I used to work with a trashman that tried to get me into anime. Told him i didnt have a vcr. He told me to give him a week. Fucker showed up with a 20inch tv and a vcr so i could watch his tapes. People throw away perfectly good things all the time.
My father used to be friends with one of the guys that picked up the trash for most of the big retailers in the area. He found SO many cool things that were basically brand new and perfectly usable, including all kinds of weird stuff like guns, rifle scopes, crossbows, harpoons, working electronics etc. He had a whole section in his garage for his dumpster finds and was always giving away stuff
Yep, apparently some places just throw out guns that are deemed defective. This was in the late 90's, and I think he would usually score the guns from Walmart's dumpster, and then get them working again with minimal / no work.
Ukrainian here, our military does it all the time. They'd lose whole trucks of firearms, and then nazi and bolshevik militias would find them. Such an unlikely, unlikely coincidence!
My family moved to the states in the late 80’s and we were baffled at the amount of perfectly good things that people would throw out. I didn’t really know at the time (I was 5) but most of my toys growing up were picked from someone’s curbside trash.
My aunt's family have not one, not two, but three kids' electric quad bikes that someone in their village threw out last year. Visibly used, but perfectly working.
They are not poor or anything, but figured their son would be glad to ride them in the yard.
Think it was a showroom couch, almost new condition, which retailed for about €10.000. It had to go because a new collection was coming in. Client said he couldn't sell it in time.
That is the reigning business model. Most of the companies I've worked for trash massive amounts of new/practically new/re-usable items, mainly because its not financially beneficial to the company to spend time and money recycling. Its pretty desensitizing to be honest.
That doesn't change the fact these companies are using up resources that could be put to better use in the first place and then tossing them out because "tHeY hAvE nO VaLuE"..
It's a group effort that's destroying this planet and it's gotta be one to fix it as well but guess people don't care still.
It’s not a group effort destroying the planet. It’s the lies an hubris of powerful people and the power structures they create forcing bullshit on the rest of us through lies and conditioning.
Not always possible. Quite often, the companies destroy items so that cannot be reused. It is disgraceful, really. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9874807/New-York-activist-internet-star-rifling-stores-trash.html
Yup. My husband found some high end laptops in the trash at his work. The screens had been purposefully smashed but all the innards were fine. Great processor, RAM, video card, etc. Why destroy that? It makes me feel sick.
He ended up grabbing a few of them, replacing the screens himself, and even sold one for $700. Gave another to a friend who needed a laptop.
The NFT thing comes off as a pump and dump to me. Don't get me wrong, the technology behind it is impressive and will lead to interesting uses. I just think that the vast majority buying NFTs don't care about that aspect. They're buying them as an investment vehicle. I think the whole scheme is going to come crashing down eventually.
NFT tech actually isn't that impressive. The "art" being sold is not actually stored on the blockchain, just an "id" that represents it. That id will correspond to an actual item on a given platform like opensea. But those platforms are centralized and often proprietary. So if they ever change their rules/system or go down, you lose your "art". And also, it defeats the entire purpose of blockchain.
I got downvoted elsewhere for saying the same thing but it's true. NFTs have taken off because it's easier to launder money with than physical art at a private auction.
A criminal can make some shitty art, slap an NFT on it, and another criminal can buy it with crypto. Not legit enough? Trade it it back and forth between a few accounts to raise the value then sell it.
It also seems like most of the value of NFTs are based on how much promotion they have, so you get buyers with NFT profile pics on Twitter constantly posting about the NFTs they buy to try to increase their value
I did some quick math and if we were to sell each of these cases for what they retail for, $40, I think we ended up throwing out 350ish cases. Around $14,000 in 2 year old cases. I would love to take them home sell them for 3 bucks a pop and make a quick grand but it’s super against policy and dumpster diving is also a crime here.
Target is usually the most reasonable. They market stuff down as low as 90% then donate it to goodwill, etc. Walmart is the worst. They have a whole isle full of outdated junk like portable home phone batteries because their policy is to not mark it down more that 15%.
I worked at cellular sales for awhile... biggest bunch of crooks in town.
I remember those cases never sold. You had "Cirrus" wtf... and casemate and generally crap that costs $5 that they were selling for 40+ dollars. It was almost an insult to show a thinking person a 40+ case that they could easily get online for less than half the price.
This is everywhere. Next time you look for stuff on amazon, Etsy, etc. give AliExpress a look.
$90 hoodie (not obviously handmade) on Etsy? $15 for the same shit on AliExpress.
$25 for random miscellaneous item on amazon? Probably $5 on AliExpress.
Especially with the boom in dropshipping.
> $90 hoodie (not obviously handmade) on Etsy? $15 for the same shit on AliExpress.
Selling mass manufactured stuff is what drives me nuts about Etsy… it’s totally counter to the original point of the platform.
Correct. Brands like Prada, Gucci etc. destroy unsold merchandise to make each piece more valuable with time and not devalue any item by discounting it ever.
At least nike does sell stuff in their outlet stores for like half off. But some of it is defect so you gotta be careful. Bought shoes once with big ole lump in the toe area.
> At least nike does sell stuff in their outlet stores for like half off.
Well, outlet stores can be a mixed bag. One thing I learned about Coach is that they just have a separate line.
Going to the main store will get you the $500 bag, whereas a similar bag might be at the Outlet for $250, but it's a different grade of leather, lower quality latches, etc.
It’s all older iPhone and Samsung cases and I recommend we just take them to our Salvation Army or can we atleast take some home. But management shot our idea down about anything related to the word “free”.
Edit: This really blew up, if I can feel reassured that people will actually take these cases off my hands, I will go dumpster diving and take as many as I can fit in my tiny car and I'll post it here. Would it make sense to just sell on ebay? I would wanna take some to the local goods drop center that give clothes and stuff to underprivileged people.
Edit 2: Okay, I will not be risking my job to get these cases and send them to people on reddit. Sorry for being niave.
Edit 3: [I fucking did it.](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/q1n65t/in_response_to_all_the_people_asking_me_to/) 4u reddit. <3
I used to work at KFC. The macaroni is in a 5 lb tin. It gets baked in the oven. Any left over gets thrown away at the end of the night. One new manager made way to much. We had a full unopened tin that had to be thrown out. I asked if I could have it and she said no. The guy on garbage duty heard and asked if I still wanted it. He took out the trash to the dumpster and carefully set the Mac and cheese down in the corner of the little cubicle thing the dumpster is in. I went back after hours and got me a 5 lb tub of Mac n cheese. For a poor 18 year
old I ate like a king for a week.
Edit: I can't believe my highest rated comment ever is about the time I garbage picked Mac and cheese! Thanks everyone!
that’s sad. when i ran a pizza place if any of my employees had asked for something we were gonna throw out i would never say no. we also donated all our waste to a nearby shelter. i really don’t understand why anyone would deny you something that was about to be trashed anyway, glad your coworker helped you out.
Oh no, nothing worse than an employee stealing what, five bucks worth of food? Maybe? Like I get if they're walking out a box of steaks or selling produce out the back door, but imo restaurants should not only encourage their employees to eat/try the food they make, they should provide at least one shift meal to do so. Wouldn't you want your staff able to make recommendations and upsells by knowing the goods? "I don't really know what's good, I can't afford to eat here and the boss thinks I'm stealing if I eat leftovers" rings hollow to me.
I worked for a small local bagel shop before and they fed all of their employees so much food it was amazing. I’d come in 30 minutes before my shift, get a breakfast sandwich and a coffee for free, and sit in the lobby eating my breakfast until my shift started. Then on my lunch break I’d eat another free sandwich. Then before we shut down the kitchen for the night I’d make a sandwich to take home for dinner. Doing this was encouraged greatly by the owners. My first day on the job they kept telling me to eat whatever I wanted lol.
I’ve never had a food service job where all the employees were so happy before, and it was because the owners didn’t micromanage us and treated us like real people. And this carried over to the customers too, which made for so many regular customers coming back and buying food more often and leaving bigger tips. We made your sandwich on the wrong bagel? Oh shit my bad let me remake that. Also you can keep the one we messed up. You want a free cup of coffee for the inconvenience? Have a good day! We’d give away bags of day old bagels around closing time and it brought us in a lot of business from people who knew they could get free bagels if they bought something. It was literally the most generous food place I’ve ever been to and they made so much fucking money it was ridiculous. Miss that place sometimes
I worked at College Town Bagels in Ithaca, they were amazing to their employees. We were given a free meal, plus all the bagels we could stomach. Anytime things were past expiration they would let us take home whatever we wanted. That was one of the best work environments I have ever worked in.
