Expiration dates: why I don’t by the bloated can of peas on the verge of sentience.

The BBQ Pit
1

On some level, I’m grateful to my local grocers and shop keepers for having the same attitude toward expired food as guys on a budget do toward old whores. Fuck it. OK, that was a cheap shot. Actually I don’t know what they think if anything.

At one time, if the stock people weren’t on top of this, the dept manager would catch it post haste. I think even store managers would do inspections. So clearly the breakdown is on at least a couple of levels. Either that or there is a desire to sell expired items regardless.

I can see the second option being possible in some cases, but there have been too many times that I have seen things that were either guaranteed to be spoiled or tainted or were virtually so. For example, if you’re familiar with Bolthouse products, these are tree hugger special, ‘all-natural’ juice blends and such. They tend not to keep well even in my fridge which is set well below normal. So I was fishing around for a mocha cappuccino that wouldn’t expire in 2 days and I found a couple that expired over a MONTH AGO!!! I think one tried to reach out to me.

Now I would imagine that in most cases people will see the food is bad and just get their money back, although probably many won’t bother. So far the plan is working. And even in the fairly unusual cases where people do get sick, no matter how pissed they are about it, they still have to prove what happened and probably won’t get much unless some permanent damage resulted. So, plan still seems to be working.

But is it really a plan when you leave shit out that is THAT old? I’ve also seen canned foods expired by over a year. Probably OK, but still – a long time. If you’re doing this to stretch your inventory and cut your losses, you don’t shoot the moon. You manage it, just like anything else. So I’m not convinced on this explanation.

But whatever the reason, it’s one more thing I can add to my list of snappy retorts when people accuse me of being paranoid. ‘Dude, do you have to check EVERY fucking label?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, yes. And here’s why . . . ‘

Too bad it is for this very reason it is so seldom that I get to drop one of these down the tube of my retort launching mortar. :smack: :frowning:

2

Pick up the can and show it to a store manager.

If he says anything other than, “Oh, oh! I’ll get that taken care of right away” then take the can (or a picture of it) to the local health inspector.

Then there are state authorities, the FDA, the newspapers…

My bet is that the store manager will jump on the problem, right away. So, relax: let him.

3

The local Asian grocery stores have a lot of expired goods on their shelves. A lot of the packaged stuff is probably still good given the amount of sodium they contain but I have to double check everything I put into my cart. I won’t buy their frozen fish partly because it’s so cheap and I wonder how often it’s been thawed out and refrozen.

4

Over the last decade or so, the big push at chain food retailers (via the home offices) has been to cut staffing to the bone and starting tracking “productivity.” At the chains I’m familiar with, the expected productivity is one minute for case. Product that can expire is theoretically expected to be rotated: pull all the older cases off the shelf, case-cut the new case and stock it in back, then restock the older ones in front. (Or for product on special displays like pushers, remove all the individual product, stock the new in back, then put all the individual items you just pulled off back up. I suppose that’s still possible at a minute per case if the stocker is experienced, but then the staffing being cut by home office makes things worse. Too few stockers for too big of a store, and no full-time stockers are hired any more, so the store is scrambling to do 75 man-hours of expected stocking a night with perhaps 40 actual hours scheduled a night. And the stockers are also expected to have the store zoned and looking pretty for the start of the sales day. Take a minute per case and they won’t get the store straightened up.

As a real world example, I’m on lunch break right now from my own retail job. Grocery got two trucks, but staffing is so light tonight that everyone has been assigned 8+ hours of stocking apiece… but we are also required to have all stocking done by 5 o’clock this morning so we can spend 2 hours sprucing the store back up. So, 8+ hours of assigned stocking, 6 actual hours in which to do it. Oh, and we get an average of 2 hours a night apiece of “picks,” backstock pulled from the store warehouse that the system thinks will go out, so now we’re at 10 hours of expected stocking time per person. At that point, the stockers mostly just shove product onto shelves, rotating only when it’s dead simple to do so, hoping to get done and not get in trouble for having unworked freight go back each morning.

Then, daytime staffing has been cut; most chains used to have support staff throughout the day to do cleaning, straightening, rotation, restocking, and usually a schedule to systematically work through the store at least once a month checking every product for expiration dates. They’re mostly gone now, and stores survive on cashiers and a slashed department management force that gives them more area to cover and no staff to help. My department manager is assigned no help during the day (whereas she had one full time and two part time workers under her a few years ago), is pulled to cashier or tech in the pharmacy, maintains in-stock levels and ordering, build features, meet with product reps, have daily hour-long meetings with the other managers and a conference call each morning, and paperwork to churn out. So, she doesn’t get to follow the expiration-date schedule too often, and the department is a disaster zone because despite being manager of the department, she’s rarely able to step foot into it.

Man, I hate retail. But I get paid bizarrely well for it, so I put up with it.

5

My local Woodman’s has a horrible problem with dairy, particularly yogurt and stuff that does not have a big turnaround. I always point it out to them when I see it, but it is constant concern. Expired dairy is nasty.