Well, will you honor it or not?

[thegiraffe]

The thread on watch batteries and the particularly the discussion about honoring signs reminded me of this little gem.

Back when Winn-Dixie was a real grocery chain instead of a few franchises every couple hundred miles (in this area at least), they used to have signs up that if you found an out-of-date product, they'd give you....either a dollar or the price of the product... I can't remember exactly (I was like 8).

SO...every couple weeks or so, the family and I would go traipsing through Winn-Dixie with a cart and grab everything out-of-date we could find. We found a lot...hence the cart. We paid for pizza dinners and trips to the movies with that money!

Eventually, management started to get the hang of it. The last time we did it, they didn't want to give us the money. My Dad simply told him that (a) proper customer service is to honor the sign that's prominently placed for all to see, and (b) if they would be more diligent about taking expired product off the shelf (i.e. trying at all), they wouldn't have this problem. We would literally find a cartload every single time. The dude gave Dad the money and basically told him to not come back expecting to get any more money. We were in there awhile later because they had meat on sale, and I noticed that the signs were gone. Guess they learned their lesson.

Now...a couple disclaimers to extinguish the incoming flaming torches:

- We didn't need the money. We couldn't necessarily afford to go to the movies or get pizza constantly, but that money made it possible.

-We were in the store for other things (mainly meat...they had good sales sometimes)

-We were proving a point. Honestly....the store was essentially paying its customers to take expired product off the shelves. When you find a cartload every time you go in, there's a problem.

-There was stuff that was grossly out of date. I'm not talking like a day or two, try a couple of weeks. I work retail on the weekends...I know it's impossible to get EVERYTHING, but if you check your stock on a regular basis, there should be a very very few that slip through the cracks.

-We weren't digging. This stuff was in the front of the shelf. I shudder to think what people who don't check dates walked out of there with.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Yeesh, that store obviously had a problem if they were leaving outdated product out there like that.

We check dates on date-coded product monthly and usually end up with a few carts full of stuff to be tossed or sent back to the vendors. It's a good way to kill a day or more if we have nothing else going on.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Back when I worked for WD . . . I spent several months just taking one day a week (usually on Friday if I had all the other Scanning duties done) and pull dates an aisle at a time.

Back then (this was around mid 90's) checking and rotating dates was to be done by the stockers each time they stocked a section. Ours weren't doing that apparently, for I was finding stuff that was dated so far back, it had codes rather than open dates on them.

The worst two aisles I had for out of dates: cereal and canned soups. On the cereal aisle, I found boxes that were almost 3 years out of date!!!!! By the time I was done, I had half a dozen banana boxes stacked at the end of the aisle of OOD product for reclaim (and I wanted my buddy Devil, who was our Grocery manager and oversaw the stockers) to see what they weren't doing. Needless to say, he wasn't very happy when he saw those boxes . . .

As far as the soups went . . . I found cans of Thrifty Maid (their then private label) that were so old, they had julian codes and the label was the late 80's plaid on white background. Next runner up was some variety of Campbell's that was almost 5 years out of date . . . .

And it's not just WD that has problems with dates not being rotated . . . I discovered not long after I started with the Kitty that it was just as bad.

[GolfCart34]

We have to make sure we check the perishable items we buy at the local Price Chopper. My bf said he's bought grossly expired products on more than one occasion at that store.

My brother works at a grocery store that is very strict about rotating their stock. Seriously, it's not that difficult to rotate stock. As others have said, you sometimes miss a thing or two here and there. But to leave cartloads of expired products on the shelves... I would consider that unacceptable if I were running a grocery store.

[Bank Lady]

I've never had a problem with my local grocerty store until recently. I happened to notice that a particular type of specially fortified milk was long past it's sell-by date (about 3 weeks). Their entire inventory (only 6-7 gallons) was expired. I couldn't find anyone in dairy to tell, so I just made sure the checker knew before I left. She was very nice about it and made sure the right person was told.

[blas]

One night at the gas station, when I just came in to do a 3 hour cleaning shift, I found a jar of dip that expired in 2002. I worked at that gas station from summer 05 to summer 06. Yeah. Gross.

[crazylegs]

To be fair canned product (unless blown) won't actually have anything wrong with it if its outside the sell by date, trust me on this as I've eaten 10-15y/o ration packs, portions of which were canned. However it does smack of a lack of professialism when you can pull that much out of date stock off the shelf in one go.

[Dark-Star]

Whoa. That's beyond unhealthy.

Perhaps an anonymous tip to the local/state health inspectors is in order?

[Crazeyal]

Unhealthy.. not really. In the case of perishables, the expired date is almost always before the red zone, and it's not like they were CHANGING the dates. Customers were aware of what they were buying.

Everything else that has an expiration date is simply for freshness, and in some chains just means the outer packaging needs changing.

As far as taking advantage of an ADVERTISED OFFER? The store wasn't doing it's job, and the Manager should have been disciplined. There might have been reasons (Corporate giving unrealistic expectations, cutting hours and job slots) but that isn't the public's problem. It's not abusive if someone walks around with a "kick me" sign (and THEY PUT IT ON!!!) to wind up for field goal. They asked for it.

[PepperElf]

Now...a couple disclaimers to extinguish the incoming flaming torches

.... if the store is stupid enough to keep out of date crap on the shelves in the first place, and then offer money for it.... then... take the money.

hell, if they can't do their job properly, then there's *nothing* wrong with customers getting paid to do it for them.

...and that's before i get to the part about protecting the other customers from the health risks involved in eating out of date foods. sure some dry products might not hurt you but... out of date meats and milks can really make you sick. (especially if they're "grossly out of date")

[Miffed]

Thats really petty of them to basically pay people to do what the employees should be doing, then getting upset when people actually take up the offer.

[Geek King]

To be fair canned product (unless blown) won't actually have anything wrong with it if its outside the sell by date, trust me on this as I've eaten 10-15y/o ration packs, portions of which were canned. However it does smack of a lack of professialism when you can pull that much out of date stock off the shelf in one go.

Anything with the 'fake' suger in it (ie. NutraSweet, Splenda, et al) will go bad in a can. The sugar substitutes will go bad even in sealed cans, unlike real suger, molassas, or cane suger. Ration packs are specifically designed to last as long as possible and use one of those three.

At least they used to when the supply guy I knew told me about it. At the time, he said the peanut butter hadn't been manufactured in about twenty years. Ration packs were being packed with peanut butter overordered in the seventies, and stored until used.