There is a community run farm near us.
Yesterday they had a pork sale as they had just slaughtered their pigs. This is the first one that they have done but they plan to do more in the future (not just pigs but lambs etc).
They said they were selling £25 & £50 bags of various cuts and you had to preorder and then collect between 11 and 12 yesterday. We thought it sounded good, especially as it's a long trek to the butchers (who are fab) and we haven't managed to get there for a few weeks. Thinking we'd stock up the freezer.
Firstly we got there (about 11.15) expecting to pick up a bag ready. The whole place was in chaos. They had made up maybe a 1/3 of the orders (and that is being generous) and were now panicking as the cuts they had were too big to make up the orders. There were orders waiting to be collected (they had done the first part of their list) and then others like us that had ordered were waiting for 20mins plus to be told that there may not be enough meat left so they could sell us a couple of joints for £32 They didn't seem to have a clue what they were doing and didn't seem bothered by it all.
One woman asked why she couldn't buy one of the orders prebagged as she had ordered as well. SO they decided to sell them. They had 5 bags ready One couple were fuming as they had turned up at 11am to be told to come back later. They almost got nothing but managed to grab the last bag in the end. It was chaos. We managed to get a bag. Decent sized so were miffed but got what we wanted and left.
WHat kind of place doesn't pre make up orders and takes orders not knowing whether they have the stuff to meet them or not ffs
Secondly dp opened the bag today to find half the bags of stuff inside hadn't even been tied up or had split and the whole thing was soaked in blood and beginning to smell. So he's had to clean it all, clean out the fridge and rebag everything.
ONe joint was huge so dp went to cut it up and said it was the worst butchering job he had ever seen. It was rolled and tied but said when he opened it it looked like they had just hacked off a lump from the pig and tied it together. He has spent an hour so far rebutchering it and cutting out the gristle and other stuff (that apparently I don't want to know about). So most of this afternoon he has spent either cleaning up or rebutchering stuff. He's still not finished.
As he said it's no cheaper than the butchers and they do a damn fine job in cutting meat (and work out at the same price). Wtf would anyone go to one of these farm sales again.
It wouldn't be so bad if the stuff they had mucked up on wasn't the BASIC principles behind selling stuff that any idiot could know.
It's not like dp has any knowledge of butchering beyond standard home cookery but even he is doing a better job than they did.
TBH I want to complain - when you add up the time we were hanging around waiting, the time today it has taken dp to sort this meat out and the amount of crap that has had to be thrown away (gristle/bone/unmentionables) then this aint' worth £25.
What kind of fucking idiot can't work out that you don't take more orders than stuff you have and that maybe you should get those orders prepared before people turn up to buy them.
Plus their attitude that people should just be grateful to get a bit of their meat and not that maybe this was a business enterprise?