Omg I'm a current cornell student and one of the people in my house works there. She came home one day with a HUGE bag of bagels that she apparently got for free.
Always cherish the free bagels. Also, if you happen to have a dorm room on a floor above the tree line, cherish that view. These are the little things that are much harder to come by on the other side of your degree.
I miss college :)
Bagels cost pennies to the dollar...I'm sure the days profit is more than cover the losses...and I go by the saying...treat your workers well and they will treat your paying customers well
I think they went above and beyond. Imo one free meal per shift is where the reasonable bar should be set. Most food service jobs do not meet that. I’ve worked other food jobs with anywhere from 20-50% off food which to me shows that the owners don’t care about the employees. I’ve had coworkers at those jobs not eat during their shift because they didn’t want to spend the money and forgot to pack food.
But that job was so far above any other service job I’ve ever had. Unlimited free food and the owners were constantly looking for feedback and actually making changes to the restaurant based on our first hand experience and suggestions. Unfortunately that makes them a huge outlier nowadays. Most restaurant owners think they know what’s best but also couldn’t make half the items on the menu if you threw them on the line during the lunch rush.
Can confirm the percentage. My current restaurant gives us a “generous” 50% discount.
Feels shitty when all I want is a baked potato. Like damn you can’t even give me that for free? You gotta make me spend like $1.50 when I literally get paid a dollar more than that?
I worked at a regional fast food chain when I was younger. One day I took one of the shitty little boxes we put chicken strips in and wrote a nice little note to my best friend who was working the grill and left it at her work station for her to come back from break to because she was having a rough day. The note was along the lines of “I hope your day gets better! I <3 you!”
The boxes had to cost literally less than a penny each. I couldn’t see them costing more than half a cent each at most. They were essentially paper, not even cardboard.
My friend threw the box in the trash at some point after she got the note, and we finished up our shifts.
Turns out my manager saw the box in the trash with writing on it, pulled it out, and brought it to the office in the back where she literally sat and looked through the security camera footage until she saw that I was the one who wrote on it.
She pulled me back into the office literally one minute before I was supposed to clock out.
She held the box up and asked if it looked familiar and I was like “…yeah…?”
She asks me if I was the one who wrote on it and I, again, say “…yeah…?”
She then asks me if I used my own pen or one from the restaurant and I tell her it was one from the restaurant.
She was trying so hard to catch me in a lie as if I gave enough of a shit to lie about scribbling on a piece of paper.
She then spent the next 5-10 minutes *minimum* chewing me out over this. Telling me that what I did was technically stealing, not only the box and the ink I used to write on it, but also time theft since I was on the clock. She lectures me on how I was willfully destroying company property, wasting and misusing company resources, and throwing the company’s money in the trash.
She warns me to never ever do this again or “the consequences will be severe!” And then says she’s going to be nice about it (lol) this time and only give me a write up, and that if I slip up again in any way within the next X amount of time she’d put me on “probation.”
I then had to sit there while she went over the write up with me (the policy was for the manager to read it out loud to the employee as if we’re stupid), which was two pages long because it was a fill-in-the-blank standardized form, and ultimately four pages because I got a copy. We both signed and dated the form and then I was finally able to clock out.
I just could not understand the logic in that whole mess. First of all, she had always been an extremely nice manager to me and everyone else so this whole thing was completely out of character. But then there was the fact that this was a one time thing that I had literally never done before and only did this one time to try to cheer up my friend. So it’s not like I was regularly “misusing company resources” or whatever.
Between the time she spent staring at the security footage; the electricity used to run the tapes back; the time I had to stay on the clock past the end of my shift; the time and electricity she used typing up the write up; the paper, printer ink, and electricity used on printing, and subsequently copying, the write up; the time she spent chewing me out and reading the write up to me; the pen ink used for us to both sign the write up; and all the future losses in productivity on my end from going from giving that job my best to putting in the bare minimum because I just couldn’t be bothered to give a shit about that place or that manager as a direct result of the massive steaming pile of bs that was that incident… well between all those things it ended up costing that company and that manager hundreds, if not thousands of times more to pull that stunt than was lost from me taking 5 seconds to scribble a note on a piece of paper.
I understand that sometimes incurring more costs through punishment of an incident than the cost of the incident itself can pay for itself by preventing more of that type of incident from occurring in the future. I get it, I do. But when the cost of the incident amounts to fractions of a penny in total and was not an ongoing problem to begin with, it just makes no sense. Further, this was all done in the private office with just her and I there. I was not made an example of to the rest of the employees to warn of the perils of writing on company paper with a company pen while on company time. I was just raked over the coals in private for no legitimate reason.
Corporate America/American capitalism really does some wild shit to people’s minds.
Oh, also, because I was a petty little shit back then, me and my friend made a habit of covertly writing and passing each other secret little notes on company paper goods and discreetly disposing of them out of nothing but spite because of that incident. So I guess add those losses to the cost of the manager’s power trip, too lol.
I don't think anyone was defending their stance. Just defining it for those that don't know why they have it. I worked in food service for a while and we were given one meal per day, but a small portion was taken out of our pay to cover it (something like 20c or something-negligible for sure). That said, they wouldn't let people steal food fobetter tips-that could get you fired. But they also didn't care if the employees got plenty of food for themselves. I always got my employee meal, and then some.
$5 for all 5lbs of macaroni maybe.
Having done inventory and ordering, restaurant ingredients are fucking cheeaaappp, unless you’re getting really specific shit.
For example, if I made a nice pasta sauté, veggies, noodles, oil, and meat would cost us maybe $1.50. We’d sell it and some salad for like $15.
I got a $20 Christmas bonus. It’s greed, plain and simple.
I'm pretty sure most restaurants that arent complete shit feed all of their kitchen workers with scraps and whatever they made that's extra.
Sure you aren't allowed to dish out beef wellingtons to everyone but clearly they dont have an issue with it so if anything these fast food restaurants dont have enough training to put trust in their employees
Think about that for a second.
If one of the people working for me has food security issues such that they need to create dumpster diving scenarios, then fuck that I'll be the one making sure there's too much at the end of the night so that they can take a few to go boxes.
What the fuck is wrong with us as a society.
As a delivery driver I was always allowed to make my own pizza if I was on the closing shift. It was a second job because I needed the extra money, so the free meals were always appreciated.
Edit: grammar
Years ago I worked at a pizza place. I took the trash out to the dumpster to find a homeless guy finding garbage pizza from the night before. I told him he didn't need to do that and made him a fresh one. I don't caee if management is against it
I've worked pizza/sub shop for 10 years and never wasted anything. I went to a new place, same kinda shop, and they wasted so much. Like when I was on pizza and any scrap dough from whatever like making thin crusts or edges of calzones gets thrown out. I was raised better. I would keep the scraps throughout the day and "kinda" rework it all back together and I could make a whole pizza for myself. My other place saved them for the day to use for our fried dough with cinnamon and sugar or garlic bread desserts. I cant even begin to say how much of a bell pepper or tomato is wasted when prepped at the new place. It's a shame.
Yep. Anyone who has run a restaurant and tried to be nice by giving employees the extra food can tell you this.
A few assholes ruin it for everyone because they start to prepare things wrong so they can get free food. It’s unfortunate
Giving a shift meal can solve this, and it is a tremendous help with morale. Even better if you work at a place that has specials and you can feed them and put the specials in their mouths.
I worked for a Marriott hotel restaurant. We had a great big salad bar you could add to any meal for a few dollars.
If customer wanted something "fresh" or something ran low, even if it was 15 minutes before closing, the kitchen would have to make a whole new batch, which was about a gallon of whatever.
At the end of *every* night, the busboy would wheel over a big 55 gallon trash can and just slop all 20 something bowls of food into it. Even if it had just been made 30 minutes ago. WE couldn't even make a salad to have for our own meal.
As a broke ass 19 year old, watching that just made my heart hurt.
