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

There are many brands where the only difference from the package side of things is a banner with “gluten free” or “dairy free”

I’m not that needs a GF diet but like the lentil chips which most supermarkets put there. I have spotted normal things dressed there as a member of staff doesn’t read the packaging correctly.

I have taken the case off the shelf and shown a member of staff that it’s a good job I picked this before someone got very very poorly.

More understanding how people can get very very poorly when eating normal food is needed

I am but there’s very few jobs available. Plus job websites have shite search engines. Ask to search jobs within 10 miles of my town. Get results for jobs 40 miles away!

Most jobs want some element of selling. I hate selling. I was expected to get two mortgage leads per week when I worked for a bank. The bank was in the most expensive area of the city 100 miles from where I live now. Customers were either paid off mortgage or unable to put deposit or afford repayments. Left that job and into a back office support for a call centre and got £1.75 more per hour (2004) with no BS targets

You complain on here about customers a lot OP. Don’t get me wrong, I get it. I worked retail since I was 17 and im 40 now and work management in hospitality. A good healthy working life needs an outlet for what we have to put up with from the general public! Do you not play “don’t you just hate it when…” at team meetings? It’s very cathartic to get it all out amongst your team and generally improves your customer service and your own mental health.

I really think the OP should not work in customer service.

I despise food waste. However, this could be avoided if stores invested some of their vast profits in additional staff to check the cold and frozen areas on a regular basis, replacing misplaced items. While customers who do this are wrong, the stores are equally wrong not to mitigate. Clearly its cheaper to waste food than employ additional staff, so once again, profit before responsibility.

If I were you OP and it bothered me this much I'd be raising it with the company. You can't control customer behaviour in an environment set up to save costs by allowing them to serve themselves, do all you can do is try to influence how the company deals with it.

I'm with OP. Work in a small supermarket and this is so frustrating. The amount of waste esp with a cost of living crisis. I like how other posters are blaming the supermarket or don't think its an issue! Ridiculous.

I think there should be an idiot tax in this world, where ever you go or whatever you do, there are always people with no common sense it seems unfortunately.

I don't think that'd work though. If anything that's been out at a non-chilled or frozen temperature longer than 20 mins has to be binned because of food safety, then you'd have to have a member of staff patrolling the whole store pretty much continually to make sure nothing was missed. And it'd have to be the whole store because if something was just in the wrong place in the frozen ailse or fridge ailse it's less of a big deal. But then you'd have to be sure that it had only been out since your last sweep and you hadn't accidently missed it last time (which would be very easy to do) or it might already be spoilt. And you'd have to make sure that your sweeps were less than every 20 mins because likely customers would stop to ask you where things were and you might get delayed. Not to mention that's one member of staff for the whole day when you maybe find a handful of freezer or chilled things in the wrong place each day. I don't think it's practical or economic. I also think that this is a really small contributor to the amount of food supermarkets waste so the money and effort could be better spent elsewhere.

Also want to note that some of these people may be disabled and/or have special needs. If you can't abide disorder and inconvenience in a customer facing role, I really think that you are in the wrong job. It is part of the job. As a note, I worked in customer service for 7+ years. I am very well aware of how hard it can be, but that doesn't excuse the tone in the OP's posts.

Come she is not asking anything that's too hard.There is more than enough waste and as humans, we need to do better. Also as more people do this, supermarkets will cost it to keep profits meaning customers pay the price. Now am not sure how much this waste is across supermarkets bur its just so unnecessary

I'm always putting stuff back dickheads dump at the checkout. I hate people.

Total scum. I either put back, or leave in my trolley and give it to check out (if I'm being lazy)

"can't abide disorder and inconvenience in a customer facing role"

This is fine until like our local supermarkets are finding nobody wants to work in the entitled customer service roll.

I have a feeling this is one reason people over 50 are leaving the workforce since COVID as people can't be bothered putting up with this anymore.

This is why I sometimes put things back out of place, but would only do it with same-temperature goods. Shopping is exhausting enough without supermarkets making it more difficult.

Yes I agree as well. I suppose it's the same level of disregard as people who litter, though. What can you do? Some people are just inconsiderate and don't think, others are just horrible,

This is fine until like our local supermarkets are finding nobody wants to work in the entitled customer service roll

is this why they are all getting around 100 applications for a job? I don't think supermarkets are struggling to recruit!

My OH and I have been raging about this lately. Only yesterday we saw two packs of fresh salmon dumped in a freezer. Some people are just so ignorant and entitled.

Our local Asda very much are, they used to do these silly group recruitment days to weed the applicants down but they are long gone and are happy to take anyone now.

Same has happened with a lot of our friends who were plumbers, plasterer etc , most have given up.

Now people on our local Facebook groups moan they can't get anyone for months to do jobs.

Look after the workers there are as having heard how they are treated by some of the customers are horrible.

Laziness and lack of thought for others.
Just like the woman I saw who dropped the can she was drinking from on the street and walked on.
Or those people who leave litter on the beach.
Or dog owners who allow their dog to poo and don't pick it up and dispose of it.

It's easy to say staff should be checking but what people are missing is that because of the huge amount of waste this type of customer behaviour generates businesses lose money so they don't have enough hours on their payroll to put staff on the shop floor.

I know you could argue that if staff were there the waste would go down but if something is left out of the cold chain for 20 minutes it has to be wasted, would you want to buy products that have potentially been on a shelf for 30 minutes or so? To keep the cold chain rules there would have to be staff constantly walking looking for dumps and the cost for that would get passed onto customers. Easier if people didn't behave like twats tbh.

Ah, it’s you.
Do you think it’s mostly the old people doing it, on a Saturday? 😉

Rudeness and impatience from customers is making people leave retail. Why would anyone want to work with these people? No wonder retailers have difficulties in recruiting. Plus most retailers post job opportunities for 15-18 hours a week which isn't suitable for all. As one reason is not to pay employer NI.

If people behaved themselves, most of those who left retail would still be working there. You had your chance not to queue up for ages etc but your behaviour has made people leave.

I went one of those silly Asda group recruitments around 2007 and it was called Asda Magic 🙄One of the things we had to do was to blow up as many balloons to a certain size in a certain amount of time. I cannot tie balloons up for love or money and didn't get further than this. Was I not taken on for my inability to tie balloons?

So many people just don't think beyond themselves.

Tesco CEO certainly doesn't. Three tier pricing, anti competitive practices, opportunistic price hikes, automated tills, absurdly frequent price changes that staff can't ticket change fast enough - every time I go to a supermarket, for the past three years, there are at least two or three items that are completely incorrectly priced. Supermarket shopping is now stressful and alienating and there's an overwhelming sense of blatant ripoff behind a lot of it. Like bollocks am I going to run around looking for the right place to put a packet of ham back when I get to the frozen section and discover that peas have gone up in price again and I can therefore afford one of either peas or ham, but not both.

So wasting the ham is going to bring the price of frozen peas down is it?

Height of laziness.