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After college, I took a job bussing tables at a very high-end restaurant attached to a very expensive country inn near my hometown. It was the kind of place where you had to stand with your arms spread at the beginning of a shift and submit to having the maitre d' inspect your cuffs and the knot in your tie (even women had to wear ties).
I'd been working there for a few weeks when I noticed that employees were throwing away massive platters of food from the wedding buffets that took place nearly every weekend afternoon -- I'm talking untouched trays of smoked salmon, artichoke hearts, blinis with caviar and mini lemon souffles. I also noticed that the wait staff would pour the remaining pitchers of fresh-squeezed orange juice straight down the sink after brunch. Finally, I asked the head waiter why we didn't just save the food to eat at employee mealtime.
"Because, if we allowed employees to eat leftover food, pretty soon you'd all be eating whatever you wanted straight out of the fridge," he told me sniffily.
What, like untrained dogs?! I gave my two weeks notice the next day.
I was reminded of that incident when I read this New York Times post, about a man fired from Whole Foods for trying to save and eat a tuna fish sandwich that was about to be thrown away. Whole Foods claimed that the man's behavior was "misconduct," which means, in addition to having lost his job, he'd be denied unemployment benefits. The man, Ralph Reece, challenged the misconduct ruling and won.
Good for him, I say. Not only is keeping employees from eating leftover food degrading and wasteful, the "misconduct" charges were, according to Reece's lawyer, souped up in order to save Whole Foods money for not having to pay unemployment. And this from a company that is supposed to be one of the best places in America to work!
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3-17-2009 @4:15PM Gobo said... When I worked at a Kmart with a Little Caesar's Pizza inside the store, we had to throw out dozens of untouched freshly-made pizzas every day. For a bunch of broke high-school kids, this was agony, but it was made clear to us that if anyone was caught eating even one slice, they'd be fired on the spot.
Health-code violations are just ridiculous.
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3-17-2009 @5:05PM Cory said... This is pretty typical policy, but the primary reason I was given, which is similar but a bit less hostile than that in the original post, was that if the employees knew they'd get to eat that steak that came back to the kitchen, or all the appetizers that weren't eaten at a banquet it would encourage people to send out the wrong order just prior to going on break so they'd have a snack, or make too many of their favorite buffet dish knowing it would be coming back to them shortly. Knowing that you'd never get to eat it even if it was an honest mistake avoided the unscrupulous 'errors' for happening.
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3-17-2009 @5:41PM whatzerkitty said... Wow, folks will rant like maniacs every chance they get. This didn't start with Obama, nor will it end there, but thanks for the crazy!!!
Anyway, I think the policy is ridiculous. Way back when I was in college, I worked at several dining establishments, one being a cookie company. Instead of throwing out trays of cookies, we got to take them home. Believe me, this didn't cause us to make endless trays of cookies, just so we'd get to take free stuff home. What actually happened was that I got so sick of those cookies, that I can't even look at them, twenty years later.
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3-17-2009 @6:04PM stevie Santangelo said... Amen! More corporations need to think greener, globally and locally! Feed your employees, homeless and various shelters if there is that much leftover. Does anyone out there know if there are programs in the works for this? Shame of Whole Foods!
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3-17-2009 @6:34PM sw said... Whole foods is notorious for it's unethical firings. It is also a place that edges people out when they become "too expensive". They do this by having multiple meetings criticizing the employee but not officially writing up the employee which is what they are supposed to do for all work-related issues.They refuse to write up the complaint because the criticisms are nebulous or unfounded and it is more dangerous to keep a paper trail of their bullying. This creates a hostile work environment which causes employees to quit so Whole Foods doesn't have to pay unemployment. It happened to me and many many people I know who worked there.
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3-17-2009 @6:52PM sean said... What's the big deal? Every food-related place I've ever worked had this policy. Starbucks...if a cookie broke...it went in a jar to be counted...to keep people from breaking them accidentally on purpose.
If you think everyone would be loyal, you need to tell me where your Utopia is, because even with that system, we found ways to sneak (read steal) food from them.
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3-17-2009 @7:07PM Gobo said... Jack, that's enough. No politics in the forums of a food blog.
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3-17-2009 @7:58PM Uly said... A better plan than letting the employees eat the leftovers would be to get the insurance to donate the leftovers to a soup kitchen (for prepared dishes) or food bank (for old cans of soup and the like).
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3-17-2009 @9:23PM Alex said... I worked in a Whole Foods bakery many, many moons ago. Every night, all fresh baked breads, rolls, cookies, muffins, croissants, pastries etc went into the trash. We would always fill at least two giant trash bags. Employees had a fifteen minute window to come buy anything they wanted, but you were not allowed to rescue anything from the trash without paying for it. And the store manager would stand there and make sure no one tried to pilfer anything. It was disgusting.
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3-17-2009 @10:04PM janedoh said... I used to be a damaged and defectives clerk at a Navy Exchange and one of my duties was to toss the expired snack foods....funny thing is we always got a lot of stuff that was real close to expiring, I think distributors would send us their old stuff but that's another story. I would always wait until after all other depts. had emptied their trash at the end of the day and then I would put the food right on top in the dumpster hoping that the local free-gans wouldn't have to dig so deep to get some snackies. It's the little things.
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3-18-2009 @12:34AM sisterbeer said... The WFMs in the South region donate leftover breads, coffees, canned goods, boxed goods, etc. to multiple soup kitchens and non-profits that are local to them. The rest of it is composted by regional and local large-scale composting companies--even bones and meat trim are accepted.
Staff food is a hard subject to deal with--if we were only making cookies, then yes, it probably would not be--after all, how many cookies would you want? That's why our stores here donate so very little goes to waste. We get a 20% discount on food, so it's not like we don't get some kind of deal on what we make.