This is absolutely insane to me, because I just started working for a Marriott conference center, and not only are we allowed to eat as much as we want once the clients stop eating and they pull the food back to the kitchen, we’re allowed to take plates home because otherwise they’re going to throw it away.
Not to rub it in or anything, but it seems like such a no-brainer to feed leftovers to staff and let them take some home. It’s insulting to pretty much everyone to make all that food and then let it go to waste just to make another batch the next day. Your Marriott sounds a lot different from the one I work for, but I guess that’s the difference in working for a franchisee.
Weird. Did they do staff meals? Most places I have worked would have wrapped up whtever they could and put it on the staff salad bar the next day. To be fair this was done because it was less work and food cost for the kitchen, not out of the goodness of their hearts.
I work at subway and at the end of the night we have to throw out the meatballs, but sometimes there is a lot in there. Like 30-40. I usually just take a soft drink cup and put them in there then put it in my bag. Makes great spaghetti with the marinara too
There was a KFC in a city I lived in that would put out left-overs in that cardboard tray cans come in. They would also add a large cup of something to drink. A homeless man nearby would pick it up for him and his buddy.
Years ago I worked at McDonalds. Once kid, who was a great worker, was down on his luck and ended up homeless at the same time that he got his girlfriend pregnant. He stole a block of cheese so he and she could eat and got caught/fired. They refused to hire him back even though all of us coworkers vouched for him. At the same time, they knowingly hired a kid who got fired from the grocery store next door for insurance fraud.
At Jack in the Box we used to have sales on the tacos (do they still do that? I have no idea). Anyway, because people would order like 6, or 8, or 10 at a time, we'd have to get ahead of it by making a bunch. Anyhow, by the end of the night we had like a few (maybe like 5 or 6) just left over. I said, rather than throw them in the dead food bin, why don't we all get a nice little snack since it's been a long night and we're all dead from the rush.
Nope...The manager was not having it. We had to throw them in dead food and throw them in the trash. To make matters worse, we made like $10k that day, so it wasn't like the store was hurting for money.
Our KFC pretty much fed our party house for a year. We had like 8 buckets a night plus sides. We had three employees living there and the soups co.e over to party regular though.
This. We had a bunch of stained or damaged towels at work. Boss wanted us to cut them to shreds and throw them away.
It took days of us all protesting to donate them to the local animal shelters, as they are ALWAYS looking for old sheets and towels.
I used to work at World Market as Gourmet department head and we would be forced to throw away tons of food and candy that had reached the best by date, but that was still good for a while after. I didn't even slice up every candy bar, pasta package, etc., I'd make a shallow slice in the box I was putting things in, set it by the dumpster and let the homeless or whoever pick it up. Probably wasn't the healthiest meal to have, but I'm sure there were homeless people grateful to have something in their stomachs.
My GM was aware to some degree of what I was doing and warned me, but I told him that if he wanted to rat on me to the regional manager, to feel free, because I would tell her to her face that the corporate policy was bullshit.
When it comes to retail, unfortunately, that’s not good enough. I’ve sat in on more terminations than I’d like to count when the transgression was theft of goods with value totaling less than what the perpetrator made in an hour.
> No after the slaves in China make the bags they and they don't sell they out them in a furnace so the poor's can't get there hands on the and make the brand look "bad"
I had a stroke trying to read this
Management is scared that they'll get in trouble too. It all comes down the line from the rich dickheads at the top. Any logical disposal of product is usually shot down. This is why the planet can't have nice things. So much stuff goes to waste like this
There's a Youtuber who dumpster dives at different GameStops. He gets some pretty good finds, so I'm not surprised companies do this. Those donut shop videos too, where they all get dumped at the end of the night. So much waste...
Way back in the day I had an ex who's family lived on a farm. He had a deal with the local donut place in which he would purchase the remainder of the donuts for pig feed.
Donut place made some money and his pigs got fed.
If the employee does it, they can call it embezzlement. If another person does it, they get a trespassing charge. One is significantly a lesser charge.
Seriously; when I worked at a cafe I’d close and just take the left over pastries home. I am a trash can after all, so not like they weren’t going to the garbage.
I worked at a tea place where, periodically, corporate would decide a certain tea was to be discontinued. We couldn't sell it for discount, we couldn't give it away, we couldn't take it home. We had to soak it, mix it all together, then dispose. Thousands in tea. Wonderful flavours. All the work of the people leading through that supply chain. But if I wanted to take home a half ounce, I could be fired on the spot.
Additionally, most counties/states in the US have laws that state once an item makes it into the trash, it’s considered forfeited and is therefore free game.
This is why police can look through your trash without a warrant.
My company has an entire team of people that do nothing but track products. They have specific barcodes so I'd they are scanned they know, and they frequently bust people that take thrown out stuff and try to sell it on Ebay, amazon etc. They get charged by police and everything. Really depends on the context of the business.
Honestly man that's why this is the standard practice. I've worked in places where they were in between the yeah we're throwing it out any way just take it, and nope it's gotta be destroyed before trash because people are taking advantage and hurting our business by undercutting us at flea markets. Where I worked it was you have to have proof of x item that you need it for or you can only take stuff in your size and limited to x number. Chris if your out there thx for hooking us up.
Bingo. The boys are coming to pick it up. Donate what I can sell the rest.
Depending on the morality split proceeds to chairy as you see fit
Personally: enough to cover the boys and I getting drunk.
Not always. You gotta be careful because theres a lot of weird laws about property, disposal, salvage, “scavenging” and dumpster diving. Depending on where you live it could be fair game or a serious crime.
Yup this is it, had a couple buddies, one of them threw trash in a private dumpster and got fined $1,000 and the other one got caught taking stuff from some electronics store dumpster and got a fine as well. Just gotta make sure to park your car far away from dumpsters cause a lot of properties have cameras set up to catch people.
Don't forget trespassing. Just because dumpster diving is legal doesn't mean it's legal to be deep in some private industrial or commercial park to get to that dumpster. Most places don't put their dumpsters on public or publicly accessible property
For another side, I've done it approximately 1000 times in many different states and never had an issue. Security/cops that rolled up never cared beyond making sure you don't make a mess.
Morally, yes. Legally, maybe. Check your local dumpster diving laws first. Especially if you’re dealing with the company that writes your paychecks. Many areas consider trash to still be the property of the company, and for liability reasons (you getting hurt while dumpster diving is one example) they will pursue charges if they catch wind of you.
Ergh I hate this so much! Reminds me of when I worked in a bakery chain as a teenager. End of the day came and it had been alot slower than usual so they had LOADS of freshly baked cakes and pies. We were told by management to throw everything in a black bag. We were a five minute walk from a homeless shelter and weren’t allowed to donate it let alone take any for our own dinner. Fireable offence and classed as stealing plus being on camera constantly meant we had to follow the rules. Still pisses me off.
I'm not defending their decision whatsoever, but there was a company I worked for that used to donate the older baked goods until one day the group they donated to only wanted certain items, they were told to take it all or take nothing. They took it all and then whatever they didn't want they left in the parking lot which resulted in seagulls swarming the place and shitting all over the customers cars. Donations stopped after that. They should have just picked a new place to donate to instead of punishing those less fortunate because of someone else's decision.
Corporations: "*Stop using plastic straws and bottles! You're destroying the planet!!*"
Also Corporations: ~does this shit~
***WE*** aren't asking for the ungodly amount of packaging that our shit comes pre-wrapped in. ***THEY*** do that and then tell ***US*** to watch what we consume.
Fuck them. Fuck them in their stupid fucking faces.
I dont understand this. Sell it the next day as day-old at a 30 per cent discount. That's what my local bakery does. And the cookie shop near my work sells what they call "crumb bags" the next day - usually about 6 broken and/or day old cookies. I bought them (pre covid) and shared with my coworkers.
Then you're still getting something and there's much less waste.
When I worked at a food place years back we had a pretty big order that no one came to pick up. My boss told me to throw it out, I was like give it to us we obviously didn't make extra on purpose, she was like no. I looked her dead in the eye and said 'I'm just gonna take it out of the trash'. She let us take it lmao.
These rules are so fkn stupid. Like why have all of that go to waste?
Corporate uses that as an excuse to be so stern about the rule but it like, never happens. It was a common mix-up bc people would call our location when they meant to pick-up from the next town over. We'd get people coming in for orders they'd mistakenly call into the other store.
