# Taco Bell - employees must eat discounted lunch in building. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 29, 2018, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taco-bell-employees-must-eat-discounted-lunch-in-building/818786 "2018-07-29T23:52:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taco-bell-employees-must-eat-discounted-lunch-in-building/818786/61 "2018-08-01T19:22:13Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > A friend in Highschool worked at a McDonalds. They had discounted food for employees, but in addition employees could eat “old” food for free. We used to show up when he was due for his break. He’d come out with a bag full of all the food that was going to be thrown out, and we’d gorge on it for free. > > We actually planned our Friday night activities around his work schedule. Wow - the exact opposite policy at the McD;s I worked at 76-77. Employees got free soda and a meal stipend (I forget the amount). If you wanted more food than the stipend covered, you paid the difference. But under no circumstances were we allowed to eat the so-called old food. I did this once (because, hey, it was going to be thrown out) but my manager said that the tossed out food was “counted” and used as a tax credit of some sort and that if an auditor saw it being consumed the store could get into trouble. So I was given a one-time warning. I see the theory behind it but I think you’d have to keep the “garbage” as proof it was waste. Otherwise your store could claim crazy amounts of waste get a bigger write-off. You had to eat in the crew lounge. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taco-bell-employees-must-eat-discounted-lunch-in-building/818786/62 "2018-08-01T20:36:53Z")
> [@BwanaBob](#): > > But under no circumstances were we allowed to eat the so-called old food. I did this once (because, hey, it was going to be thrown out) but my manager said that the tossed out food was “counted” and used as a tax credit of some sort and that if an auditor saw it being consumed the store could get into trouble. So I was given a one-time warning. I see the theory behind it but I think you’d have to keep the “garbage” as proof it was waste. Otherwise your store could claim crazy amounts of waste get a bigger write-off. You had to eat in the crew lounge. I’m sure it was counted- at the places I worked there was even a separate bin for the wasted food. But I never thought it was for a tax write-off (and I don’t see how it could be). Instead, it was used for inventory reasons\* and in some cases the waste was counted hourly and the results used to determine production - for example, if we ended up throwing 10 burgers away during the last hour every day, we’d start cooking to order that last hour. - burger patties wasted+burger patties sold= the amount missing from inventory. If 100 burger patties were wasted/sold but the inventory was decreased by 120, something happened to those 20 extra patties ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taco-bell-employees-must-eat-discounted-lunch-in-building/818786/63 "2018-08-01T20:49:49Z")
The waste food would be counted as a tax write off be the mere fact that it wasn’t sold. If your store purchases $1000 worth of food and sells it for $2500, you’d be taxed on the $1500 in profit. If you threw out $200 worth of food (at retail prices), you’d be taxed on the $1300 in profit. You don’t have to save it or count it, you just didn’t sell it. If it needs to be counted for inventory or loss control, that’s different. In all likelihood, it was a scare tactic to keep the employees from taking the old food. As stated above, it’s not uncommon to make too much to ensure there’s some waste that you can the take for free, which is very different from taking things that are legitimately going to be thrown out. I’ve seen both first and second hand (my store and someone elses) where items were hidden until they needed to be thrown out, then they magically reappeared in the hands of an employee asking if they could have them. ---
**Author:** ![Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taco-bell-employees-must-eat-discounted-lunch-in-building/818786/64 "2018-08-01T21:06:27Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > I’ve seen both first and second hand (my store and someone elses) where items were hidden until they needed to be thrown out, then they magically reappeared in the hands of an employee asking if they could have them. This happened when I used to sell cameras. My store sold expired film for 50% off. One of my coworkers was a struggling professional photographer using every trick he could to cut costs. He would go through his preferred film bins, remove the short-dated ones, and hide them in the back of the film fridge. Once they expired, he would buy dozens of rolls at at time. I could imagine a restaurant that gave employees stale food would have a similar experience. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taco-bell-employees-must-eat-discounted-lunch-in-building/818786/65 "2018-08-01T22:54:17Z")
> [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](#): > > This happened when I used to sell cameras. My store sold expired film for 50% off. One of my coworkers was a struggling professional photographer using every trick he could to cut costs. He would go through his preferred film bins, remove the short-dated ones, and hide them in the back of the film fridge. Once they expired, he would buy dozens of rolls at at time. I could imagine a restaurant that gave employees stale food would have a similar experience. That was basically the exact same thing I had happen. One of my employees actually asked me if she could ‘hide’ something that was going to expire in a few days and have it then. The other person I mentioned was out and about doing some stuff, when he got back to his store he saw a bowl of shrimp. He asked about it, assuming they were making another batch of the soup that had shrimp in it. Nope. The employee said ‘you always let us take the left over soup home, but [regarding this soup] there’s never any shrimp left in it by the end of the day, so I took a bunch of it out and I was going to add it back to the left over soup at the end of the night’. These are example of stealing. Sometimes I think the employees don’t see it that way. It doesn’t dawn on them that if they don’t give the customer a chance to buy it specifically so they can have it for free, the owner has to pay for it. Some employees (and I’ve seen this happen multiple times) really, truly believe that all that money in the cash register is what the owner takes home. In their mind, if the store brings in $1000 today, the owner keeps it. They’ve never thought about all the bills (and payroll) to be paid. It’s these people that will literally say ‘look at all this money, I can take $5, no one will miss it’. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taco-bell-employees-must-eat-discounted-lunch-in-building/818786/66 "2018-08-01T23:46:06Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > I briefly worked in a Luden’s factory for a while, which (apart from the cough drops) made 5th Avenue candy bars. Same deal - all you can eat onsite, but no takeaways. By the end of the first day working in an atmosphere redolent with the odor of cocoa butter, the appeal of gorging on chocolate had already gone. My mom worked as a soda jerk when she was in high school, and you can tell how long ago this was by the phrase “soda jerk.” In addition to fountain items, they also sold chocolates. They could eat as much of whatever they wanted. Thirty, forty, years later, ice cream _still_ was not her preferred treat. When I was a little kid, she didn’t eat it at all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taco-bell-employees-must-eat-discounted-lunch-in-building/818786.md?page=3)