No. Nor would you if you understood anything about welfare reform. In order to receive welfare, unless you’re incapable of working and have no other means of support from another program, you must work at a job somewhere. The idea is that you’ll get the training and job experience you need to move off welfare when your eligibility runs out. Google “workfare” for an explanation.
Oh, and one more thing: considering you’re making such a big stink about the abuse of poor Christianity in another Pit thread, look up Matthew 25:31-46.
I don’t believe it. Isn’t there an activist charity that’s willing to take this up? Surely there’s some group that can use this stuff.
I can understand the merchants’ objections to allowing taking from dumpsters, but I still think the ban is wrong overall.
However, I think there may be some sort of tax reason as well.
When I lived in South Oshawa, I roomed in a house whose back yard ended at the fence of the parking lot for the GM South Plant. One summer they decided to rip the guts out of the plant to retool for a new manufacturing process. The entire vast parking lot was covered five metres deep in machinery, beams, wall fragments, entire prefabricated offices. And all of it was smashed beyond repair.
I looked at the appalling waste and asked why, and I was told that they could ‘write it off’ only if it was totally unusable. If they wanted to give, say, a working used computer to charity it would count as some sort of income or expenditure or something, and its value could not be used to get the same tax savings.
Chocolate?
I used to work for a company that smashed up perfectly good “trade-in” photocopiers before putting them in the dumpster – to prevent people from fishing them out and putting them back on the market.
If Quebec’s welfare is anything like Alberta’s they prefer it that if you are able to work you do so and anything earned above a certain dollar amount, plus a percentage above the dollar amount is left to you while the rest is taken off dollar for dollar from what they provide.
It’s also a way to get benefits that aren’t covered by the health system (like dental/eyecare).
Most places don’t let you take stuff away that’s being trashed. I worked for Tim Horton’s and taking home donuts that would be trashed was a huge no. (I did it anyway, but I was night shift and they had trouble keeping us so they turned a blind eye to much worse. Like the lady who trained me who stole at minimum $40 a night selling drive thru coffee.) We dumped donuts in bins for the Mustard Seed (soup kitchen) 3 times a week, and the rest was tossed. We’re talking anywhere from 3 to 6 garbage bags full of donuts.
I haven’t worked for Bay or Zellers but it’s probably in the employee handbook.
Almost all major retailers have rules regarding their trash. Nothing that has been marked down as a loss can be used for anyother purpose including giving it away.
I worked for Home Depot for a number of years running a shipping receiving department. We threw out alot of things others would consider to be valuable. No one could take these things. Stealing trash from our store was something we prosocuted people for on a few occasions.
Many retailers have vendor contracts as well say I have a contract with Hershey. Hershey agree’s to reemberses me for any unsold chocolate bars. Instead of wasting time and money shipping old candy bars back to them Hershey allows me to ‘destroy’ them in field. If I throw them out, thus destroying them, and allow someone to take them out of the trash I have breached the contract. Hershey catching wind of me allowing such a thing can resonably sue me for any money they have reembursed me for old candy bars.
I worked for a fancy sandwich shop once. Every day we made up fresh batches of grilled vegetables, so at the end of every day we had to pitch them. We could not get rid of this stuff. Pounds and pounds of fresh, cooked vegetables; sliced cheeses and deli meats; tasty fresh bread. Every day. And nobody would take it off our hands unless it was already made into sandwiches.
So we threw it out. Every day.
Considering his wife works in HR for that chain, I suspect she knows something that isn’t in the article. (Either that, or another article on the topic not linked to here.)
Believe or don’t believe, I don’t care. People have been trying for years to not throw out our overrun and it is next to impossible. Every once in a while we can get someone to take something. Even organizations who originally started be taking restaraunt left overs (prepared, but unserved food) won’t anymore. I am not saying they don’t exist anywhere, but they don’t exist here. We are not shipping discarded perishable product to NY.
Dumpster diving also sets a dangerous precedent. How do you know why the product was thrown out? Was it expired? Out of spec? Out of season? Crawling with Listeria that have been breeding in the dumpster? Full of metal pieces from broken equipment? Contaminated by toxic chemicals? If a store acknowledges that people are taking discarded food, someone somewhere will eat something they shouldn’t and sue the store.
Many companies like McDonalds won’t donate food because they have been sued by people who may or may not have gotten sick from eating it. Many non-profits have taken up policies of only accepting food prepared for them, not food that is left over, for the same reasons.
In the end its more cost effective for companies to pay to have their trash removed then it is to give it away.
While the merits of distributing food to the needy is a topic worthy of much discussion, and preferably, action-that’s not the topic of my OP.
A guy took some candy from a dumpster-not to resell it, but to give it to his kids, because he’s on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, trying via hard work to make it to the next level.
Was or was not his action a violation of the company policy? It has been alleged that it was, yet mhendo’s request for a cite is thusfar unanswered, and is one I’d like to see, as well.
Beyond that, I feel it’s an issue for thought-based management. I’m not a suit anymore, but while I was, discretion was often applied, as opposed to looking at the world in black and white. Even if it violated the sacred company scrolls, I’d have taken the man aside and kept things private, and worked out a way to keep him on the payroll and not bruise his self-esteem.
I used to work retail in a bakery. There was a charitable network that took day-old products from us. We’d contact them or they’d contact us, and one or more shopping carts with day-old baked goods would be tagged off for pickup by the charity. They only got a fraction of what we threw out, but they could generally get bread when they wanted it from us and (I assume) others.
Except that one guy taking a few candy bars will escalate to a few guys taking a few candy bars to everyone taking candy bars to everyone taking cases of candy bars and a line has to be drawn somewhere unless the average shopper is willing to foot the bill for sticky-fingered stock boys.
Thought-based management is a great theory, but is impossible to implement fairly. This is why there are corporate policies and they are strictly followed. If Guy A gets away with lifting a few candy bars and Guy B gets busted for stealing a box of cereal, Guy B sues for discrimination against his race, religion, ethnic group, socioeconomic class, gender, sexual orientation, or hair color. Corporate HQ now has a potential million dollar loss in defending themselves against the suit. What should the corporate policy say…you can’t take stuff unless you don’t think it is worth anything to the company? Or is the corporate policy OK and the manager should risk his/her job to cover for the guy who took the candy bars? Your average child knows you can’t take a candy bar without paying for it or asking permission of its owner. Your average adult knows this too, they just come up with a thousand ways to justify taking it anyway.
Put me on the list of “people not feeling too sorry for this guy.” I think there is more to this story than we are being told - it just plays better the way they wrote it.
The thought process you’ve described is exactly why we read stories of third graders being taken out of school in handcuffs because they had a gasp compass in their bookbag. Zero tolerance policies are enacted by and for people who don’t possess the fucking common sense Og gave a turnip. Incapable of observing the hundreds of gray shades before them, contemplating mitigating factors, and lacking the intestinal fortitude to stand behind their decisions, the cerebrally-challenged beetle-browed wankers of business, government, and education justify their short-sightedness with “It’s Our Policy.”
It’s my policy to advise them that they may defecate in their chapeau.
There’s a decided difference between a 3rd grader having a compass and an adult who knows or should know his company policy on theft.
Yeah, but the fact that he took them home for his kids almost screams the proverbial theft of bread to feed your starving family.
He’s on welfare AND getting a paycheck. And it was chocolate.
Yeah, I know. I’m just saying, that’s all.
It just seems like it was stupid of them to fire him for such a petty thing.