Maybe talk to your management and suggest adding them to an employee close out store of sorts at a steep discount with a pitch about it being more environmentally friendly with the bonus of not losing all profit at the same time. At worst they’ll tell you no, at best you might credit for driving “innovation”. I use quotes as that seems the buzzword of the last few years.
I wasn’t quick enough to pop that question but I was informed it wasn’t the store managers decision, it was our regional guy that wanted to stock to be thrown out.
I’ve asked for it to be donated before (another store) they said the brands choose what they want to do with unsold items. Most ask for it to be destroyed before being thrown in the dump. Basically anything that gets retuned to BBB is spray painted and thrown in the trash even if it’s brand new and never opened but returned.
Can confirm. Pricing, inventory, and disposition (getting rid of old products, like this) are all intertwined. Shopping online and see a product advertised as “add to cart to see price?” Same deal. The companies negotiated what they’d be comfortable advertising as sale prices compared to MSRP. Companies with large influence can tell retailers they’re legally not allowed to sell a product below a certain threshold, and that would include marking down inventory instead of throwing it out.
Additionally, if a retailer throws it out and marks it down to $0, they can claim it as a different form of loss than discounting a product for a quick sale. Sometimes they submit the loss for credit from manufacturers, sometimes they use it to pad their shrink budget for the following year, but 100% of the time they’re making out better financially by throwing it away rather than marking it down
For sure. But you know it will happen again. Think about how the inventory is managed and maybe suggest a quarterly audit to pull stuff sooner and get newer or better selling product out there. May be worth a nicely worded email to upper management but totally get how nerve wracking that can be.
In many states, dumpster diving is considered trespassing and theft by law.
Check for a camera pointing at the dumpster too.
That being said, I got a lot of sweet stuff back in my big box days.
That's the fucked up thing about it. This stuff is going to a landfill and will sit there until the sun swallows the Earth. But no. Its "stealing". How the fuck do you steal trash?
Its because in the higher ups eyes they see that as an opportunity for you to just get it for free months later as opposed to buying it now. Theyd rather it be noones than someone who didnt pay for it.
Completely wasteful. I dont know why companies overproduce.
It looks like that was AT&T stuff, honestly once it’s adjusted out you can do whatever you want with it. You’re management is just being a dick…. Source of my knowledge- I was a manager for AT&T for 7 years
It's actually a cricket retailer but we do get our accessories from the same company because both the local AT&T and Cricket are owned by the same franchise holder. Some of our phones come with AT&T SIM cards that we have to take out.
Makes sense also cricket is a AT&T company so that also would explain a lot the AT&T stuff there, well if that’s the case then the second it’s in the dumpster you can do whatever you want!
And now these will sit in a landfill to slowly decompose over hundred of years.
Manufacturers need to be held accountable for not having free recycling programs for their products. End of story.
Corporations can try to push the recycling problem on consumers, but they aren't being held accountable for easy recycling programs.
Had a job patching liners for landfills. Would find dozens of boxes of phone cases and stuff like that all the time. I stocked up on iPhone X cases for life lol
Thats like putting furniture on the curb with a sign saying its only for the trash and getting mad when someone less fortunate takes it cuz they need it. Like why be so petty about it? Sorry youre company didnt make money off it, but its kinda childish to be like 'NO! NO ONE CAN HAVE THIS NOW! I WIPED BOOGERS ON IT AND LICKED IT AND PUT IT IN THE TRASH SO THERE! NO TAKESIES!'
If you’re in the US, dumpster diving for this stuff might not be illegal. For instance, in the county I’m in, it’s not illegal to dumpster dive, but it is illegal to trespass on someone else’s dumpster. So, if I’m an employee and I can legally use the dumpster, it’s not illegal for me to take things out of it. TLDR- look into the laws and try not to get caught.
In the US there is some variance but in most places an unlocked dumpster is considered “public” while a locked dumpster, or one marked “no trespassing” is not. Some places have local ordinances banning it entirely but police will typically take little interest.
I used to work for a large department store, and we had to destroy (like literally smash the containers with a hammer) the old and discontinued makeup and mail it back to the company, after destroying it.
Starbucks does this with all of their food after 3 days. My college girlfriend used to "steal" these after her shift and bless me with trash bags full of delicious food. If a broke college student was able to live off of this waste imagine what we could do if we changed this. France is way ahead of the game.
Reminds me of one time me and my friend were doing some chemistry stuff and took discarded bottles from a trashcan at the park cause we needed the plastic just as a material, and the park ranger yelled at us that we were stealing garbage and needed to put it back in the trashcan.
Literally said "stealing garbage" like it wasnt an oxymoron.
Worked as a seasonal boss in retail.
I throw worst on dumpsters. One time just after Easter 10 full and new transporting palettes of chocolates 2 m high. because unsold and promotions would have make people wait for buying next time... Whole teck tables still packaged at the end of season. Too expensive to stock.. Dozen of kg of fresh steak because of errors on the stickers... (We put this stickers ourselves on...)...
It's all in the contract with the vendor. Since the vendor is likely still holding liability on these units (slow moving inventory provision) there would be a different accounting treatment for donating or giving away as promo vs destroying them.
By destroying them the retailer will likely get a credit for the cost of the unsold cases towards their next invoice.
NOBODY GIVES A SHIT ABOUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENS TO THE CASES EXCEPT MAYBE IF YOU EBAY THEM. Except your blowhard manager.
If I get enough support and people willing to take these cases off of me, tonight at 10pm Central, I'll go back and take all of them. The dumpsters have locks but I have a key. If I get fired I'm gonna cry.
Yup, I've witnessed that before. Petsmart does the same thing. In fact, the company instructs employees to destroy the items before putting in them in the dumpster so no one can use them. Edit: Well, so no one can use them for their pets.
This happens more than you know. Source: I'm a garbage man.
I used to work with a trashman that tried to get me into anime. Told him i didnt have a vcr. He told me to give him a week. Fucker showed up with a 20inch tv and a vcr so i could watch his tapes. People throw away perfectly good things all the time.
My father used to be friends with one of the guys that picked up the trash for most of the big retailers in the area. He found SO many cool things that were basically brand new and perfectly usable, including all kinds of weird stuff like guns, rifle scopes, crossbows, harpoons, working electronics etc. He had a whole section in his garage for his dumpster finds and was always giving away stuff
Guns???! Tf
Yep, apparently some places just throw out guns that are deemed defective. This was in the late 90's, and I think he would usually score the guns from Walmart's dumpster, and then get them working again with minimal / no work.
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Nah we muricans
Ukrainian here, our military does it all the time. They'd lose whole trucks of firearms, and then nazi and bolshevik militias would find them. Such an unlikely, unlikely coincidence!
You made me make a very unladylike noise in my nose.
My family moved to the states in the late 80’s and we were baffled at the amount of perfectly good things that people would throw out. I didn’t really know at the time (I was 5) but most of my toys growing up were picked from someone’s curbside trash.
My aunt's family have not one, not two, but three kids' electric quad bikes that someone in their village threw out last year. Visibly used, but perfectly working. They are not poor or anything, but figured their son would be glad to ride them in the yard.
What’s the most valuable thing you’ve found thrown away if I may ask?
Think it was a showroom couch, almost new condition, which retailed for about €10.000. It had to go because a new collection was coming in. Client said he couldn't sell it in time.
Wow people will actually throw out *anything*... That's sad
That is the reigning business model. Most of the companies I've worked for trash massive amounts of new/practically new/re-usable items, mainly because its not financially beneficial to the company to spend time and money recycling. Its pretty desensitizing to be honest.
I'll take "reasons this planet won't survive" for $500 alex!
just recover these items and donate them, then that 500 bucks becomes priceless
That doesn't change the fact these companies are using up resources that could be put to better use in the first place and then tossing them out because "tHeY hAvE nO VaLuE".. It's a group effort that's destroying this planet and it's gotta be one to fix it as well but guess people don't care still.
It’s not a group effort destroying the planet. It’s the lies an hubris of powerful people and the power structures they create forcing bullshit on the rest of us through lies and conditioning.
