10+ year manager named Joe was apparently fired for bringing cookies to be thrown away before their sell by date to a food pantry in my town

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• not_that_guy05@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  You should let the pantry know as well. They can be a force that could change this. They can let folks that go to the pantry know not to go to those kind of gas stations and also have them call corporate.

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  • StarvingMartist@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I mean the food pantry is apparently called creston food pantry in illinois if that helps

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    • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      [deleted]

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• JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Joe should see a lawyer about a wrongful termination lawsuit.

  The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act (pdf) brought to law in 1996 shields most liability for people donating food exactly like he did.

  This may have been a knee-jerk reaction from the employer incorrectly assuming they could be liable if someone got sick. Though its also possible they’ve been looking for a reason to dismiss a long time employee to replace him with a cheaper one. Corporate ownership makes me leans towards the latter.

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  • roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Liability if the food is bad. He was fired because the company perceives it as theft. The act does not cover that.

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    • SinningStromgald@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Same reason grocery stores toss perfectly good food in locked dumpsters in lieu of donating it.

      The only chain place with fresh food that donates their extra at the end of the day is Panera.

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    • JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I didn’t really consider the reason the company gave for the dismissal. Though it occurs to me now that any incident where someone loses their job due to donating food nearing expiry could be plausibly written up as thievery by the company doing the firing.

      Which is a nuance that might be worth chatting to a lawyer about.

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• FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I want to know who narc’d on Joe.

  That person deserves an ass beating.

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  • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Image

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• caboose2006@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I remember once the heat broke in the middle of winter at my work. I wore a unbranded brownish orange beanie because it was effing cold. I was told to remove it because hats were against dress code. When a customer asked me why I wasn’t wearing my beanie I told them the truth. Management told me to take it off because it violated dress code. I was taken to the back for a disciplinary meeting for being “unprofessional”. Then let me wear the fucking hat if talking about not wearing it is making you look bad.

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• PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  A manager doesn’t have discretion to dispose of out of date stock in any other way than putting it in the bin?

  Why would you even have the position of Manager then?

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  • rumba@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The general corporate answer is that the misappropriation of waste is theft. They’ll try to propose that Joe might hide boxes of cookies to take them, causing disproportionate waste. Giving them to the pantry instead of keeping them for himself is immaterial to their rules.

    Realistically, some companies move near-out-of-date products to the sale rack and then offer them up to pantries after they pass their best-by date. They should easily be able to look at waste and sales here and make a judgment call. I’m betting someone local had a beef with Joe, didn’t get their preferred day off, and turned him in.

    Handled correctly, corporate would have donated a shit ton to the food pantry, taken a tax break, improved the community and told Joe to cut it out if they really cared.

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    • WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Didn’t Eskimos throw sociopaths off cliffs?

      Why doesn’t the conversation end there?

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    • Sunsofold@lemmings.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      If you don’t trust someone to appropriately handle waste, you don’t trust them enough to be a manager.

      Giving them to the pantry instead of keeping them for himself is immaterial to their rules.

      This is prime executive laziness. In this case, that should warrant an investigation by upper management. If the regional director fired an otherwise productive manager for what really would amount to ‘not getting a receipt for tax purposes,’ one has to question whether they’ve been promoted beyond their capabilities. Rules are for people who aren’t trusted to apply critical thinking to their job, i.e. relatively new minimum wage workers. Managers are supposed to be people with enough education, experience, and established trust to make decisions on behalf of the company. If they aren’t trusted, they shouldn’t have been made a manager.

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    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      When I was in retail, we were required to destroy anything we threw away.

      If we had a warranty issue on a product, the manufacturer would usually just ship us a new one because it was cheaper than a repair, and we’d have to provide proof of destruction. My favorite was for kayaks. We had to mail back a portion of the body at least 1 square foot in area that included the serial number stamp.

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    • thlibos@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Yep. This is exactly why. It makes logical sense if they only thing that matters is profit. Several places that I worked would allow the public to come in and request these “about to be tossed.” items to take for free. You had sign up, provide ID, and come right at closing time, though, to do it. The employees were not allowed to do this for the reason rumba gave.

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    • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Legally speaking it cannot be theft. Once it has been discarded you give up all legal rights to it.

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  • Jarix@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Lots of rules like this in large corporate outfits.

    If you think this is crazy look into musical instrument disposal policies. It’s disgusting

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    • Soup@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I tried but got a lot of hits on positive sounding stuff. I believe you, I just don’t see what you’re seeing.

