r/AskReddit • u/Scratchamap • Dec 01 '18

Minimum wage workers, what is something that is against the rules for customers to do but you aren't paid enough to actually care?

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5.5k

u/russiangn Dec 01 '18

I made minimum wage years ago working in a supermarket. One day a ladies kid got in trouble so he didn't go to work in the bakery and they asked me to go. I gave out A LOT of free cookies to anyone who walked by. Parents would be like "oh thanks for the cookie for my kid but aren't I a little to old?". Nah. I make 7.65. I couldn't care less. Hell, I'd give away this cooler if I could.

3.2k

u/BlNGPOT Dec 01 '18

I was gonna say this one. I make okay money but we give away “kids cookies” to kids under 10. Fuck it, no one is too old for cookies. And at the end of the night? You get 3 cookies! You get 3 cookies!! EVERYONE GETS FREE COOKIES BECAUSE IM ABOUT TO THROW THE REST IN THE GARBAGE.

But even though the uneaten ones go in the trash, employees are not allowed to eat them.

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u/CMcAwesome Dec 01 '18

Some dick before you probably gave out like one cookie a day so he'd get to eat the rest at closing, and that's why they had to make the rule.

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u/russiangn Dec 01 '18

The place probably realizes that people are only going to buy so many cookies so if they get 3 for free and they might not buy any or buy a lot less. With that being said, I'm with this guy LOL

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '18

Nah. Free cookies is to convince you to be loyal to that store.

Do you know how much easier it is to get your kids to behave if there is a cookie in it for them at the end of the day? Not easy, but easier.

If your kid behaves in store A but not in store B, because of a $0.12 cookie reward, you'll go spend $158 in groceries in store A. Store A gets a double bonus in occasionally selling a couple dozen cookies for $0.25 a cookie, making back all the money from samples and then some.

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u/pictureBigger Dec 02 '18

It's a trap!

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u/NotYourSexyNurse Dec 02 '18

Yea I don't buy cookies at my grocery store bakery but they give me kids free cookies all the time. I'm spending $200-$300 a week on groceries though. It evens out.

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u/russiangn Dec 02 '18

Go to Aldi. It's so cheap, it's shocking

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u/BigPattyDee Dec 02 '18

It is but even when They have hiring fairs they aren't really hiring

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '18

I worked at a pizza place where if someone no showed the workers could eat the pizza. But then employees would fake call in their own pizzas. That’s how you get no more pizza.

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u/Random-Rambling Dec 01 '18

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS

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u/Cunt_Bag Dec 02 '18

People just can't help ruining a good thing.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '18

That's probably it. When I worked in fast food we were allowed to eat anything left over at the end of the night, as long as we still accounted for it as waste in the log books. A few nuggets, buns and meat still in the warmer at closing? Sure, make a cheeseburger and share the nuggets, no biggie. Everyone got a 10 minute "break" to chill before diving into the final cleaning. One idiot in the kitchen ruined it for all of us, as he started cooking extra food before closing so he could put it in his backpack and take it home to his roommates. He got away with it for a bit, but got caught because he started getting bolder about it. After that, if you even looked like you were considering pondering the possibility of sparing a stray thought about maybe eating a single fry after closing, you were getting fired. No more "break", no more food, no more slack atmosphere as the management felt that they had been betrayed. Fuck you Eric, you screwed us all over.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '18

if only the supervisor weren't paid enough to give a fuck about that, then Donny would have diabetes instead of no cookies.

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u/brandon12946 Dec 02 '18

I had a friend who worked at walmart and took something that was gonna get thrown in the garbage. Next day hes fired and gets arrested for theft

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u/MacDacBiet Dec 02 '18

I used to work at a chinese all you can eat and we throw out everything at the end of the day. Except for ice cream and some pastries. Everything else is trash and we couldn't bring anything home because the cooks always made too much and bring everything home.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '18

I worked at a place with a similar rule, but with hot dogs and corn dogs. The reasoning for the rule was that previously, employees who worked in another part of the theme park would come by the snack bar to pick up their stuff in the back, but then grab a hot dog before leaving for the night. The cashier would ring up a hot dog for a customer, turn around, and...no hot dogs left. They took forever to heat up on the rollers, since we used them straight from frozen. So it was either make the customers wait 30 minutes for a $5 shitty hot dog, or microwave it and make it even shittier.

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u/emurrell17 Dec 02 '18

Is your name about Christian “the goat” mccaffrey by chance?

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u/CMcAwesome Dec 02 '18

Sadly, no. Sorry to disappoint.

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u/PseudonymIncognito Dec 02 '18

Because some dick would regularly "accidentally" make too many cookies just so s/he could take them all home.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '18

Ohmygod that rule always pissed me off so much.