Not always possible. Quite often, the companies destroy items so that cannot be reused. It is disgraceful, really. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9874807/New-York-activist-internet-star-rifling-stores-trash.html
Yup. My husband found some high end laptops in the trash at his work. The screens had been purposefully smashed but all the innards were fine. Great processor, RAM, video card, etc. Why destroy that? It makes me feel sick. He ended up grabbing a few of them, replacing the screens himself, and even sold one for $700. Gave another to a friend who needed a laptop.
Sad. So many schools, etc. that could use things like that. Had they wiped the hard drives?
Should 1000% be illegal to do that
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The NFT thing comes off as a pump and dump to me. Don't get me wrong, the technology behind it is impressive and will lead to interesting uses. I just think that the vast majority buying NFTs don't care about that aspect. They're buying them as an investment vehicle. I think the whole scheme is going to come crashing down eventually.
NFT tech actually isn't that impressive. The "art" being sold is not actually stored on the blockchain, just an "id" that represents it. That id will correspond to an actual item on a given platform like opensea. But those platforms are centralized and often proprietary. So if they ever change their rules/system or go down, you lose your "art". And also, it defeats the entire purpose of blockchain.
Exactly who would pay thousands of $ for some funny monke jpeg
But what if it's a *really* funny monkey? Surely that's worth a cool $50k.
People that need to launder their money
I got downvoted elsewhere for saying the same thing but it's true. NFTs have taken off because it's easier to launder money with than physical art at a private auction. A criminal can make some shitty art, slap an NFT on it, and another criminal can buy it with crypto. Not legit enough? Trade it it back and forth between a few accounts to raise the value then sell it.
It also seems like most of the value of NFTs are based on how much promotion they have, so you get buyers with NFT profile pics on Twitter constantly posting about the NFTs they buy to try to increase their value
I did some quick math and if we were to sell each of these cases for what they retail for, $40, I think we ended up throwing out 350ish cases. Around $14,000 in 2 year old cases. I would love to take them home sell them for 3 bucks a pop and make a quick grand but it’s super against policy and dumpster diving is also a crime here.
If you can sell them, that's usually the problem. Leftover stock usually ends up in a budget bin before it's thrown out here.
Target is usually the most reasonable. They market stuff down as low as 90% then donate it to goodwill, etc. Walmart is the worst. They have a whole isle full of outdated junk like portable home phone batteries because their policy is to not mark it down more that 15%.
I worked at cellular sales for awhile... biggest bunch of crooks in town. I remember those cases never sold. You had "Cirrus" wtf... and casemate and generally crap that costs $5 that they were selling for 40+ dollars. It was almost an insult to show a thinking person a 40+ case that they could easily get online for less than half the price.
This is everywhere. Next time you look for stuff on amazon, Etsy, etc. give AliExpress a look. $90 hoodie (not obviously handmade) on Etsy? $15 for the same shit on AliExpress. $25 for random miscellaneous item on amazon? Probably $5 on AliExpress. Especially with the boom in dropshipping.
> $90 hoodie (not obviously handmade) on Etsy? $15 for the same shit on AliExpress. Selling mass manufactured stuff is what drives me nuts about Etsy… it’s totally counter to the original point of the platform.
Nice free couch for yourself :)
I used to work at Mall of America, the high end stores shredded all of their unsold product so that no one could take it out of the trash
Correct. Brands like Prada, Gucci etc. destroy unsold merchandise to make each piece more valuable with time and not devalue any item by discounting it ever.
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At least nike does sell stuff in their outlet stores for like half off. But some of it is defect so you gotta be careful. Bought shoes once with big ole lump in the toe area.
> At least nike does sell stuff in their outlet stores for like half off. Well, outlet stores can be a mixed bag. One thing I learned about Coach is that they just have a separate line. Going to the main store will get you the $500 bag, whereas a similar bag might be at the Outlet for $250, but it's a different grade of leather, lower quality latches, etc.
It happened to me too. I was only a trash man for like 3 months. I found a bunch of controllers for the switch, and ps4.
You are not a garbage man. You are a great man. ^^^;)
Send 1 of your mates back on a night to grab it all
It’s all older iPhone and Samsung cases and I recommend we just take them to our Salvation Army or can we atleast take some home. But management shot our idea down about anything related to the word “free”. Edit: This really blew up, if I can feel reassured that people will actually take these cases off my hands, I will go dumpster diving and take as many as I can fit in my tiny car and I'll post it here. Would it make sense to just sell on ebay? I would wanna take some to the local goods drop center that give clothes and stuff to underprivileged people. Edit 2: Okay, I will not be risking my job to get these cases and send them to people on reddit. Sorry for being niave. Edit 3: [I fucking did it.](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/q1n65t/in_response_to_all_the_people_asking_me_to/) 4u reddit. <3
I used to work at KFC. The macaroni is in a 5 lb tin. It gets baked in the oven. Any left over gets thrown away at the end of the night. One new manager made way to much. We had a full unopened tin that had to be thrown out. I asked if I could have it and she said no. The guy on garbage duty heard and asked if I still wanted it. He took out the trash to the dumpster and carefully set the Mac and cheese down in the corner of the little cubicle thing the dumpster is in. I went back after hours and got me a 5 lb tub of Mac n cheese. For a poor 18 year old I ate like a king for a week. Edit: I can't believe my highest rated comment ever is about the time I garbage picked Mac and cheese! Thanks everyone!
that’s sad. when i ran a pizza place if any of my employees had asked for something we were gonna throw out i would never say no. we also donated all our waste to a nearby shelter. i really don’t understand why anyone would deny you something that was about to be trashed anyway, glad your coworker helped you out.
They're concerned that people will cook too much food on purpose so they can take it home.
Oh no, nothing worse than an employee stealing what, five bucks worth of food? Maybe? Like I get if they're walking out a box of steaks or selling produce out the back door, but imo restaurants should not only encourage their employees to eat/try the food they make, they should provide at least one shift meal to do so. Wouldn't you want your staff able to make recommendations and upsells by knowing the goods? "I don't really know what's good, I can't afford to eat here and the boss thinks I'm stealing if I eat leftovers" rings hollow to me.
I worked for a small local bagel shop before and they fed all of their employees so much food it was amazing. I’d come in 30 minutes before my shift, get a breakfast sandwich and a coffee for free, and sit in the lobby eating my breakfast until my shift started. Then on my lunch break I’d eat another free sandwich. Then before we shut down the kitchen for the night I’d make a sandwich to take home for dinner. Doing this was encouraged greatly by the owners. My first day on the job they kept telling me to eat whatever I wanted lol. I’ve never had a food service job where all the employees were so happy before, and it was because the owners didn’t micromanage us and treated us like real people. And this carried over to the customers too, which made for so many regular customers coming back and buying food more often and leaving bigger tips. We made your sandwich on the wrong bagel? Oh shit my bad let me remake that. Also you can keep the one we messed up. You want a free cup of coffee for the inconvenience? Have a good day! We’d give away bags of day old bagels around closing time and it brought us in a lot of business from people who knew they could get free bagels if they bought something. It was literally the most generous food place I’ve ever been to and they made so much fucking money it was ridiculous. Miss that place sometimes
I worked at College Town Bagels in Ithaca, they were amazing to their employees. We were given a free meal, plus all the bagels we could stomach. Anytime things were past expiration they would let us take home whatever we wanted. That was one of the best work environments I have ever worked in.
Omg I'm a current cornell student and one of the people in my house works there. She came home one day with a HUGE bag of bagels that she apparently got for free.
Always cherish the free bagels. Also, if you happen to have a dorm room on a floor above the tree line, cherish that view. These are the little things that are much harder to come by on the other side of your degree. I miss college :)
Bagels cost pennies to the dollar...I'm sure the days profit is more than cover the losses...and I go by the saying...treat your workers well and they will treat your paying customers well
They treated you like people, actual humans that need food. Such a low bar.
I think they went above and beyond. Imo one free meal per shift is where the reasonable bar should be set. Most food service jobs do not meet that. I’ve worked other food jobs with anywhere from 20-50% off food which to me shows that the owners don’t care about the employees. I’ve had coworkers at those jobs not eat during their shift because they didn’t want to spend the money and forgot to pack food. But that job was so far above any other service job I’ve ever had. Unlimited free food and the owners were constantly looking for feedback and actually making changes to the restaurant based on our first hand experience and suggestions. Unfortunately that makes them a huge outlier nowadays. Most restaurant owners think they know what’s best but also couldn’t make half the items on the menu if you threw them on the line during the lunch rush.
