Customers who dump stuff in the wrong temperature

[Auburngal]

Ice cream in the baked beans
Or find a cheaper pizza in the frozen section - dump the fresh pizza they had and leave it in the freezer or vice versa

So much money is wasted by customers who do this.

YOU picked it up
YOU changed your mind
YOU should put it back

One day I had to dispose of £340 of food - mainly meat which was dumped in the wrong temperature section

Stop being lazy

Are you the same poster who doesn’t like customers rooting about for the best date? Maybe find a job outside retail? I’m afraid customers are always going to interfere with the smooth running of the store. They’re a nightmare!

I used to work in Sainsbury's and this drove me insane. I'd have to walk around with a trolly just before closing and get all the perishable items from random sections. Unsurprisingly it all had to be binned because god knows how long it had been there. Such a waste. It's infuriating.

Unfortunately I don't think people will ever learn or stop doing this, they seem to lose all common sense and respect for others once they enter any retailer, not just food but clothing, furniture....etc.

I left retail work over 10 years ago because I don't have the patience to deal with people's stupidity, entitlement and abuse.
Look after yourself OP.

I'm just relieved that the stuff does get disposed of, because I sometimes think that some items get put back in the fridge, because it goes off so quickly once I've opened it.
But yes, I despise waste like this.

Customers who do this should be banned from the store. Yanbu

Agree with you. I always back track on myself to put it back if I change my mind.

Unfortunately many customers think they're doing a good deed by taking frozen/fresh items left on shelves and putting them back without knowing how long they've been left out. I can't fully remember how long the chain of cold is but I want to say 30 minutes maximum before it is no longer considered safe.

Say for example a customer takes some frozen chicken breasts out of the freezer at 8am, they then decided they don't want them and leave it on the shelf with the toilet roll. Another customer comes in at 9pm and spots it, thinking they're being helpful and puts it back in the freezer section. That product is absolutely not safe to eat however staff don't know that, other customers who may purchase it don't know that, to everyone else, it's fully frozen and absolutely fine. You can't even reach for the products at the back of the shelf/freezer because I've seen customers on CCTV put items right at the back thinking they'll chill/freeze faster.

Yes it really frustrates me because I feel people are causing deliberate waste by being lazy. Worse for me is meat, and although I know it doesn't work like this, but I just feel an animal has lost life for no reason.

To those people who put meat in the plant-based section, you must think you're hilarious. I can only speak for myself but it really doesn't bother me. I usually have to walk through the meat aisle to get to the plant-based section anyway.

I would love to catch a customer dumping stuff in the wrong place and ask them to put it back.

Another one though in the same temperature zone. Customers pick up wraps from bakery and dump them in the Mexican section and vice versa. Got to find at least one per day.

If I come across a freezer or fridge item out on the open shelves, if it's still cold/frozen, I pop it somewhere suitable

If it's room temperature, I bring it to a member of staff

This drives me nuts, it's pure waste

Edit: My local Sainsbury's had one twat who would pull large lumps of ice, or ice cubes out of the freezers and hide it in the back of shelves of electrical items or paper or card packaged goods

I caught him one time.

Turns out, even though he was an adult, his mum looked after him and he had a diagnosis of some sort

He knew well enough what he was doing would cause ££££s of damage and that it was wrong, but he kept on doing it

I caught a man opening up jars and sticking his finger in contents, licking his finger with contents and put back randomly on shelves.

This was early 2020. We had to go through the jars and press the middle of the lid. If moved - it was opened and therefore requires to be disposed

I once watched a customer drop a croissant on the floor in Waitrose.
He picked it up and put it back on the display!
I kept an eye on it until I could catch a partner’s attention to get rid of it.

I've specifically been told at the till when I had accidentally picked up a cherry pie instead of apple, that because it had been out of the chilled section for an unknown length of time, it would be binned rather than returned.

How about not minimising the OPs excellent points about food waste and selfish lazy behaviour rather than telling them the solution is to work outside retail.

No, why not instead let's highlight customers' selfish lazy behaviour and also thank the OP and others who work in supermarkets because they keep us fed and watered and should be appreciated for their hard work.

I read on here recently that Aldi are trialling a store where you get charged when you pick up the item. You can return it but it must be in the same place in order to refund your account.

Obviously, everyone on here said it will never take off but there’s always hope.

Ooo, a lifetime ban for this would be great.

I suspect that the idiots who do this are people who are nightmares in every area of their lives.

👆❓😁

YANBU

People are ridiculous. I usually take it back to its actual place but at the very least put it in the appropriate place in the shop.

Meh, if store owners really cared there'd have enough staff to check the shelves periodically. It's just another symptom of shitty customer service. Treat all customers like thieving wankers and they're less likely to act with respect and consideration in return.

I do feel a bit sorry for any nice staff that have no choice in where they work, but don't meet many of those anymore.

Stores could tackle this easily. Have a ‘changed your mind’ basket at the end of aisles or by the tills. Staff members who are on the floor stacking etc can just check the baskets and redistribute.

That doesn't help reduce the fridge and freezer waste, does it?

Do you actually know how many putbacks stores get? Goods people randomly dump, , customer changes mind, customer may not have enough money, something might be dearer than the customer thought, attempted trolley pushes, toys that the kids have been playing with to keep them quiet whilst shopping. Anybody stacking shelves would get no stock out if they had to keep putting everything else back

I think that's fine as long as it's the same temperature.

I don’t do this, and I do feel your frustration at waste, however it is a problem largely caused by the stores themselves. The whole notion of a super market is size and economy of scale, the whole idea was to reduce service and staffing levels by letting the customers in to pick their own items, carry their own items, calculate their own costs, and now, check out their own items, pack their own items, and process their own payments, much of the time without any interaction with a member of staff. Our nearest supermarket is the size of an aircraft hangar. Supermarkets invented huge shopping trolleys. They invented and promoted the idea of a “weekly shop”. We do not know the people who work there. They do not know their products or what they do, or what to recommend for you. They often do not know where things are or what is sold there (understandably, it’s huge). Food waste is increased hugely by the size of the store, the lack of human interaction - not guilting people into buying something but by being able to guide them to the deal/item in the store that they want, and not requiring them to walk two football pitches there and back with a fully loaded and wayward shopping trolley to put a pizza back. It’s done in the design of the store - hiding cheaper items away or frozen sections at the back. It’s done in the idea of shopping just once every seven days, so food is not as fresh when we eat it, doesn’t have as many nutrients, goes off faster, tastes worse. We are encouraged to buy something six days before we are due to eat it and then we must have it because it needs eating, whether we want it or not. They encourage food waste by selling things in packs of four, eight, ten, to families of three, six and nine,

if we could shop in smaller shops, with people to answer questions about offers, stock and fresh produce, if we could shop in a couple of minutes instead of a couple of hours - walk in, ask for things needed, get them prepared as we need them in the quantities we need them. Buying things as we want to eat them, seasonally, when our bodies are telling us we need a certain type of meal and not the type the “meal plan” or use by dates are telling us we must eat. This would not happen. It would reduce food waste on every level.

It is a very annoying feature of a huge set of problems caused mostly by the very idea of a super-market.

really annoys me too OP. I despise food waste and it is just lazy. I've dumped things before admittedly but never in a place where they'd go to waste due to having been stored incorrectly! I mean things like 'brand I dont usually buy are on offer, put my cheaper tomatoes next to them'.

Yes, the product won't go to waste, but that wasn't really my point. For the record, I have seen chilled meat products in the ambient plant-based section too.