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3-18-2009 @1:07AM KF said... Unbelievable. Emily, this is my day for reading about people unfairly fired for taking what would otherwise be thrown away. Here's a story I encourage people to read -- a woman employed by a school asked if she could take a table that was being carted to the DUMP and when she did, she was fired for taking school property -- even though it was being discarded. Her outcome wasn't as good -- she appealed and STILL Lost. -- http://bit.ly/Vyxu.
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3-18-2009 @5:36AM Elana Aptowitzer said... A few years ago I was a student at an american university in DC. One evening, as I ate dinner late with my fiance in the cafeteria, we noticed the cafeteria staff closing up shop. They were dumping all the leftover food into massive trash bags. I'm not talking about table scraps...I'm talking about UNOPENED bags of bread, massive trays of pasta and sauce (enough to feel 15+ people), chicken, fish, giant bowls of fresh (undressed) salad greens, WHOLE cakes, entire pizzas etc. etc. It seemed like no one had eaten dinner that night...all the food looked untouched.
Horrified, I ran up to one of the workers and said "Are you going to be donating this food to a shelter?". She looked at me and said "Honey, they don't let us. We have to throw it all out. I make so little money here that I can barely support my large family. I once asked if I could take home some of the food that we were going to throw in the trash. The university said it was a liability and that anyone caught taking food home (instead of throwing it out) would lose their job!
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3-18-2009 @10:31AM Astin said... As has been implied a few times in the comments, I think this a "fear of being sued" issue when it comes to leftover food. If that perfectly good food is given to shelter or food bank and someone gets ill, it could open up some unfortunate proceedings. Just another side effect of a litigious society.
Then there's the fear of underpaid employees purposely making sure there was extra food for them to take advantage of.
I can certainly see the second point, and I can even see an argument for not providing leftovers to food banks due to cost (ie.- nearest major bank location on the other side of town costs gas, manpower, etc.), even though that's a bit callous. Regardless, I think it's disgusting how much perfectly good food is thrown away.
Watch "We Feed the World" if you can find it. There's one scene where the show the amount of day-old bread that's thrown away in Austria's (I think) largest city every DAY... enough to feed its second-largest city easily.
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3-18-2009 @12:56PM Melissa A. said... My first job ever was working at Tim Hortons. We were supposed to throw out everything at the end of the day, but of course we didn't. Who would? In fact I would take a bite out of a donut and then throw it in the garbage. It's ridiculous. The food should be donated at least.
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3-18-2009 @2:50PM Rick said... All well and good, but speaking from a corporate POV -- throwing away the food vs. giving it to shelters or letting the staff eat it is more about not opening themselves up to liability and lawsuits. Companies used to give unused or extra food to shelters, until they started getting sued over it when someone got sick (happened here in Florida). Get rid of the litigious nature of people and THEN you'd have companies letting people take this stuff home or giving it to shelters to actually help people.
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3-18-2009 @3:50PM Jonz said... In regards to legal issues concerning the donation of food, the Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, passed in 1996, protects donors liability when donating food to a non-profit, except in cases of "gross negligence".
The wikipedia article is very short, but links to the full text of the bill and another page that spells it out in non-lawyer terms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerson_Good_Samaritan_Food_Donation_Act
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3-18-2009 @5:38PM KF said... How hard is it to come up with a simple donation clause -- "Sign here. You take it as is except in cases of extreme neglience and disregard for public safety." Have it signed once for donations for a year, and then boom, pick up the food and feed your sheltered people.
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3-18-2009 @5:43PM KF said... Oh, and one last comment on this subject. My father grew up in the 1930s-1940s era in Washington, D.C. In the 1940s he was working as an errand boy for a bakery.
They used to load up the bakery trucks for delivery to shops and restaurants in the morning, but they got broken into and bread was stolen by neighors (a poor neighborhood) too often, and it was creating a problem, until the bakery owner solved the problem. He told my Dad, who had to load the trucks each night, to load all the day old, scraps, returns, overbakes, underbakes, and whatever wasn't going to be sold, as well as a few good loaves for good measure, into ONE truck, and he'd change that truck nightly. He'd leave it unlocked with the door just slightly ajar. The neighborhood would sneak in and clean out THAT truck, and leave the rest of the trucks alone.
When my Dad asked why the owner just didn't set up a table of giveaways, the owner said too many were too proud to come ask for it, but for some reason, wouldn't mind coming and taking it when no one was looking, so that's what he did for years -- made it easy to steal the day old stuff, and that protected the good stuff.
Pity Whole Foods can't do the same. Bag up the day old stuff or can't be sold stuff, and make it easy to get out of the dumpster, and then make sure needy people know what time, and what dumpster, the food will be discarded, so they can come get it before it's trampled and ruined.
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3-19-2009 @10:55AM Sarah said... Every place I worked for in college and in my 20's in the food industry, they took care of their employees. If something was hitting the time to be written off, it was fair game for the employees to have it.
As well, I was a barista for 9 years - and my employer didn't care how many drinks we had a day (just how many lattes can you chug?). My boss encouraged us to try everything we sold so that we could talk about it to customers. Same with a later job - for an importer. That boss wanted me to know exactly what we were selling. If a box of noodles were expiring, it was "help yourself". Better than going to the dump!
I had a friend who worked for a tightwad who made the baristas count cups every shift - and if you were off even by one at the end, they charged you. Needless to say...that place didn't keep workers and went under.
One friend in college worked in a bistro that made bread daily - what didn't sell by closing was 'help yourself'. I ate a LOT of bread in college. And it was the good stuff ;-)
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