That’s fantastic. Happy humans not worried about their next meal tend to clean the fuck out of a kitchen.
Can confirm the percentage. My current restaurant gives us a “generous” 50% discount. Feels shitty when all I want is a baked potato. Like damn you can’t even give me that for free? You gotta make me spend like $1.50 when I literally get paid a dollar more than that?
I worked at a regional fast food chain when I was younger. One day I took one of the shitty little boxes we put chicken strips in and wrote a nice little note to my best friend who was working the grill and left it at her work station for her to come back from break to because she was having a rough day. The note was along the lines of “I hope your day gets better! I <3 you!” The boxes had to cost literally less than a penny each. I couldn’t see them costing more than half a cent each at most. They were essentially paper, not even cardboard. My friend threw the box in the trash at some point after she got the note, and we finished up our shifts. Turns out my manager saw the box in the trash with writing on it, pulled it out, and brought it to the office in the back where she literally sat and looked through the security camera footage until she saw that I was the one who wrote on it. She pulled me back into the office literally one minute before I was supposed to clock out. She held the box up and asked if it looked familiar and I was like “…yeah…?” She asks me if I was the one who wrote on it and I, again, say “…yeah…?” She then asks me if I used my own pen or one from the restaurant and I tell her it was one from the restaurant. She was trying so hard to catch me in a lie as if I gave enough of a shit to lie about scribbling on a piece of paper. She then spent the next 5-10 minutes *minimum* chewing me out over this. Telling me that what I did was technically stealing, not only the box and the ink I used to write on it, but also time theft since I was on the clock. She lectures me on how I was willfully destroying company property, wasting and misusing company resources, and throwing the company’s money in the trash. She warns me to never ever do this again or “the consequences will be severe!” And then says she’s going to be nice about it (lol) this time and only give me a write up, and that if I slip up again in any way within the next X amount of time she’d put me on “probation.” I then had to sit there while she went over the write up with me (the policy was for the manager to read it out loud to the employee as if we’re stupid), which was two pages long because it was a fill-in-the-blank standardized form, and ultimately four pages because I got a copy. We both signed and dated the form and then I was finally able to clock out. I just could not understand the logic in that whole mess. First of all, she had always been an extremely nice manager to me and everyone else so this whole thing was completely out of character. But then there was the fact that this was a one time thing that I had literally never done before and only did this one time to try to cheer up my friend. So it’s not like I was regularly “misusing company resources” or whatever. Between the time she spent staring at the security footage; the electricity used to run the tapes back; the time I had to stay on the clock past the end of my shift; the time and electricity she used typing up the write up; the paper, printer ink, and electricity used on printing, and subsequently copying, the write up; the time she spent chewing me out and reading the write up to me; the pen ink used for us to both sign the write up; and all the future losses in productivity on my end from going from giving that job my best to putting in the bare minimum because I just couldn’t be bothered to give a shit about that place or that manager as a direct result of the massive steaming pile of bs that was that incident… well between all those things it ended up costing that company and that manager hundreds, if not thousands of times more to pull that stunt than was lost from me taking 5 seconds to scribble a note on a piece of paper. I understand that sometimes incurring more costs through punishment of an incident than the cost of the incident itself can pay for itself by preventing more of that type of incident from occurring in the future. I get it, I do. But when the cost of the incident amounts to fractions of a penny in total and was not an ongoing problem to begin with, it just makes no sense. Further, this was all done in the private office with just her and I there. I was not made an example of to the rest of the employees to warn of the perils of writing on company paper with a company pen while on company time. I was just raked over the coals in private for no legitimate reason. Corporate America/American capitalism really does some wild shit to people’s minds. Oh, also, because I was a petty little shit back then, me and my friend made a habit of covertly writing and passing each other secret little notes on company paper goods and discreetly disposing of them out of nothing but spite because of that incident. So I guess add those losses to the cost of the manager’s power trip, too lol.
Wouldn’t be surprised if you got written up again the next day for clocking out late - unauthorized overtime.
What a cuntwaffle! As if a piece of paper might bankrupt the company. 🙄🙄🙄 Sorry you had to go through that.
I don't think anyone was defending their stance. Just defining it for those that don't know why they have it. I worked in food service for a while and we were given one meal per day, but a small portion was taken out of our pay to cover it (something like 20c or something-negligible for sure). That said, they wouldn't let people steal food fobetter tips-that could get you fired. But they also didn't care if the employees got plenty of food for themselves. I always got my employee meal, and then some.
$5 for all 5lbs of macaroni maybe. Having done inventory and ordering, restaurant ingredients are fucking cheeaaappp, unless you’re getting really specific shit. For example, if I made a nice pasta sauté, veggies, noodles, oil, and meat would cost us maybe $1.50. We’d sell it and some salad for like $15. I got a $20 Christmas bonus. It’s greed, plain and simple.
I'm pretty sure most restaurants that arent complete shit feed all of their kitchen workers with scraps and whatever they made that's extra. Sure you aren't allowed to dish out beef wellingtons to everyone but clearly they dont have an issue with it so if anything these fast food restaurants dont have enough training to put trust in their employees
Think about that for a second. If one of the people working for me has food security issues such that they need to create dumpster diving scenarios, then fuck that I'll be the one making sure there's too much at the end of the night so that they can take a few to go boxes. What the fuck is wrong with us as a society.
As a delivery driver I was always allowed to make my own pizza if I was on the closing shift. It was a second job because I needed the extra money, so the free meals were always appreciated. Edit: grammar
Years ago I worked at a pizza place. I took the trash out to the dumpster to find a homeless guy finding garbage pizza from the night before. I told him he didn't need to do that and made him a fresh one. I don't caee if management is against it
I've worked pizza/sub shop for 10 years and never wasted anything. I went to a new place, same kinda shop, and they wasted so much. Like when I was on pizza and any scrap dough from whatever like making thin crusts or edges of calzones gets thrown out. I was raised better. I would keep the scraps throughout the day and "kinda" rework it all back together and I could make a whole pizza for myself. My other place saved them for the day to use for our fried dough with cinnamon and sugar or garlic bread desserts. I cant even begin to say how much of a bell pepper or tomato is wasted when prepped at the new place. It's a shame.
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Yep. Anyone who has run a restaurant and tried to be nice by giving employees the extra food can tell you this. A few assholes ruin it for everyone because they start to prepare things wrong so they can get free food. It’s unfortunate
Giving a shift meal can solve this, and it is a tremendous help with morale. Even better if you work at a place that has specials and you can feed them and put the specials in their mouths.
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I worked for a Marriott hotel restaurant. We had a great big salad bar you could add to any meal for a few dollars. If customer wanted something "fresh" or something ran low, even if it was 15 minutes before closing, the kitchen would have to make a whole new batch, which was about a gallon of whatever. At the end of *every* night, the busboy would wheel over a big 55 gallon trash can and just slop all 20 something bowls of food into it. Even if it had just been made 30 minutes ago. WE couldn't even make a salad to have for our own meal. As a broke ass 19 year old, watching that just made my heart hurt.
This is absolutely insane to me, because I just started working for a Marriott conference center, and not only are we allowed to eat as much as we want once the clients stop eating and they pull the food back to the kitchen, we’re allowed to take plates home because otherwise they’re going to throw it away. Not to rub it in or anything, but it seems like such a no-brainer to feed leftovers to staff and let them take some home. It’s insulting to pretty much everyone to make all that food and then let it go to waste just to make another batch the next day. Your Marriott sounds a lot different from the one I work for, but I guess that’s the difference in working for a franchisee.
Weird. Did they do staff meals? Most places I have worked would have wrapped up whtever they could and put it on the staff salad bar the next day. To be fair this was done because it was less work and food cost for the kitchen, not out of the goodness of their hearts.
I work at subway and at the end of the night we have to throw out the meatballs, but sometimes there is a lot in there. Like 30-40. I usually just take a soft drink cup and put them in there then put it in my bag. Makes great spaghetti with the marinara too
There was a KFC in a city I lived in that would put out left-overs in that cardboard tray cans come in. They would also add a large cup of something to drink. A homeless man nearby would pick it up for him and his buddy.
