Actually Infuriating

The reason this food gets thrown away is because you might steal.

Same thing happened to me at my high school job at Steak n Shake. Normally, if something was ordered and, for whatever reason, never made it to the customer (server mistake, customer changed their mind, order made wrong, etc.) we would hold it for a time under the heat lamp, and if someone else ordered the same thing, we would offer it to them. If, after some time, no one took it, common procedure was to take it to the break room where it could be snacked on by the staff. It was a very rare occasion that it happened, and none of the managers were concerned about it... until Andy transferred to our store.

Andy was a dick, and was constantly watching for anything that MIGHT be theft and harassed everyone all the time about the purchases they made with their employee discounts (who rang you up, did they ring up everything, did you pay for that, etc.). One day we had someone order a large fry late into their meal, then had to leave in a hurry, paid and left before they got the fries (unclear if they paid for the fries or if they took it off the check, idk). So they sat for like 2 hours under the heat lamp, way longer than we would ever have served them to a customer as they were going dry and stale by this point. I confirmed the situation with the fries and started to take it back to the break room for munching if anyone was so inclined. Andy, who was at the shake station, though, saw me walk toward the back with the fries.

He sprinted to the back and doubled back to cut me off. He asked where I was going with the fries and if I bought them. I said to the break room and no and explained that they got left, were old and stale, etc. He said, "oh, ok. Here, I'll take it." So I handed it to him and without taking his eyes off of me, he dumped the whole thing in the trashcan next to him and tossed the dish on the dishwasher station counter, and said nothing while continuing to stare at me. I said, "okaaaay...." and walked away. Fucking psycho.

I worked at a Panera a long time ago on closing shift and we had an agreement with a local food bank who would send over a car to collect bread. Usually the car got filled up and we were allowed to take as much as we could carry of the rest. Only anything leftover after that was thrown away.

It's easy to prevent this by tracking waste. This location is just dumb if they have this much of a surplus. Their manager is bad and doesn't understand how to adjust prep amounts. If they say to prep this many then how would an employee prep extra for themselves? Every restaurant I've worked at the manager gives prep amounts.

They did this at the supermarket I worked at as a teenager.

Fuck that noise though, no one was watching me work so I'd just eat some pastries I was supposed to be throwing away. Didn't take anything home, but you better believe I'm not going to just throw it all away without eating something!

Their mentality was "if you want it enough, pay for it, otherwise you don't really want it."

Mother fucker it's going in the garbage that's the only reason I'd "want" it... I don't "need" to buy it, but I don't want it go to waste.

I hope they piss in his car's ventilation every day.

One day I went to Chipotle before work, with the plan to buy something to later have for lunch. They had recently raised the prices, but I still got my usual burrito. When we got to the guac station, it was fresh out. "They're making more." Cool! I'll just wait then.

When the fresh guac came out a few minutes later, the worker casually went to throw the burrito they'd already made for me away. I stopped them and asked, "What are you doing?!"

They said, "I'm making you a fresh one."

What?! It wasn't even five minutes. I told them, "Just put the fresh guac into the same burrito. I'm not eating it until my lunch break anyway. Four hours from now."

Thankfully the worker complied, but I was shocked. If that's what they typically do, I can't imagine how much food they needlessly waste on a daily basis. Do people seriously think burritos go bad after sitting under foil for a few minutes? Especially when all the exact same ingredients are kept out and uncovered at the prep station for much longer? I just... I can't understand. I paid $9 for something they would have just thrown away?

If food is that easily disposible to a restaurant, then they have no business raising prices so often. Maybe employees can offer to remake food in a situation like I had, in order to satisfy the pickiest of us. But to train people to automatically do it in every circumstance? You're pretty much driving your own food costs up for no reason. I just can't logic this.

The level of spite in this policy exemplifies the class war we are all in right now.

There are surplus food donation programs: the EPA provides a guide that explains the legal protections & tax benefits with tools to find recipient organizations. When even Chick-fil-a runs one such program, the manager has no excuse to be a certified asshole.

I'd love to tell your manager that he works at a Christian establishment and that this constitutes greed, perhaps with elements of sloth. Both are mortal sins. Shall the owners' sky-daddy beliefs turn out to be right, he's in for eternal punishment.

The key is everybody takes the good parts home/gives them away, no matter what any manager says.

Tough to fire an entire franchise at once.

Sadly, just about every product at retail has a version of this. Mass production produces waste at every stage, including the final product. At the same time, those waste streams have value and need to be managed to avoid hurting the bottom line. Usually it's a practical money-making thing, but I suspect that there's ample room here for spite.

For example, "expired" magazines get the covers ripped off, so they can't get re-purposed somehow. Also, new cars are downright rage-inducing when you learn about the full picture.

I used to work at a supermarket that had a little pizza shop inside, in the deli. They'd throw out all the unsold pizza at the end of the night.

I was like, "wait. What? Let us take some home. Or give it to some homeless people"

They were like, "we can't give it away because of liability. And we don't want to attract homeless people. And you can't have it just because "

I'm pretty sure the liability thing is made up. The "don't want homeless to show up" thing is cruel, and not really applicable to rich suburbs.

Well, joke's on them I was friends with the deli guy and he'd "throw out" the pizza directly to me.

Then they went out of business because the upper management types over leveraged themselves

Then make less? Or set a number of how many to make so there isn't waste?

Has this company ever done LEAN transformation or any corporate practice to reduce waste?

Or are they just concerned about donating to conversion therapy and dumb Christian hate stuff?

yeah exactly what'd i'd expect from chick fill-a

Thinking aloud, what would you think of a "community donation" menu item?

The gist is - say you're a pizza company and create an edible mistake - offer the customer to make a community donation. You add $5 to their order (cost of ingredients) and a paper slip to their order and heck, toss in one slice of the mistake pizza. The slip has a dual purpose - one half is a donation receipt, the other is a 'collect 5 for a free pizza' coupon. The rest of the pizza then is free to distribute (to employees, guests, passersby's on the street - or on a particularly error prone day a local shelter)

The shop management gets costs reimbursed. The employee is out only the time for the second pizza (which they had to do anyway) and the customer gets warm fuzzies and a tax write off for doing the right thing. As a bonus, the free pizza and charity are both great optics.

If the customer declines, the option reverts to the employee (they get the tax receipt, house keeps the coupon), and only if both decline may the pizza be trashed (I mean, management may still opt to 'donate' but give it to only non-employees (still great optics), but even if it gets trashed, it now looks like the customer that's the jerk, not the shop.)

And there's little chance of abuse, I think. If the customer and employee conspire, the employee is effectively just adding to their own workload, the customer spends $25 in donations for a free $14 pizza, and management laughs its way to the bank bragging about how charitable their employees are.

When you're too stupid to work so you manage instead.

The part I'm mad about is that part of his job is to keep track of how many of what they make and throw out. He's literally wasting food because he's too stupid or lazy to do his job.