Yes, that's EXACTLY where you should leave that...

[Monterey Jack]

Today at work, a customer informed me that a gallon of milk had been left on the shelf in the cereal aisle, so I went over, rolling my eyes as I always do when it comes to refrigerated/frozen items left wherever the hell a lazy customer happens to be when they decide they don't want it. This is bad enough. But wait, it gets better...! Not only was it milk left out of the cold case, it was leaking milk left out of the cold case, so that by the time I got around to it, it had leaked all over the shelf it was resting on, soaking a full EIGHT boxes of cereal in the process!

For Christ's sake, if this customer realized the milk was leaking, why in the name of GOD did they not hand it over to an employee, instead of leaving on a shelf right next to product that would be RUINED as well?! Pissed me right the fuck off, seeing all of that cereal going to waste just because this idiot couldn't flag down an employee who would have done the work FOR them in properly disposing of their leaky merchandise.

[Silent-Hunter]

They may not have been the one who left it. I know if I saw something like that sitting on a shelf I would have told someone.

[Tama]

I remember seeing a pack of some kind of raw meat in a cereal aisle...I alerted someone right away.

Who leaves things like this? Why do people just drop things that can stink up/destroy other merchandise around it?

[Draco]

They may not have been the one who left it. I know if I saw something like that sitting on a shelf I would have told someone.

Pretty sure he wasn't blaming the customer to who told staff about it. Just the lazy SOBs who leave stuff there in the first place.

[EricKei]

My best guess -- aside from just plain laziness and "Well, this isn't my home, so why should I give a damn?" -- is that people have an irrational fear of being required to help clean up their own mess, or, more likely, that they will be made to pay for the unsellable food.

[emax4]

I think there was an old shoplifting policy by Wal Mart where any apprehended shoplifting perps were walked through the store by security, embarrassing the perps the whole way. Perhaps these lazy people should wear a wood sign around their neck and face the same punishment.

[Lovecats]

When I worked at a big superstore (think Red), I was mostly in the grocery side. People left cold stuff in the aisles a lot and for some reason it seemed mostly in the cereal aisle. Bags of chicken stand out to me. Of course, the opposite of that is when someone left a Halloween Barbie in one of the freezer cases.

[Monterey Jack]

They may not have been the one who left it. I know if I saw something like that sitting on a shelf I would have told someone.

I probably worded it wrong...the customer who told me about the milk was not the one who left it there.

[Silent-Hunter]

Oh good! I despise people who waste food.

[MelindaJoy77]

People do this all day long in my store (HellMart). Not only that, they do it in the checkout line when I'm looking right at them. If it's busy, I ignore them but sometimes I take the item and (as nicely as possible) let them know that I can take it if they don't want it.

When I first moved to where I'm living and walked into this HellMart, I was shocked at how messy it was. Now that I've worked there for two years, I know why. I do not understand people and their behavior anymore.