to think supermarket shelf stackers shouldn't get annoyed because I want to get items that have a later best before date?

[supersup]

When I am food shopping, I always choose the items at the back with the later best before dates. The items at the front are sometimes out of date in the next day or two. When I am planning ahead, I want to get food with a later date as possible.

I know the dates don't have to be strictly followed but I prefer the later dates.

Shelf stackers are getting increasingly annoyed when I pull out items from the back and I was told I should just get one from the front. I put everything back properly so it is not as if I am messing up the shelf.

AIBU?

I check use by dates if I can read them (tins are right pain) and take the one with the longest date. I get it that shelf-stackers might get annoyed - but I have never met one who was. If I did I'd just smile and say 'but I want this one'.

Me too! I'm out in the country and do a shop in town once a week. Tesco is really bad on dates, so I always get the longest date possible. I don't mess the shelves up though.

When I was a shelf stacker I couldn't care less if customers went for products at the back, especially if they didn't mess up the shelf
Management never blamed us for food going out of date.
Just try to ignore it OP. Loads of people do the same.

About Christmas dates. Bread and other things have the same x days from date of production/packaged all year round. Manufacturers are not going to increase the date because it’s Christmas.

i said to customers you buy bread with 5-6 days on the bread all year round and that will not change because of Christmas.

Actually, I don’t eat much bread over Christmas

It is in my OP.

Always do this, I hate going food shopping and want to get stuff as far in date as possible so that I can stock up and avoid having to go back for a good few days. I would never leave a shelf in a mess though.

Call me a cynic but supermarkets are more likely to make the longer dated food more expensive rather than reduce price of the short dated food 😂

I do this OP although I have never been challenged on it
(except by my sister who for some reason thought it was "embarrassing"?)

I'm with you OP (and most of the others on this thread it seems) I do my 'big' weekly shop online with Tesco and I put a note on all the fresh items "please pick the furthest date out thanks". I always get really good dates on my fresh produce so the staff picking the shopping clearly do what you do!

Of course they find it annoying, the process is based on people buying the ones at the front first with the closest dates (if everyone goes for the later dates the closer dates will never sell).

however as buyers we can choose the item from the shelf and therefore are able to choose the one with the best date.

we do what is most beneficial for us and the shop doesn’t like it as it’s not the most beneficial for them. Doesn’t mean we need to stop though.

Not to derail, but it doesn't help that so many BB dates are deliberately obscured nowadays - in tiny black writing on a very dark grey background or those silly codes on vegetables.

Maybe, if manufacturers made them easily legible, people may well still take the longer-dated stuff, but at least without the mess of having to rummage and strain to find the dates in the first place - like they're a contestant on Fun House searching for a pencil in a full chest of drawers!

I do this, I always shop for at least a week so want to get food that’ll last. That’s what puts me off online shopping, last time I did that, all the meat for the week was “use by” the next day. I didn’t have room in the freezer for it all.

Why should I buy food that goes out of date before I need it? I'm finding a lot of vegetables going bad within a day or two of buying so I try to get the freshest I can. It might be annoying for shelf stackers but why should I pay for food that goes straight in the green waste bin?

Although, to be honest, 'best before' doesn't mean a lot. The food won't go off overnight as soon as the date is reached. The reason that there's so much food waste is that people will reject food that has reached 'best before' (not talking about 'use by' dates here, you have to be a bit more careful with those) and throw it away even when it's perfectly good.

This is a great idea and in this day and age supermarkets are missing a trick not doing this.

I do this all the time too; search carefully and considerately, for the latest date.
In all my years of food shopping, I've never been challenged by staff.
However it's good to remember that the store has the responsibility to rotate food and bring to the front items nearest to expiration, as the store is legally obligated to remove expired food from the shelf.

That costs the store money, so they insist that their staff do this regularly, which explains how some ( kind of brazen if you ask me) staff passed on their displeasure to the OP!
Speaking of BB dates, I have seen a few times dairy products that are past their sell-by date and once I brought it to the attention of the manager ( in the hope that they would reduce it then and there and I would get a discount) ha ha well that didn't happen which led to me not shopping there anymore!
Where I am, the staff may silently curse customers who mess up the shelves, but they are not allowed to challenge them, things must be different where OP shops.

I’d much rather wasted food were at the cost of the supermarket than my own pocket though. If there’s too much there it’ll be wasted either way. Nothing more frustrating than not having checked than having your meal plan destroyed by a short date item.

You’ve given me a flashback re the vegetable codes, I overheard a conversation about it recently but couldn’t work it out. What are they doing now instead of BBE date, a letter and a number?

I know, my comment was a general one, should have said 'people' rather than 'you' to be clear.

I was taught to do this by my dad when I was very young!

however as buyers we can choose the item from the shelf and therefore are able to choose the one with the best date.

Yes, this - it's all a trade-off. The shops could go back to having counters for everything and having to ask an assistant for each item you want, who would then hand you the shortest-dated one; but it's much cheaper and more profitable for them to stack them high and let customers help themselves, so they have to accept this will happen.

Same as with self-service checkouts, where they save money on staff wages, but theft is also made easier for those who are so minded.

I take the view that if it has been put out on the shelf it is an invitation to select whichever one I want.

However, I’ve never managed to annoy anyone in the shop by selecting later date products, so I’m intrigued as to the background to them getting cross.

I'm always amazed when I see someone taking something like meat/deli stuff/dairy off the shelf and just putting it in their trolley without even looking at the date! Do they just put stuff in their fridge and not bother about dates?

I hardly ever look at the dates on food. I just want to get what I need and get out of there!

So the online orders get the nearly use by date stuff. It happens to me regularly.

What shelf stackers are these? I don't think a shelf stacker has ever commented on what I'm taking and if someone's rolling their eyes at me, I've never noticed.