I’ve suspect this happens a lot in the food service industry. The people in the produce department probably eat a few grapes or an apple for a snack. It’s pilfering but not that unexpected. Supervisors should catch this pretty quickly and take action.
Early reports indicate charges were filed. Glad that’s incorrect. The store should have caught this employee years ago and put an end to the snacking.
She must really love ham. I’d get tired of it after the first month. 
I must admit this loss prevention officer reminds me of Officer Kirk on Happy Days.
Especially the way he/she so carefully calculated to the penny the value of 8 years of snacking.
A firm chewing out by the employee’s supervisor would probably be sufficient. Termination if it continues.
At that price, she must have liked the good stuff!
Maybe she was just sampling it. To make sure it was okay to serve?
I worked in the supermarket as a kid and, it did seem par for the course.
Some places are quite mellow about sampling, and other times one manager or another can be pretty harsh. This is loss, or shrink as it was called, which includes things that aren’t sold, or spoil or have a damaged package. Bit unfair to do it and say, “Just this once…” then cause lots of loss.
Taking the efficiency guy at face value, I calculate USD $4.60 per day (assuming 50 week work year, and 5 day work week, YMMV.) I generally spent about 5 bucks for lunch, so, yeah, seems about right.
That’s awful lot of salted meat to eat with no bread or topping. But I’d seen worse – one day a worker ran into my produce backroom, he was ducking the supervisor, as he quickly made a Wonder bread and ketchup sandwich to wolf down. I was warming up to say, “Uh … don’t steal, don’t make me complicit, and what the hell man, steal something good, at least” when the supervisor came in.
“Hey, unload the delivery. Just … jus… take the sandwich, I don’t care, but unload the truck.”
Some working people don’t have money left over for food. Or time to cook after their commute. Some people may not have the space, in their place of residence. I knew a guy who slept on some families couch. He was allowed to keep soda in their fridge – but nothing else. No food was provided for him. He wasn’t allowed to cook there, all his eating was out. I don’t know what his bathroom privileges were like, but probably the minimum as well.
For a full time employee over 8 years, that’s about 50 cents of ham an hour. Not the crime of the century.
ETA: ninjaed by Arkcon on the calculation
I suspect the store was pretty relaxed about snacking. That would explain how this employee did it for so many years.
Maybe the store got sold? New management comes, wants to show their authority. Now they crack down.
<shrug> that’s life at a job.
Its easy to tell yourself "It’s just me, a few pieces of ham, a bruised apple, why not?"If every employee did that, just think of the cost. OTOH, stuff that would otherwise get thrown out, I see no reason not to give it to employees or soup kitchens.
In practice, you can only do the latter unless there’s some strict way to police it, otherwise stuff that employees want to take home would just tend to remain unsold and find its way into the “stuff to be thrown out” pile.
I worked as a grocery store night crew stock person many years ago. You want to see food revenue lost? Lock a group of 20-year-old guys in a (closed) grocery store for 8 hours.
Management knew there would be some, er, snacking, so there was an envelope where we would leave money every morning for the food we consumed during the previous night. Most guys put in a dollar or so.
mmm
Just think of the cost? I’m thinking…
Well, lets say it’s $8 a lb. And each slice is an ounce. (Both estimates are more than a bit high.) That means that over the course of her shift, she consumed $1 to $1.50 worth at the retail price. Given that the store is not paying retail price, that is for customers, it would be less, but we’ll stick with using price for shrinkage calculations, rather than cost.
So, we are looking at something like $0.12 to $0.17 an hour.
If every employee did that, then it would be $0.12 to $0.17 an hour, times the number of employees they have.
Sounds like they got a new manager with a serious case of newmanagerititis.
Math doesn’t add up to me. Story says 3-5 slices a day. Then people are doing math to figure out how many slices she ate - Why? I know what ham costs at Giant Eagle. While it’s more expensive than Kroger, Aldi, Walmart, Target, and Meijer, it’s not THAT expensive.
Because it seemed like the “loss prevention manager” was trying to make this sound like major theft by valuing it at $9k. Spread over 8 years, it’s minor pilfering of lunch, it’s not as though she was stealing cases of the stuff and selling it in the parking lot to support her crack habit.
My first job with a tax return was at a grocery store. On my first day, I saw a guy take a lighter out of a package, light his cigarette, then put it back in the package. The grocery manager saw it, and fired him. He got fired for less than a penny’s worth of butane. They figured that if you were going to steal something small, you’d eventually steal something larger, and took shrinkage very seriously.
As far as the cost of the ham this lady was eating, I calculate it to be something between 1.30 and .80 a slice. Either those were large slices, or she was eating really expensive ham
This is ridiculous. I frequently shop at Market District which is the top level of the Giant Eagle chain. Every time I buy deli meats there they ask me how thick I want it sliced, show it to me and give me the first slice. There have been times I’ve bought several different meats and they give me a slice of each. I can leave the deli counter full, and I see them do this to every other customer. How can they possibly care if they give away 3 slices a day to one of the workers? Sounds like an overly zealous loss manager.
Looking for any updates to the story, looks like it was referred to the prosecutor to decide whether charges were to be filed.
Although, I did find this version of the story to be most enlightening.
How many languages was that translated through?
There’s ham and then there’s ham. At the grocery store there is plain old boiled sliced ham for $3.99 a pound and then there are at least half a dozen different varieties - maple ham, tuscan ham, herb infused ham, etc. going up to $8 or more a pound.
Huh. I worked in a supermarket deli during high school. The supervisor encouraged us to try all the meats and cheeses, and had no problem with snarfing a slice or two during a regular shift, in fact encouraged it, within reason. (Deli slices are usually sliced quite thin.) You can’t describe the differences to customers between the 20 varieties of ham, turkey ham, boiled ham, baked ham, honey ham, black forest ham, etc, otherwise. You do ordinarily get pretty sick of the food quickly. I doubt there are many food-service jobs where sampling/snacking isn’t a thing. It’s hard to fight human nature; easier to put reasonable limits on it.
I’ve heard a lot of the small hamburger places would let employees have a free burger and Coke.
Knowing they’d be thrilled the first week or two. Then quickly lose any appetite for food they were around day after day.
I couldn’t snack on ham every work day for 8 years. That’s too much of a good thing.
Am I the only one who read the thread title as if it were a double entendre?