woman admits stealing from tesco bin

[magpienchips]

Hi Mum's
I just want to know your opinion on the news that a woman who admitted taking food out of a tesco bin Is being prosecuted for theft?
I felt sorry for the woman when that news came to my attention because I would like to believe that she assumed that since the food was in a bin then it was no longer sell able and so it would not be considered a crime for taking it?
but tesco policy obviously does not allow that.
I think also that the fact that she admitted taking the food should have made tesco let her go.
also I can remember watching a Pro-gramme called whistle blowers I think?
anyway this man Applied for a job at various tesco stores and he secretly filmed tesco staff selling meat that was past the sell by date and I think that was done with the approval of management.
so my point is how can it be right for tesco to deceive and rip off customers
but it is wrong for customers to take food out of a bin?
I can understand that food is sold for profit but the fact is that food was bagged up and put into a bin to be thrown into a landfill site.
but if that woman had approached tesco management and ask them if she could take some of the food out of the bin?
I doubt very much if they would have said yes she can.
so this woman made the decision to take without asking permission which was foolish of course but yet it is understandable why she did it.
and for this woman to now be facing getting a criminal record and possibly a fine while tesco are still allowed to carry on trading after they were filmed Deceiving their customers.
I don't think that Is just or fair.
what do you Think?

BooyHoo
Well said...Well said.

Are Tesco's really liable for illness resulting from food taken from a bin? Could you point me in the direction of the law on that?

Well perhaps I should dump my stuff in Tesco's bins then :)

If they allow people to take it or don't care about where it ends up then yes they could be negligent. The person taking it would also be contributing to their own illness too.

I don't really see it as outrage-more of doing the right thing.

Would you feel it was acceptable behaviour for your child to go rooting through a neighbours bin in the hope of finding some discarded biscuits?

If someone was desperate enough to need to steal food ,I would be sympathetic not all morally outraged

As a student I have taken food from behind shops. My attitude at the time was that they were throwing it away and I was recycling. It never occured to me that someone would see it as stealing. These aren't belongings like jewellry, this is food that will be going into landfill.

I also used to print letters from work and use their envelopes when I ran out. All of that is stealing too. Yet if I leave the supermarket and realise there is a top hanging from the trolley that I haven't paid for I always go back and pay for it.

Different people have different moral codes I guess. But I'd rather food was recycled than tipped into a hole in the ground where it gives off methane gasses.

She wasn't desperate, she was a greedy thief who thought she could get something for nothing.

Truly amazed that people would object to someone taking food that has been thrown away. Mindboggling.

A lot of the shops around here donate their best before date food to a local food bank

much better than chucking it in land fill

I think they should forgive her...it was a silly mistake on her part...perhaps her circumstances played a part in why she resorted to routing through a tesco rubbish bin?
also when you consider the shame that woman must be feeling now it must be hard for her to hold her head up in public now.

I suppose every little helps.

pintoguiness
please tell me if i was right or wrong to do this?
back in 1995 I used to work for oxfam and I was in charge of the float and opening and closing the shop etc.
anyway there was other people volunteering and this old Indian woman used to steal clothes and anything that she wanted.
one day a woman donated somethings that belonged to her nan who had died.
the minute the woman left the shop the indian woman was routing through the suitcases and phoned a friend who came to the shop and left with the best of the clothes and things.
I was so upset that I told the manager and the woman and another man got into trouble.
the next day the indian woman was so angry with me and refused to talk to me for ages and if looks could kill i would have died.
and yet I only told the manager but I thought it was wrong for me to overlook look what was happening and the fact that it is a charity that donates profit to poor people and here this woman was robbing the shop blind and she hated me for blowing the whistle on her.
was I was wrong?

BooyHoo why would anyone throw away a pair of jeans? Why would you do that? Bins are not for clothes, surely? I don't get it.

What do I think? As a mum? Well I think you're probably a journo or researcher.

The double-bluff with that rogue apostrophe was the give away

An Indian woman? This just gets better...

I think you should have told the Indian woman to stop taking things. But then back in the 70s some charity shop workers could have the pick of the donated items. My m-i-l worked for Sue Ryder and they were allowed to help themselves which is why my dh got all his toys second-hand.

It's not always desperate poor people who scavenge in bins for free food though. I've seen it on a number of "ways to save money" website lists. Cut the cost of your living by taking food from bins, etc. You don't have to be poor to want to save money, especially not on stuff which is as expensive as food is.

I suspect she's being made an example of. Taking her to court does seem a bit extreme for the crime, but they probably want to deter others from doing the same.

I don't know if it's necessarily true, but a woman I used to work with said she once had very severe food poisoning and they came to her house, took all their samples, asked all their questions and eventually established exactly which food it was she had caught the food poisoning from. She could then have sued the company, I don't know whether she did. I guess it would be quite difficult for the company to prove that the food was taken from their bins. And even if they could prove it, they would need to answer questions about why they hadn't disposed of potentially dangerous food in a more cautious way.

I think we have been had .......

the justification was that its donated things so why should I put money in the till for them?
I'm working for nothing so my wages are whatever takes my fancy in the shop.