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  • bcgm3@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Why would you even have the position of Manager then?

    God DAMN that’s a great question

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  • hector@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Corporate joints, they figure if they don’t waste the food people would be motivated to see food is wasted that could be used. And it would prevent managers from slipping in expired food they aren’t supposed to use anyway because they are under pressure to lower waste costs. So they throw out food rather than let anyone have it.

    Plus if you feed someone, they aren’t going to be buying food. It’s completely just a theoretical self serving philosophy, that’s why I refuse to work for corporate joints like that.

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    • Woht24@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It’s also ‘theft’ and ‘damage of reputation’ by these companies. They believe by giving away food to homeless people, that purchasing customers will see that, believe the brand is dirty and not buy their product.

      It’s fucking madness.

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  • Bluewing@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The biggest impediment to donating foodstuffs by grocery stores is most often governmental food safety regulations. A store just can’t take foods it needs to pull off the self and donate it. It can be onerous to get the special permission to do things like this. And yes, management is too lazy to jump through all the hoops and put out the effort to try as it often stands.

    I highly recommend working with your local government to make it easier for a grocery store to donate foods.

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    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Maybe outside the US, but we have Good Samaritan laws at the federal level to expedite charitable donations from corporations. Any rules you may have encountered, in the US, were put in place voluntarily by the company.

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  • bitjunkie@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Offloading of actual work + the illusion of power over your situation

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• Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This is very much wrong, and something I’ve always disagreed with.

  The reasoning behind it, is ‘conflict of interest’ (I’m just passing on the reason I was told when I worked for 7-11). The employees in the store look at a ‘product forcast’, decide how many cookies to make (heat up some pre-made dough) and package for sale. If they are permitted to keep or donate expiring product: they may intentionally make more than needed, ensuring they get free stuff.

  I get that viewpoint; but I think they should punish abuse of the system, not outright prohibit saving perfectly good food, if nearly expiring/expired, for good causes like the needy/homeless.

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  • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s not too hard to look at stores and see that there’s a consistent overproduction. Instead they punish people.

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    • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Yeah; the current system is a bit of an overreaction. Some people abuse and tracking it is work; so everyone gets punished and food gets wasted entirely instead. Stupid.

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    • Zirconium@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      At my gas station we were required to put out a certain amount of hot dogs and hothold items but not allowed to eat it even after it’s expiration (4 hours) unless we paid for it

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  • cybervseas@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The guys at my local 7-11 treat my nephew like their little brother and will give him a bunch of extra food if he goes there towards the evening. “Here take an extra hot dog” kind of thing.

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    • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Nice :)

      Some of the managers are very nice amd are happy to bend obviously stupid rules, others have a massive stick jammed deeep up inside their rectum…

      The manager that hired me, re-wrote my employment contract and forged my signature on the new one, to put me as part-time instead of full time. Didn’t find out until 3mo later when I asked about my benefits package to the manager that replaced her and got confused looks/responses.

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  • HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I even see that as bs. My friend worked for BK back in the 80’s when they were still decent and tacitly the manager would stop over making of food but he erred on the side of over and they took stuff home and it was a nice little perk. Now granted if its abused to the point they are like reselling the stuff then yeah you gotta nail them. It just blows me away how bad minimum wage jobs have gotten and how many regular jobs have been pushed closer and closer to min wage.

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• tresspass@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I work in food services and just yesterday a temp was fired for “stealing” leftovers that were going to be composted. Like excuse me? They could at least have gotten a warning since they were new not to mention its a cruel policy to begin with.

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• YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Everyone would call the number! The prompts to get you to a human are 2, 1. I just spoke with Stacy, and she literally wrote down my comment. Like with a pen and paper.

  Casey’s is actually one of the few ethical petrol stations and will actually listen to customer feedback.

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  • dellish@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Casey’s is actually one of the few ethical petrol stations

    The very fact we’re in this situation kinda tells me otherwise.

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    • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Corporate≠regional management.

      I don’t know. I’ve been dealing with ai chat bots more than should be reasonable. It was nice to talk to a human.

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• Feathercrown@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Our society will not improve until we punish this type of disgusting behavior

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• Nomorereddit@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Imma need to see bodycam footage and his hr files. If he was grazing the salad bar again, he’s toast.

