop at the same time and helped the driver do their tyres.

My advice was just to make sure that's actually what's happening.

Your only BU is to be surprised.

ALL shops do this. Do you really think they are going to hang on to every unsold bit of plastic tat until it comes back into fashion again, or someone asks them to bring it out of the Tardis they keep out the back for all the unsold stuff?

It all gets dumped. In landfill, in China, off massive ships taking it out of our waters....shops have to stock more than they will sell because consumer behaviour dictates that no-one will look at one or two items on a shelf or a rail, but a fully stocked shop will draw people in.

Think about how often shops completely change their stock (toys/clothes). The unsold stock all gets thrown out, with a great deal of secrecy around it, so that people can't interrupt the chain and get stuff for free. The cost of this is built into the things you buy.

Designer shops often burn their unsold stock so that it can't be resold, as that would damage their high prices.

Clintons plastic tat department is no different from anywhere else. The only answer is for all of us to buy less stuff. The High Street shouldn't be taken as a barometer of financial health across the country, it's economically unsustainable to keep trying to drive more growth by getting people to spend more on stuff they don't need and to have it overproduced in this way.

When I read the title of this thread I thought to myself "What have Bill and Hillary done now?".

YADNBU

A large, and once highly regarded shop in Edinburgh was bought over by House Of Fraser a few years ago , and from then on the staff were banned from selling the testers for all the perfumes, which they had previously sold off to other staff members and the large amount of money it raised was given to charity! Now the bottles, some more than half full are dumped, it s shit and wasteful.
God knows what it’s like with Ashley in charge now! The

The pursuit of profit is doing awful things to the planet

id love to go dumpster diving stuff i see on programmes about it just chucked out is ridiculous

I used to work for them. Discontinued stuff had to be destroyed. I mean cutting up teddies, smashing Yankee candles. Tearing up cards, snapping stationery. Industrial bin fulls. And we were a small store

Haha I didn't think about the Clintons connection!

I'd be very surprised if that were true, usually companies sell it on the grey market.

I'd be very surprised if that were true, usually companies sell it on the grey market.

Have you worked in many retail stores?
Some may , but having worked in a similar store to Clinton's I can totally see this as being true.
I remember cutting up & binning massive amounts of Christmas cards that all had to be binned. It was awful & such a waste.

I agree with nwybhs I don’t think a shop assistant/ store manager would know anything about these sorts of logistics. Might just be a rumour going round.

But why don't shops reduce the stock so cheap it will be bought rather than bin it ?
It's madness I know I love a bargain but it annoys me that some sale stuff isn't reduced much , like a cuddly toy Is £ 10 is reduced to £9 so if it's going to be binned reduce to £1 .

This will be Disney’s decision and not Clinton’s. Disney are hot on their licensing; in a previous line of work we came across some Disney items that had ended up in a charity shop but should have been destroyed. Someone had obviously saved them and taken them to charity, Disney were told about this and went to the shop and rebought all the stock so it could be destroyed. It’s total madness but I guess they’re protecting their brand?!

I work in a supermarket years ago. One Christmas I threw away 1500 pounds worth of ready meals. At the time they wouldn’t donate them. Six months later I refused to stand at the front of store asking for people to donate to the food bank because of the amount of food we threw away. My manager threatened me and I said I won’t be asking anyone for anything when I
Known how much food we waste.

That was just one days worth of waste

You might be right re licensing. The member of staff said Clintons aren't renewing their Disney license.

I completely agree. If they reduce it to basically nothing they still get to make some money and it doesnt go to waste. Complete madness. I am so cross at how wide spread this is when there is so much need.

They can't donate it in case people injure themselves, but it's fine if people injure themselves having paid for the privilege?

When I was a manager at a well known bear shop one of my jobs was to draw on bears and other furry creatures so they couldn’t be taken out the bin. Other managers would cut their feet off but that was too harsh for me-I just drew eye brows so they looked rather cross.

I would agree it's due to the licensing. If the Disney licence ends on a certain date they are unable to sell from any of the items from then. They are also not able to pass them on to charities or other retailers as Disney have full control over where their merchandise is sold.

I was in a Clintons recently and the Disney Tsum Tsums or whatever they are called were reduced to 49p. They have been 99p for ages (originally about £4 ish). They had massives of them and even at 49p simply were not selling. If they aren't selling there why would they sell if they were in a charity shop? It gets to a point that some products aren't selling and are never going to sell. Woolworths used to drop the price of cd singles once they had left the Top 40. They would go down and down to 10p - then after a couple of weeks of not selling at 10p they would be thrown away (I worked for them - this was one of my duties).
Some products produced just don't sell. People simply don't want them. However it shocking that recycling these unwanted goods is not what happens. I expect it's all down to costs. Sadly.

I'm another one who opened the thread wondering what Bill 'N' Hill were up to now

This is well worth getting angry over (locally and globally) and I hope Watchdog DO pick it up!

They did a piece on coffee shop food being spoiled and thrown away instead of being handed out to people in need on the day it went out of date. Terrible really.

I worked in one of these chains for a while and we were allowed to take items home at the close of business on the day they were due to 'expire' they were almost always still good for a solid day or two after! Paninis etc....

I’ve just found out today a bakery in our town offers food 50% off between 1-2pm. Anything left after that is thrown away. It’s all made fresh every day. We have a hostel that families can stay in for free while their relatives are in hospital in the area. They set up a roster for people to go in and donate food and cook meals. And here we have a business and many others throwing good food away.

I used to work in retail and we donated food, unfortunately we stopped as it was found that people we donated to were selling it. Also another company I worked for used to sell damaged furniture etc to staff at a much reduced price that stopped as they discovered quite a few members of staff deliberately damaging stuff so they could buy it cheap. Sadly like in so many TV bings the greedy few ruin it for the majority.