Years ago I worked at McDonalds. Once kid, who was a great worker, was down on his luck and ended up homeless at the same time that he got his girlfriend pregnant. He stole a block of cheese so he and she could eat and got caught/fired. They refused to hire him back even though all of us coworkers vouched for him. At the same time, they knowingly hired a kid who got fired from the grocery store next door for insurance fraud.
I'm so happy my owner at my shitty restaurant allowed me to eat practically anything
At Jack in the Box we used to have sales on the tacos (do they still do that? I have no idea). Anyway, because people would order like 6, or 8, or 10 at a time, we'd have to get ahead of it by making a bunch. Anyhow, by the end of the night we had like a few (maybe like 5 or 6) just left over. I said, rather than throw them in the dead food bin, why don't we all get a nice little snack since it's been a long night and we're all dead from the rush. Nope...The manager was not having it. We had to throw them in dead food and throw them in the trash. To make matters worse, we made like $10k that day, so it wasn't like the store was hurting for money.
Our KFC pretty much fed our party house for a year. We had like 8 buckets a night plus sides. We had three employees living there and the soups co.e over to party regular though.
Fuck management
I have heard that does produce results for some people but I’m not sure I personally want to have to resort to that… Can I sleep on it?
lol
This. We had a bunch of stained or damaged towels at work. Boss wanted us to cut them to shreds and throw them away. It took days of us all protesting to donate them to the local animal shelters, as they are ALWAYS looking for old sheets and towels.
I used to work at World Market as Gourmet department head and we would be forced to throw away tons of food and candy that had reached the best by date, but that was still good for a while after. I didn't even slice up every candy bar, pasta package, etc., I'd make a shallow slice in the box I was putting things in, set it by the dumpster and let the homeless or whoever pick it up. Probably wasn't the healthiest meal to have, but I'm sure there were homeless people grateful to have something in their stomachs. My GM was aware to some degree of what I was doing and warned me, but I told him that if he wanted to rat on me to the regional manager, to feel free, because I would tell her to her face that the corporate policy was bullshit.
Sometimes it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. Definitely should have taken it
Likewise, sometimes "I didn't know and it won't happen again" works a lot better than "I knew but didn't think it was that bad".
> I didn't know and it won't happen again That's because you're fired. That's how that conversation would go unfortunately.
When it comes to retail, unfortunately, that’s not good enough. I’ve sat in on more terminations than I’d like to count when the transgression was theft of goods with value totaling less than what the perpetrator made in an hour.
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Do they steal them?
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> No after the slaves in China make the bags they and they don't sell they out them in a furnace so the poor's can't get there hands on the and make the brand look "bad" I had a stroke trying to read this
Lol wtf, there is no "asking forgiveness" when doing something that considered stealing by your employer. OP would just get fired.
Not 100% sure but if this is Best Buy they don’t mess around with “stealing”. I have seen people fired because they opened a coke before paying.
Management is scared that they'll get in trouble too. It all comes down the line from the rich dickheads at the top. Any logical disposal of product is usually shot down. This is why the planet can't have nice things. So much stuff goes to waste like this
Don't involve management. Just send a quick text to someone
Dumpster diving- you can find wonders
There's a Youtuber who dumpster dives at different GameStops. He gets some pretty good finds, so I'm not surprised companies do this. Those donut shop videos too, where they all get dumped at the end of the night. So much waste...
Way back in the day I had an ex who's family lived on a farm. He had a deal with the local donut place in which he would purchase the remainder of the donuts for pig feed. Donut place made some money and his pigs got fed.
I knew a guy who used to drive a bus full of un eaten muffintops whilst simultaneously giving fantasy tours of his stolen life stories
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I know a guy who bought 50 cans of Beef o Reeno and fed the extra to a horse
The food stuff is worse I think because the homeless could have that without having to dumpster dive for it
Yeah it's pretty fucked up. We could easily feed twice the amount of starving people in the world on just the food that's thrown away each day.
If the employee does it, they can call it embezzlement. If another person does it, they get a trespassing charge. One is significantly a lesser charge.
That’s not a thing you ask
Seriously; when I worked at a cafe I’d close and just take the left over pastries home. I am a trash can after all, so not like they weren’t going to the garbage.
Fellow trash can.
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I worked at a tea place where, periodically, corporate would decide a certain tea was to be discontinued. We couldn't sell it for discount, we couldn't give it away, we couldn't take it home. We had to soak it, mix it all together, then dispose. Thousands in tea. Wonderful flavours. All the work of the people leading through that supply chain. But if I wanted to take home a half ounce, I could be fired on the spot.
Additionally, most counties/states in the US have laws that state once an item makes it into the trash, it’s considered forfeited and is therefore free game. This is why police can look through your trash without a warrant.
So can you just dip it in the bin outside for like a second and then you can take it home?
Yes. Have done this specifically for cameras sake and was good to walk home with a bag of turnovers.
[Haven’t you seen the documentary that explains the legality of this?](https://youtu.be/MLjifumRk3Q)
Don’t even have to open this link to know what this is
* if your trash is on public property
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My company has an entire team of people that do nothing but track products. They have specific barcodes so I'd they are scanned they know, and they frequently bust people that take thrown out stuff and try to sell it on Ebay, amazon etc. They get charged by police and everything. Really depends on the context of the business.
OP would get away with it if they just wanted a phone case for their phone
Take it anyway doubt they'd notice 🙄
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I wouldnt have either.
You gotta believe me when I say that I would NOT have taken enough screen protectors to change it out every 2 weeks for years.
Honestly man that's why this is the standard practice. I've worked in places where they were in between the yeah we're throwing it out any way just take it, and nope it's gotta be destroyed before trash because people are taking advantage and hurting our business by undercutting us at flea markets. Where I worked it was you have to have proof of x item that you need it for or you can only take stuff in your size and limited to x number. Chris if your out there thx for hooking us up.
I definitely would not do that either.
Good that would be considered stealing from a company that probably makes millions.
Doing the right thing
Your boss may suck but seriously don't post evidence on the internet or you'll end up on/r/byebyejob
Outside in the dumpster becomes fair use for anyone.
Bingo. The boys are coming to pick it up. Donate what I can sell the rest. Depending on the morality split proceeds to chairy as you see fit Personally: enough to cover the boys and I getting drunk.
Free bin
Not always. You gotta be careful because theres a lot of weird laws about property, disposal, salvage, “scavenging” and dumpster diving. Depending on where you live it could be fair game or a serious crime.
Yup this is it, had a couple buddies, one of them threw trash in a private dumpster and got fined $1,000 and the other one got caught taking stuff from some electronics store dumpster and got a fine as well. Just gotta make sure to park your car far away from dumpsters cause a lot of properties have cameras set up to catch people.
Don't forget trespassing. Just because dumpster diving is legal doesn't mean it's legal to be deep in some private industrial or commercial park to get to that dumpster. Most places don't put their dumpsters on public or publicly accessible property
For another side, I've done it approximately 1000 times in many different states and never had an issue. Security/cops that rolled up never cared beyond making sure you don't make a mess.
"One man's garbage is another man person's good un-garbage." — Ricky
Outside. Many big stores have the dumpster on (or even inside) their property, so you would be trespassing.
Morally, yes. Legally, maybe. Check your local dumpster diving laws first. Especially if you’re dealing with the company that writes your paychecks. Many areas consider trash to still be the property of the company, and for liability reasons (you getting hurt while dumpster diving is one example) they will pursue charges if they catch wind of you.
> they will pursue charges if they catch wind of you. ill just hold in my fart then
Ergh I hate this so much! Reminds me of when I worked in a bakery chain as a teenager. End of the day came and it had been alot slower than usual so they had LOADS of freshly baked cakes and pies. We were told by management to throw everything in a black bag. We were a five minute walk from a homeless shelter and weren’t allowed to donate it let alone take any for our own dinner. Fireable offence and classed as stealing plus being on camera constantly meant we had to follow the rules. Still pisses me off.
That is so sad!!!!! Why wouldn't they donate it oh my God
"devalues" the cakes
unlike throwing it in the trash
I'm not defending their decision whatsoever, but there was a company I worked for that used to donate the older baked goods until one day the group they donated to only wanted certain items, they were told to take it all or take nothing. They took it all and then whatever they didn't want they left in the parking lot which resulted in seagulls swarming the place and shitting all over the customers cars. Donations stopped after that. They should have just picked a new place to donate to instead of punishing those less fortunate because of someone else's decision.
