we all know capitalism is fucking evil but one of my favorite stories to tell from Retail Hell is that time my district manager got annoyed that 2 poor people were taking food out of the dumpster occasionally so he told us all to start pouring bleach over all the items we threw out so people couldn’t use them/it would hurt them if they touched it directly. never did that and absolutely have participated in “employee theft” by stealing bags of food from the dumpsters to donate to the local food bank but like. he really did just want us to directly harm people over food that was already in the literal trash.
when managers and CEOs get up in arms about “employee theft” they’re actually talking about people like me who don’t throw out the 30 pairs of shoes that we weren’t able to sell and instead bag them up and throw them behind the dumpster for retrieval/donation later. I once took home $450 of food and another night got $500 worth of makeup. Perfectly good electronics get thrown away bc the packaging was tampered with. We throw away food, cosmetics, and household products 30-60 days before their expiration dates (which are also kinda bullshit anyway). The whole retail model is structured around this idea of massive waste.
When I was working fast food I closed almost every night. Most of the managers were cool and let people take home leftover food because it was perfectly good and all of it was going to be thrown away. At times the salads I took would be the only fresh fruit or veggies I got for weeks at a time because lol minimum wage paying for rent AND food pffft yeah right. But once a month the gm of the store would work close and I almost got caught taking a (still sealed, still fresh) salad out of the trash can to bring home and my coworker informed me that if anyone was caught “stealing” food out of the garbage they and anyone she suspected of trying to cover up the “theft” would be fired on the spot. Over a $2 salad that was already in the trash can.
konekorambles 