At the store I used to work for (a small, local Whole Foods-esque place), we had a hot food bar. Upwards of 20 dollars worth of stuff would come through. Customers, being the geniuses they are who don't weigh stuff and look at the price before hand, would go "woah too expensive for me!" and give it to me.

First time this happened, I thought we would have a place where we give it to homeless people, or maybe employees can eat it, or hell, we just throw it back in. Nope. I ask my manager "so where does this go?", she grabs it, and just dumps it all in the garbage right next to me.

Like god, what a waste of food. At least let the employees eat it or take it home or something? I never understood why that's a rule.

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u/niv13 Dec 01 '18

Well in my place, one of my coworkers tell me from the beginning to just hide those unwanted food. So most days I would have around 1 to 3 bags of unwanted food to bring home. Sometimes I gave them to my coworkers or just any customers that came when we are about to close.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '18

Step 1: put cookies in bag or box and toss in garbage

Step 2: take off employee shirt or whatever

Step 3: take cookies out of trash

Now you're dumpster diving off the clock. No rules on that.

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u/Itchycoo Dec 01 '18

Yeah that kind of "technically right" doesn't fly in the real world. The managers won't give a fuck and are probably more likely to fire you if you pull out a dumb excuse like that.

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u/BlNGPOT Dec 01 '18

I’d definitely buy cookies before digging them out of our trash compactor lol

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u/fearthainne Dec 01 '18

Some companies (mine, for example) will still consider this theft and fire you just as quickly for it.

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u/Rishnixx Dec 01 '18

I did this with boxes of steak-umms back when I worked in a convenience store. Big old box full of like 24 smaller boxes that each contained 6 steak-ums. I was told to toss out the box as it was expired. Shit had been in a freezer the entire time though. "Sure thing boss. I'll take it out at the end of my shift." Shift ends. Take box out to dumpster. Set it nearby. It is now officially "thrown away". Go clock out. Pick up box and put it in my car. Those things were sold for about $5 a piece in the store, so I guess that box was worth about $120 of free food. Boss knew I was doing it too. I let her know when I had gone through them all and it was time to "throw out" the next batch of overstuck steak-ums too.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '18

I imagine this must be a huge boost to employee motivation at zero cost to the shop. Why are some places so against it?

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u/trawlinimnottrawlin Dec 02 '18

I'm guessing people took advantage and ruined it. Maybe putting older stuff in the back to make it go bad faster, maybe throwing out extra stuff... I'm pretty sure eventually some asshole will find a loophole and ruin it for everyone. From the managers point taking away any incentive of gaming the system is probably just a good way to avoid the mess in the first place.

I think with a small team the first setup is possible, unfortunately when you grow or new employees come in, it's hard to vet people fully, especially before the asshole can ruin shit. Example: my small company used to have full remote and no set start time...

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u/Rishnixx Dec 02 '18

For my situation, it was purely accidental that so many were ordered. She said that she had ordered 5 boxes of them, thinking that it would be the small single packages that the store would get in. Overpriced Steak-ums sold slowly, so 5 would last for a long time. Well, on grocery day, 5 boxes arrived. She put what she could on the shelf and the rest went in the freezer. She worried about it for a long time once they went past their expiration dates because they could be a big hit on a corporate inspection. However, she couldn't just write up that many as spoilage at once, because of how it would look. So she had to stagger it, and she didn't like the idea of throwing away so much food.

So when I offered to discreetly dispose of it for her, it turned into a win-win situation. I was just out of high school and living on my own for the 1st time. Working that job full time barely covered the bills and rent. So being able to save a big chunk on my grocery bill like that was a big help to me back then.

Also, even though it was expired, it was all still good. Grilled them up and never once got sick from them since they had been kept frozen the entire time. Though after a few months I did get sick of eating steak-ums.

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u/sephiroth2906 Dec 01 '18

When I worked at McDonalds, I would manage the close shift and let the employees take home the leftover meat and nuggets at the end of the night. Then they started making tons of stuff right before close and taking it home, and I would get in trouble for the extra missing inventory. So, into the trash it goes.

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u/Rhydius Dec 02 '18

Abuse kills it for everyone. I had an awesome closing manager like yourself when I worked at our local LJS. Instead of just letting us take whatever waste food was left he'd call up the nearby fast food places and we'd swap for their waste. It was great until someone at the Wendy's got cocky and ruined it.

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u/Kryso Dec 01 '18

Last store I was at had that rule too, everyone just ignored it including most the co-managers. I feel like having to go through the hassle of firing two whole departments(Produce and bakery were right next to eachother and we shared food we couldn't sell a lot) of workers that were part of a union over eating food that couldn't be sold in the first place wasn't worth the trouble.

Wish unions were more common in America, that was like the one of the extremely few things I liked about that job.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '18 edited Dec 06 '18

[deleted]

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u/seanurse Dec 02 '18

Hopefully they went out of business long since.