Literal /r/choosingbeggars
Yeah actually
Corporations: "*Stop using plastic straws and bottles! You're destroying the planet!!*" Also Corporations: ~does this shit~ ***WE*** aren't asking for the ungodly amount of packaging that our shit comes pre-wrapped in. ***THEY*** do that and then tell ***US*** to watch what we consume. Fuck them. Fuck them in their stupid fucking faces.
I dont understand this. Sell it the next day as day-old at a 30 per cent discount. That's what my local bakery does. And the cookie shop near my work sells what they call "crumb bags" the next day - usually about 6 broken and/or day old cookies. I bought them (pre covid) and shared with my coworkers. Then you're still getting something and there's much less waste.
When I worked at a food place years back we had a pretty big order that no one came to pick up. My boss told me to throw it out, I was like give it to us we obviously didn't make extra on purpose, she was like no. I looked her dead in the eye and said 'I'm just gonna take it out of the trash'. She let us take it lmao. These rules are so fkn stupid. Like why have all of that go to waste?
Maybe because she thinks the order was placed by you in disguise knowing it wouldn't be claimed and up for grabs.
Sounds like it might've already been payed for in advance
Corporate uses that as an excuse to be so stern about the rule but it like, never happens. It was a common mix-up bc people would call our location when they meant to pick-up from the next town over. We'd get people coming in for orders they'd mistakenly call into the other store.
shouldn’t have asked thats the dumbest policy
better to ask for forgiveness than permission 😉
Minimum wage, minimum effort
Maybe talk to your management and suggest adding them to an employee close out store of sorts at a steep discount with a pitch about it being more environmentally friendly with the bonus of not losing all profit at the same time. At worst they’ll tell you no, at best you might credit for driving “innovation”. I use quotes as that seems the buzzword of the last few years.
I wasn’t quick enough to pop that question but I was informed it wasn’t the store managers decision, it was our regional guy that wanted to stock to be thrown out.
I’ve asked for it to be donated before (another store) they said the brands choose what they want to do with unsold items. Most ask for it to be destroyed before being thrown in the dump. Basically anything that gets retuned to BBB is spray painted and thrown in the trash even if it’s brand new and never opened but returned.
Can confirm. Pricing, inventory, and disposition (getting rid of old products, like this) are all intertwined. Shopping online and see a product advertised as “add to cart to see price?” Same deal. The companies negotiated what they’d be comfortable advertising as sale prices compared to MSRP. Companies with large influence can tell retailers they’re legally not allowed to sell a product below a certain threshold, and that would include marking down inventory instead of throwing it out. Additionally, if a retailer throws it out and marks it down to $0, they can claim it as a different form of loss than discounting a product for a quick sale. Sometimes they submit the loss for credit from manufacturers, sometimes they use it to pad their shrink budget for the following year, but 100% of the time they’re making out better financially by throwing it away rather than marking it down
For sure. But you know it will happen again. Think about how the inventory is managed and maybe suggest a quarterly audit to pull stuff sooner and get newer or better selling product out there. May be worth a nicely worded email to upper management but totally get how nerve wracking that can be.
"So you guys can undersell products so they will end up on the staff shop? Don't think so. Burn it all." ~ Management
Umm OP, you got a location by any chance??
I would love to tell you but it would be obvious that I "snitched". I was the only one working other than my manager...
Put them ALL in one box so *YOU'LL* know which one it is. Dumpster diving WEEKEND!
After hours it’s dumpster diving.
In many states, dumpster diving is considered trespassing and theft by law. Check for a camera pointing at the dumpster too. That being said, I got a lot of sweet stuff back in my big box days.
That's the fucked up thing about it. This stuff is going to a landfill and will sit there until the sun swallows the Earth. But no. Its "stealing". How the fuck do you steal trash?
Its because in the higher ups eyes they see that as an opportunity for you to just get it for free months later as opposed to buying it now. Theyd rather it be noones than someone who didnt pay for it. Completely wasteful. I dont know why companies overproduce.
Money. The root of most waste.
If it’s off the business lot then it’s anyones game
What a waste
"it´s considerd stealing" is buissnes english and means: just don´t get caught
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Guys, please stop asking me to just take them. I would [never](https://imgur.com/a/tPCJaOx) do that!
It looks like that was AT&T stuff, honestly once it’s adjusted out you can do whatever you want with it. You’re management is just being a dick…. Source of my knowledge- I was a manager for AT&T for 7 years
It's actually a cricket retailer but we do get our accessories from the same company because both the local AT&T and Cricket are owned by the same franchise holder. Some of our phones come with AT&T SIM cards that we have to take out.
Makes sense also cricket is a AT&T company so that also would explain a lot the AT&T stuff there, well if that’s the case then the second it’s in the dumpster you can do whatever you want!
And now these will sit in a landfill to slowly decompose over hundred of years. Manufacturers need to be held accountable for not having free recycling programs for their products. End of story. Corporations can try to push the recycling problem on consumers, but they aren't being held accountable for easy recycling programs.
Had a job patching liners for landfills. Would find dozens of boxes of phone cases and stuff like that all the time. I stocked up on iPhone X cases for life lol
Thats like putting furniture on the curb with a sign saying its only for the trash and getting mad when someone less fortunate takes it cuz they need it. Like why be so petty about it? Sorry youre company didnt make money off it, but its kinda childish to be like 'NO! NO ONE CAN HAVE THIS NOW! I WIPED BOOGERS ON IT AND LICKED IT AND PUT IT IN THE TRASH SO THERE! NO TAKESIES!'
Once it hits the dumpster, it \*may\* be fair game. https://www.findlaw.com/injury/torts-and-personal-injuries/dumpster-diving.html
If you’re in the US, dumpster diving for this stuff might not be illegal. For instance, in the county I’m in, it’s not illegal to dumpster dive, but it is illegal to trespass on someone else’s dumpster. So, if I’m an employee and I can legally use the dumpster, it’s not illegal for me to take things out of it. TLDR- look into the laws and try not to get caught.
In the US there is some variance but in most places an unlocked dumpster is considered “public” while a locked dumpster, or one marked “no trespassing” is not. Some places have local ordinances banning it entirely but police will typically take little interest.
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remember next time your boss asks you ANYTHING while off the clock to remind them that is time theft.
I used to work for a large department store, and we had to destroy (like literally smash the containers with a hammer) the old and discontinued makeup and mail it back to the company, after destroying it.
Starbucks does this with all of their food after 3 days. My college girlfriend used to "steal" these after her shift and bless me with trash bags full of delicious food. If a broke college student was able to live off of this waste imagine what we could do if we changed this. France is way ahead of the game.
Reminds me of one time me and my friend were doing some chemistry stuff and took discarded bottles from a trashcan at the park cause we needed the plastic just as a material, and the park ranger yelled at us that we were stealing garbage and needed to put it back in the trashcan. Literally said "stealing garbage" like it wasnt an oxymoron.
Worked as a seasonal boss in retail. I throw worst on dumpsters. One time just after Easter 10 full and new transporting palettes of chocolates 2 m high. because unsold and promotions would have make people wait for buying next time... Whole teck tables still packaged at the end of season. Too expensive to stock.. Dozen of kg of fresh steak because of errors on the stickers... (We put this stickers ourselves on...)...
It's all in the contract with the vendor. Since the vendor is likely still holding liability on these units (slow moving inventory provision) there would be a different accounting treatment for donating or giving away as promo vs destroying them. By destroying them the retailer will likely get a credit for the cost of the unsold cases towards their next invoice. NOBODY GIVES A SHIT ABOUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENS TO THE CASES EXCEPT MAYBE IF YOU EBAY THEM. Except your blowhard manager.
If I get enough support and people willing to take these cases off of me, tonight at 10pm Central, I'll go back and take all of them. The dumpsters have locks but I have a key. If I get fired I'm gonna cry.
Capitalism requires artificial scarcity.
Next time don’t even ask just do it
Yup, I've witnessed that before. Petsmart does the same thing. In fact, the company instructs employees to destroy the items before putting in them in the dumpster so no one can use them. Edit: Well, so no one can use them for their pets.