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 The items at the front are sometimes out of date in the next day or two.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?

You are being totally reasonable. If I am going to eat something quickly I will take it from the front. Otherwise I will go to the back. As long as you don't make the shelf a mess I don't see their issue.

Look at the post after yours 😂

I am not the only one.

I've just (unusually) done a weekly shop at Waitrose this morning and did notice how short-dated a lot of products are. I rarely do a weekly shop, due to the erratic hours that myself and DH work (we've often thrown out food as we've not been home enough to eat a whole week's worth of shopping after we've bought it!), so I often don't pay much attention to use-by dates. More often than not, I'm buying food that will be eaten that evening anyway.

I really had to dig around to the very back of the shelf to find some items that had more than a day's life left. Off the top of my head, items that spring to mind were a parmesan and truffle chicken Kiev thing, all the ones at the front were use-by the 19th, but I found some right at the back which were the 21st. A pack of DH's custard tarts were either tomorrow or the 18th. Pre-bagged salad leaves were quite interesting...all of Waitrose own brand ones were really short-dated and many were yellow stickered, yet Steve's Leaves brands all had at least 5 days on. Coleslaw was also ridiculously short on life on the larger packs. The smaller packs had much longer use-by dates?

I weigh the prepackaged veg too. 850g of courgettes for the price of 500g, carrots often over by 100g, leeks by 200g.

Milk is always dated ages in advance?
Vegetables/fruit it's irrelevant

IME milk from corner shops (as opposed to supermarkets) can often be only a day or two away. And veg, of course it's not irrelevant. Tenderstem broccoli goes yellow and spoils very quickly, for example.

I've always done this, even bread I take from the back as I freeze half a loaf
I'm always careful when I reach across but have hardly seen a shelf stacker recently.
YANBU

That's a sensible move!!

In all my decades of food shopping and choosing the most appropriate dates I've never once been spoken to by a shelf stacker

I can't understand how this is a repeated issue for you. Is your local shop some kind of weird anomaly? How often are they filling up the shelves?

Our Tesco has the shortest dates ever, from bread and milk to cooked meats - there is normally only 2 or 3 days life so I rarely buy those products from them

Our Lidl is very good on dates, plus they start their reductions the day before use by, or even two days before depending on stock levels - 20% off to down to sell at 20p , where as Tesco take 10% off on the use by day

If any minimum wage shelf stacker actually gave the shiniest shit about this they’d probably be the sort of anal jobsworth who has far bigger problems than your rummaging op. I voted YANBU but I actually think YABU for giving this headspace.

I can’t say it’s ever happened to me either. I’ve always found shelf stackers to be very helpful, especially when I ask them where to find a product I’m looking for.

That’s not to say I don’t believe the OP, I’m sure there are rude or grumpy people in all walks of life.

This is the main reason why I stopped shopping online. I would do a weekly shop and I was getting everything expiring in the next 2-3 days. I complained a couple of times and the last time I tried the lady from customer service (Ocado) told me that if I wanted to do a weekly shop to go elsewhere since it’s not possible for them to give me items with longer expiry dates. And I haven’t looked back since. Annoying to have to go to the shops every weekend but at least I know what I’m getting. YANBU.

I do this with coop sandwiches. I feel a bit bad leaving the older ones for other people but I’ve also had enough of stale coop sandwiches

I have always gone to the back to get the fresher food and always see other people doing it as well and it's never a problem. The fact that it's happened to you multiple times, and the fact that your replies on this thread are quite rude, points to this being a you problem.

I forget which supermarket it was, but there was one that had a slogan something like 'as fresh as you'd pick yourself' for their online home deliveries.

I always wondered how true that could/would be in reality - and whether the pickers would be guided/ordered by management to not deliberately get the latest-dated stuff. After all, you've avoided having to go to the store, so you'll never know if they had a later date!

This reminds me of a Dave Gorman routine where he queried the use of the claim that "We only use the freshest ingredients" by a cafe.

He was asking, if you had a box of eggs with a week on them and a box with a fortnight on them, would you really not use the perfectly-fresh-but-not-absolute-freshest ones first?!

Then again, if it's a meal that's been ordered to be cooked right now and then eaten straightaway in a cafe, it's hardly the same as ingredients that you need at home for a meal in 6 days' time!

Which replies are rude?

It’s not adding to waste. If it’s dated Tuesday and I know I want to cook it on a Thursday, if I accidentally buy it it will definitely waste as it’ll be off and I’ll have to replace. If I leave it, someone intending to cook it on Monday may buy it and it won’t waste.

I'll always reach for the latest date, and in 20 years of doing my own food shopping, I've never one been "told off" by an employee for doing so!

I can promise you that shelf-stackers could not care one iota where you take your shopping from, but they DO care when you put it back out of date order - which most shoppers do, even though they seem to think (from this thread) they don't.

Then if the boss checks on the stock and it's not in the correct date order, they don't blame Mrs Bloggs who buggered off 20 minutes ago. They blame the staff in charge of stock rotation.

I agree you are coming across quite snappy with PPs - maybe you are inadvertently pissing the shop workers off?

I've also done it without issue

Yeah but it’s a poster without a name so they don’t count, it could be you using another email address 🤣

I work in food retail and it is beyond infuriating to spend ages on a section getting all the products in the rate date order (we call it rotation) and all facing the right way so it's nice and tidy, only for someone to come along and literally demolish everything as they route through all the products. I've even had it happen with bread I've just put out and I'll say something like. "Oh those are all the same dates, I've just put those out." only for the customer to ignore me and proceed to destroy my facing to discover that I was indeed telling the truth.

Funny thing though, if they had asked me whether we had any better dates out back I would glady have gone and gotten one for them.

I work in food retail and we do gget uidance when picking orders for online deliveries. I won't bore you with all the details but it essentially boils down to picking items you'd be happy with yourself, so the freshest fruit, the bread with the best date etc.

How am I snappy?

Food is expensive.

Recently, fresh produce seems to stay fresh for shorter time, sometimes it is less than fresh even within the dates.

I get to choose how I spend my money.

I choose to buy food which is as fresh as possible, especially vegetables, meat and fish.

I don't shop daily, I shop weekly.

So, I need to have dates as long as possible.

I feel no responsibility to spend my money to benefit a supermarket's profits

Not sorry about that.