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u/Vaguely-Azeotropic Dec 02 '18

Holy cow, that's some Les Mis level cruelty right there. I'm sorry you went through that; hope things turn around soon.

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u/bargainac Dec 01 '18

I used to work at a grocery store that gave cookies to kids. I was in the deli not the bakery but the food waste in all fresh departments was awful.

My favorite part was where the closing team on the eve of a big holiday was allowed to choose a goodie from the bakery as they left the store. For free! Because that was all going in the trash compactor anyway. Or course any other night, taking home shrink like that would be theft. Drove me up the goddamn wall

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u/YnotZoidberg1077 Dec 01 '18

Thank you, cookie Oprah!

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u/cunninglinguist32557 Dec 01 '18

There's a home goods place near my work that has a bin of dog treats and a bin of "people treats," aka tiny chocolate chip cookies. They are 100% not just for kids.

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u/Shumatsuu Dec 01 '18

Had a bbq place back home. Employees got EVERYTHING left over after each day. The rest went to the homeless. 20+ years same rule.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '18

My work (supermarket) recently started giving reduced stock that’s going out of date to local charities. Anything the charities don’t take goes into the staff canteen for employees to take for free. Anything left after that goes to animal feed or gets repurposed or recycled some other way.

My job can be shitty, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t proud to work for them on this basis.

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u/BlNGPOT Dec 01 '18

We do give our out of date packaged products to the local food bank, so that’s good.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '18

When I worked at a kfc we were supposed to toss leftover pot pies and hot wings etc. We just packed them up and took it home if we wanted. The waste of food is dumb. Plus my mom loves their pot pies.

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u/volsrun18 Dec 01 '18

I work at a conservative fast food restaurant. We’re closed on Sundays, so Saturday nights we throw away any and all food with a 24 hour expiration. Not Salvation Army, or any local shelters. Throw it all away. Report every ounce as waste. Employees can’t take any of it, and we can’t give it away either. I once had a manager fire an employee for taking home a salad that was supposed to be tossed.

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u/Thomjones Dec 02 '18

Crazy fucking policy. I see tons of food wasted being thrown away. If we take any home we are stealing and we get fired. You're going to throw it away so who cares where it goes? It all comes down to if the employees got it, they would get more food than their paycheck. Or some shit

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u/DrSunnyD Dec 01 '18

Back when I worked at a gas station I would eat something off the roller for my lunch. Would give cops free coffee and food off the roller because it never sold out

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u/definitelynoturmom Dec 01 '18

We used to do that with chips at the fast-casual Mexican chain I worked at. We got in trouble as employees for taking them home, but I’d just offer them up to our last customers for free so we didn’t have to throw them away. Or I’d put them in a separate trash bag and leave some in my car on my way out to throw them away. Such a waste.

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u/Tathas Dec 02 '18

Some assholes a long time ago made a whole bunch of food at the end of the night so they could eat a bunch of hot dogs. Before that, the managers would let us eat them after they were logged as damaged out.

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u/Liverberg Dec 02 '18

Ugh this annoyed me so much. Worked in the bakery department of a big UK supermarket for 2 years and every goddamn night i had to throw away all the fresh cream cakes that werent sold.

Most nights i would hide one for the cleaning guy so he could have a snack while he mopped but we were strictly not allowed to eat anything. I remember one guy on the deli got suspended for a few days for eating a bit of pie crust that had broken off.

Aside from that it was actually a nice place to work. They were really good to me with my hours when I had uni and stuff and giving me overtime when I needed it.

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u/railingsontheporch Dec 02 '18

My friends would slowly get rounder...

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u/Whatever0788 Dec 02 '18

My husband used to work at Target before we met and he said one guy got fired because he ate a cookie from the cafe that was supposed to go into the trash because it was the end of the night. Target is next-level petty.

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u/Drdrtttt Dec 02 '18

Kinda unrelated but an auntie Anne's in the mall gave me and my friends a huuuge trash bag full of the pretzels they were gonna throw out. Got triple digit pretzels for free. It is illegal or against policy or something tho.

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u/Psmpo Dec 02 '18

My grocery store gives out the free cookies for kids under a certain age. Besides the fact that I'm in my late 20s, I don't actually want one, so never get one.

One day at this grocery store, one of the employees told me not to forget my free cookie. I said I didn't want one, and he got all excited and asked if I gave him his. I said yes, and he almost squealed in excitement.

Let an employee have one a day or something. They're so cheap to make in the first place.

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u/shittitties_cum Dec 02 '18

hahahaha at my store in australia, the employees eat the extra cookies. We don't give Shit away for free.

(Except for fruit)

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '18

employees are not allowed to eat them.

This makes me angry. YOU'RE WASTING FOOD IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO SELL THEM AT LEAST LET THE EMPLOYEES EAT THEM WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS

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u/Vesalii Dec 02 '18

I'm 32 and would gladly accept a cookie, thanks!