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  • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yep! Call me a skeptic on these stories. I’ve seen too many, “I was fired because I clocked in 5 minutes late!”

    Only for it to come out that while they were fired for “being late”, it was the last straw because of all their HR complaints for sexually harassing dozens of women, offensive humor, and for creating a toxic atmosphere.

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    • hector@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Look at you giving employers the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, just like I’m sure all of the president’s companies fired people for totally legitimate reasons that they came up with after the fact when they got called on it.

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    • Ougie@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Of course his name is Joe so he must be a sex offender. Holy shit you have issues pal

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    • Woht24@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Call me a sceptic, but I don’t buy the corporate dick sucking posts are real people.

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  • hector@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You just said salad bar, they don’t have toast at salad bars, croutons maybe, I mean that’s stale toast they toast more traditionally, but get your story straight.

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• jerkface@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  hello - - my name is joe

  • • I have a wife a job and a fam-il-ee and i work - - in a cookie factory one day - - my boss came up to me he said hey joe are ya busy i said no he said do this - - so i did - -

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• Adderbox76@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It absolutely sucks, but from a company perspective it’s not about greed, it’s about legal liability. If they provide food to a charity and someone gets sick from it, they are responsible for it. So the legal danger of giving away your “close to be expired” food is fraught with corporate danger.

  Does it suck. Yes. Absolutely. But Joe opened them up to a potential lawsuit.

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  • plz1@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Indemnity agreement, done.

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    • korazail@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      This really should be the first go-to.

      Old goods? Assign liability to the food bank and let them handle sorting.

      Tossing perfectly edible food in the trash because it’s no longer pretty and (acknowledging) I won’t buy it, it is just insane.

      I try to buy bruised food when I can because I know others won’t. a wrinkly bell pepper, cucumber, or zucchini will be exactly the same once I chop it up and put it in my meal.

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  • czardestructo@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Everyone misses this point. Lawyers have turned into leeches of society sucking the empathy and fun out of everything so everyone is scared to get sued. On the flip side its so god damn easy for corporate lackeys to say ‘no cuz lawyers’ just to make their job incrementally easier rather than actually doing it. Its a shitty cycle and I’ve seen it too much in corporate America.

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  • Frigidlollipop@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I wasn’t sure if this was the issue or if it was because the cookies technically needed to be expired first to donate?

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• TheLastRadiant@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  There is too much of this in the world, no big corporation is getting hurt by them donating food they just want to keep from helping people and making the world a better place who cares if they bring them cookies they were going to lose money in anyways at least they actually got used!

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  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Here, use a few of these: …,

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• psx_crab@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Must’ve breach some stupid must-throw rule all these corpos like.

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• WanderingThoughts@europe.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Big chains do stuff like that. They usually got on trouble once, or got some employees trying to game the system. Stuff with a damaged package can be taken by workers? There’s always one guy that ‘accidentally’ drops the good stuff and then takes it home, and does that every day. Expired stuff can be taken home? Some things somehow end up in the back and are forgotten until one day over expiration. And then there are the idiots that find some stuff weeks expired, take it home, and then sue the company for giving them bad stuff. Usually management finds that it’s easier to just outright outlaw taking things home instead of dealing with a few idiots, and that ruins it for all other people handling in good faith.

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  • lovely_reader@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’m not accusing you of making excuses for them, because all you’re giving is a reason, and you’re right. And at first it does feel like an excuse. But “management finds that it’s easier” deserves more of our focus and pressure. If they’re big enough that it’s hard to manage basic employee rules/discipline on the ground, they’re probably also big enough to be pocketing loads of profit. It’s reasonable to expect that they’d to allocate some of those spoils to finding better solutions than “throw all the food away.” For instance, if you pay people what their work is worth, they’re less likely to risk termination by taking your old cookies.

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    • WanderingThoughts@europe.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      And most people would think it’s a huge waste of trashing stuff that’s still usable, but companies don’t care unless forced by regulations. Hell, a bunch of companies go out of their way to make stuff unusable.

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• CADmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Fucking Casey’s. Bad food, advertising on the pumps that can’t be muted, and now this. Good thing there’s alternatives where I live.

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• Alchalide@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I work for a cookie factory and i can give away as many cookies I want :D. As long as I don’t get the customers employees in trouble.

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• joyjoy@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  “Due to the high number of complains related to this location, we will be shutting down operations effective immediately.”

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• BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I sure do miss working on the corporate world. NOT!

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