"Sheldon" > wrote in message
oups.com...
>
> Damsel in dis Dress wrote:
> > Crash and I did some serious grocery shopping last night, and I was
> so
> > disgusted. In the (soda) pop aisle, we found a nearly empty plastic
> bottle
> > of Mountain Dew. Later, we found a partially eaten roll of Rolo
> candies.
> > These people have no class, and they're thieves!
>
> These kinds of misdeeds (partially eaten products) are much more apt to
> have been commited by the store employees... typically most shelf
> restocking is done by the night shift, and typically they are poorly
> suppervized, if supervized at all... mostly they are itinerate temps,
> and not paid very well... and in fact in order to recruit them the
> store management often offers the 'all you can eat on premises' perk.
>
> > The greeter guy at another store recently told us of having to clean
> up
> > after mothers who left dirty diapers in carts.
>
> I know in some locations stupidmarkets maintain public restrooms but
> many locations throuhgout the US do not. I've never seen a public
> restroom at any stupidmarket in the entire state of NY... if the stores
> don't offer a terlit to the patrons it should come as no surprise that
> putrid pampers will be changed and discarded out in the parking lot...
> and generally there are no trash recepticals, at least not handy, so if
> garbage ends up in the carts rather than strewn about the streets
> that's a good thing (lesser of evils)... for that kind of trash I place
> the *entire* blame on the Municipality Officials for not enacting
> commercial building code REQUIRING _adequate_ public restroom
> facilities in *ALL* retail establishments, and that the municipality
> must require that all retail establishments contract with private
> sanitation companys to maintain adequate trash recepticals with timely
> pick up thereof.
>
> > The world is in a sorry state of affairs when this kind of thing is
> > happening.
>
> Not the entire world, only those in charge... how those pinheads become
> in charge is the true sorry state of affairs.
>
> > Any other gross encounters of the shopping kind?
>
> By far the very worst stupidmarket _filth offenders_ are the employees
> working in the meat and deli departments... um, yoose really don't
> wanna know.
>
> Sorry, but I can't place the blame on the public.

I make my living in the retail grocery universe as a field manager. And
while all retailers will tell you that the "shrink" (unaccounted loss of
products due to a variety of reasons, theft, grazing, poor accounting,
damages, etc.) are mostly due to employees, that doesn't mean it is all the
results of employees. However, it is pretty evident by our surveillence
cameras that the employees who graze, steal, call it what you want, don't
consume their product in the aisles. on the sales floor because they know we
are watching there. If you see half consumed products on the sales shelves,
displays, etc. they have been left there by our "guests."

Our night stocking crews are permanent full time staff, paid at the market
rate (are you going to shop our stores if we charge more to off-set higher
paid employees. Consumers are unwilling to pay more for the same thing that
they can buy for less elsewhere). We catch employed "grazers" all the time
and they are immediately terminated without regard. Again, the vast
majority of these thieves are careful to try to dispose of any evidence of
their stealing and seek areas in the store that are away from our cameras
(back room areas).

Many people whether company employees or customers are just selfish pigs,
with no regard for anyone else besides themselves. Our company and ALL of
our competitors have restrooms available to the public; I have never seen
one of our competitors, and I shop them daily, without a public restroom.
We clean our restrooms, empty trash, sweep the floors hourly (log the action
and then there are three redundant checks to make sure it happens). And an
hour later, the users have left a mess that makes me wonder how these folks'
homes must look. In the bathrooms, daily we find feces on the walls, urine
on the floor, water spigots left running (we are going to a photo-sensor
system to put the end to that expense), used bathroom tissue stuck to the
seats, walls, floor...sometimes even the ceiling. This is not the image we
wish to leave with our customers hence the hourly cleaning details and
dedicated cleaning teams. We steam pressure wash our shopping carts daily.
This is a huge, overly unproductive expense that we see as a necessity. And
unfortunately, the customer pays, and then pays again.

Worst of all, there is no solution to this problem. Children run throughout
our stores unsupervised while parents shop. Our records show that we
apprehend 4.7 children PER DAY throughout our 478 stores for "eating and
dumping" as we call it. Easily, a quarter of the parents who are required
to pick up their children from us after apprehension argue that they
children would never have done such a thing. And due to our surveillence
system and the way we apprehend, we now have a 98.6 conviction rate. So
what. The same thieves are back on the street that same day.

Rand