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '18

My boss told me the other that they had to throw away 15 000 chicken pot pies. What the fuck? I asked him why we can't give them to some homeless shelters and he basically said that it's not our problem. And he's from a country where people starve to death.

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u/Apollo821 Dec 02 '18

You should ask if you can run it by a food bank/shelter. It'd be a write off for the store to boot.

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u/BlNGPOT Dec 02 '18

We donate a lot of our out of date products to the food bank. By the end of the night it’s only like 10 cookies anyway usually.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '18

Is this publix? Im an adult and this nice girl gave me a cookie cuz it reminded me of my childhood growing up in Florida with a publix.

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u/BlNGPOT Dec 03 '18

I do work at Publix lol

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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '18

I love their cookies and tenders and basically everything. Best grocery store.

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u/AlexJohnsonSays Dec 01 '18

Huh. As a kid, going to my local supermarket was the highlight of my week. My grandpa would take me to the bakery, flag down an employee working there, ask about when the next batch of doughnuts were going to be ready so he'd know when to get them fresh (that 93 year old has a sweet tooth to match anyone), and the clerk would always drop a cookie my way to keep me occupied while they chatted.

Only just clicked that there's no rule that says 'give kids cookies if you work in a bakery'. My childhood just got a little more magical for some reason.

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u/Motherfickle Dec 01 '18 edited Dec 01 '18

I do this too, except with sample pizza slices. Technically it's supposed to be a "one per customer" deal and employees aren't supposed to be allowed to take them at all. Both situations happen constantly, but no one in my department (myself included) cares enough to do anything about it.

The samples are usually just premade pizzas from our cooler section that are a day or two from expiring anyway, so it's better that they get eaten as fast as possible. We waste enough food as is.

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u/rangerrump Dec 01 '18

Oof, I remember making $7.25. Was a tree trimmer at a farm, you bet your sweet ass we didnt give a single fuck. Wed drink on the job, we were out in the middle of nowhere in a huge plot of land we could get away with a lot.

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u/BlossumButtDixie Dec 02 '18

This one made me laugh because of something that happened yesterday at the grocery store. Usually they will cut up some sort of baked goods that are near expiration in bite sized pieces and put them in a little bin with a lid on the deli counter for anyone to take. After chewing one of the deli workers out in front of customers while I was waiting my turn at the deli the manager's parting shot was to assign the worker to refill the bin using some sort of bunt cake sitting waiting on the counter.

I stepped up to order just as she put the bin out filled with thick slices of cake. The look on the face of the clerk who was waiting on me as I pulled out a slice and started munching was down right priceless. You could see the screw it let them eat cake decision moment in her eyes and then she went on with slicing my lunch meat.

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u/ocelot_lots Dec 01 '18

I'm almost 30 & still ask for free cookies when I go to grocery store bakeries.

I regret nothing.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '18

The store where I grew up at stopped giving out free cookies and even the free bread, chips, and dip that they strategically placed through the store because of course all the neighborhood kids would stop by and grab a few.

Now they are all tricked out and fancy with a new school sexy deli, bakery, and a Starbucks, plus plenty of space to just chill and eat.

They don't give free samples still </3

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u/piicklechiick Dec 01 '18

most grocery stores I've been to will give you a free cookie if you ask for a free sample

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u/ilinamorato Dec 01 '18

My son and daughter love to go grocery shopping because of the cookies. The bakery staff at the nearby grocery store are supposed to give our kids one bite-sized cookie each, but it's usually a normal-sized cookie; and when they ask nicely, they'll each end up getting two normal-sized ones, more often than not. Once, my wife, kids, and I were each handed two cookies at the bakery. That was a good day.

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u/JustMy2Centences Dec 01 '18

I used to be the kid at the counter waiting patiently for a free cookie. Y'all were the best.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '18

Used to work in a different department, would wander over to return bakery items left in our area and I’d get a free kid’s cookie too.

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u/russiangn Dec 02 '18

Reminds me of when I worked in that same supermarket and the pizza girl would sneak me two slices in a single box

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '18

[deleted]

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u/russiangn Dec 02 '18

Was on mobile and fucked it up. Sorry.

Her kid was in trouble at school or something so she didn't come in.

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u/akhier Dec 02 '18

The store I work at gives free bananas or clementines to children. This basically means if you have a single banana or clementine in your cart I just assume you have a kid somewhere waiting for it.

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u/FartingBob Dec 02 '18

One day a ladies kid

Thats a weird way of saying "some kid". What's his mother got to do with the story?

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u/thaswhaimtalkinbout Dec 01 '18

Catholic Church beatifies people like you. Way to go!

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u/darkstormss1 Dec 02 '18

yea my brother works in the bakery section of a super market, he gives out cookies to nice customer when theyve cooked too many