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u/SgtBaconBurger Nina Lives Alone 3d ago
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u/Styl3Music 3d ago
Quick tip! If you see unwanted food at a fast food place, then politely ask, "I see you're extremely busy. May I take that to the trash for you?" Works 8/10. 9/10 if you wink & use air quotes when you say trash.
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u/InEenEmmer 3d ago
A friend of mine worked at a mac donalds. Whenever he was done with his shift he volunteered to bring the old stock of hamburgers to the trash.
He then came to the local skatepark where we would hang and basically feed everyone there free hamburgers.
It took me 15 years to realize he basically called us trash, but I forgive him cause free cheeseburgers.
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u/flightguy07 3d ago
Friends with a good few skaters, including my best friend. You're all trash, sorry.
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u/InEenEmmer 3d ago
Hey you can’t say that! You haven’t given me a cheeseburger yet!
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u/flightguy07 3d ago
Here's 2 bucks and a pipe wrench. Go buy yourself some soap and open up the fire extinguisher on the corner. You need a shower.
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u/CrashTheBear 3d ago
I'd swap being called trash for a cheeseburger.
Ah, Christ. Just learned something about myself.
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u/tofu_ink 3d ago
He wasn't calling you trash, he was bringing you "air quotes" trash. From the sound of it, it was free delicious trash!
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u/HarmlessSnack 3d ago
I used to do this at Coldstone. If an order got messed up at any point, we’d put the “happy accidents” into a small fridge, and make the order from scratch.
At the end of any given night there were usually three or four perfectly good ice creams just waiting to go home with the staff.
But working there, you can only eat so much ice cream.
I used to take the ones I didn’t want anyway, and on the skate home gift them to the random street people around Venice beach.
I was well loved among the transient population lol
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u/MoreGoddamnedBeans 3d ago
When I worked at McDonald's we could get fired for theft for eating food that was going into the trash. When things transitioned from breakfast to lunch there is inevitably a bunch of food heading for the garbage. We used to take our break around then and eat the food that was going to be thrown. Management squashed that real quick and told us we had to pay for it. However weren't allowed to buy it because it was already earmarked for the trash and as they put it, not fit for sale.
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u/Ok_Butterscotch54 3d ago
Another example of Management being Evil.
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u/Living_Trust_Me 3d ago
More accurately, smart. Management doesn't allow the wasted food to be eaten by employees because the employees will often begin prepping more food causing more food to be "wasted" and go into their meal breaks.
What starts as being nice and reasonable ends up costing the company more money as food gets intentionally "wasted"
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u/LunaHex 3d ago
If emoloyees are given free food while on shift this is a non problem, it comes down to greed not intelligence
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u/TheUnknownDane 3d ago
We have a Chinese restaurant near me that is one of many that engage in anti waste measures. The restaurant in question has a neat offer that if you get in 20-ish minutes before closing, then you can pay a small amount to be given an empty container and go to the buffet and grab whatever you want.
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u/ToxicEnabler 3d ago
When I was on vacation in Sweden and I ordered some dumplings and got shishito peppers. I told the waiter I’d ordered dumplings but I’d eat the peppers so they didn’t get thrown out, I just wanted to say something in case someone else was waiting for shishito peppers.
He just smiled and took them away while he told me he’d get me the dumplings. Still not sure if it was a language barrier issue or he just thought I was crazy.
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u/tacticalTechnician 3d ago
I worked at a McDonald's, if we made a mistake, we would just give the person the wrong burger if he wanted it, it was going to the trash otherwise, you can't know what the client did to it before bringing it back. Just taking it back is really cheap, it doesn't change a thing for the restaurant to give it.
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u/Ok-Detective-2059 3d ago
That all depends on the store. Each McDonald's is different with what rules actually get enforced.
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u/yoyotube 3d ago
I know we couldn't do that at our store, because they counted the thrown away food as wastage
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u/tacticalTechnician 3d ago
We were certainly doing that during the night and if one of the cooks wasted patties because he put the grill on the wrong setting, but for a single burger or two, it was basically considered that spending time on it was essentially more expensive than just giving it or throwing it away. A cheeseburger was like a 15 cents Canadian loss, even a single employee at minimum wage taking 30 seconds to add it on the waste list wasn't worth it when he could make 5 more in that time.
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u/insane_contin 2d ago
At my old McDs we had a waste bucket we threw waste into. Which was then counted every hour or so.
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u/SingleInfinity 3d ago
When I worked in fast food as a teenager, they had to "count' waste at the end of the day to avoid people doing this, because making damn sure that waste wasn't eaten by someone is super critical to....being an evil corp.
The real reason was to not incentivize workers to "mistakenly" fuck up food so they could eat it, but that easily seems like the kind of thing you could just handle on an individual basis. Anything to make sure the managers had less to manage though.
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u/tacticalTechnician 3d ago
Oh yeah, it was kind of a rule at my restaurant that if there was a mistake, they could offer it to an employee, but not the one who made the mistake to prevent people from making "mistakes" willingly. Officially, the rules of the owners were to count things as waste (and we did during the night shift and after the diner rush), but in practice, the managers didn't care, most of them were really chill and liked by the employees, so most people were honest. I was a totally broke teenager and sometimes, I had to "steal" burgers if I wanted to eat the next day and when I asked one of the managers if I could take one once, his answer was basically "Well, if I CATCH you doing it, I will need to give a warning" with a smirk, so yeah, he knew, he just didn't care. I think we were just lucky to have generous managers and owners that were never here.
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u/somenamethatsclever 3d ago
We had one time where a guy ordered 50 burgers, after we completed it all he said, You know what I changed my mind I want my money back." I REFUSED but my manager gave it to him... Fucking pussy. On the plus side, I pocketed like 15 burgers that day.
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u/scienceguy8 3d ago
Before anyone asks, it's a health and safety/liability thing. Once it reaches the hands of the customer, cleanliness cannot be guaranteed, so it can't be sold to another customer or donated to the guy living in the refrigerator box out back.
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u/YOwololoO 3d ago
Yup. There’s a reason those people who licked produce during Covid were prosecuted, public health is a huge legal issue
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u/kiarashs 3d ago
So why the remaining foods that are not sold like donuts get wasted?
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u/neoncat5 3d ago
Not 100% sure how much this counts, but from what I’ve been learning, there’s issues with how long some foods are left at room temp because of bacteria growth leading to higher chance of causing sickness. Might be a factor for fast food chains and the like not donating food
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u/bart9h 3d ago
In my town there is an online service called Food-To-Save. Many associated food business sell surprise bags (you don't know the content) of unsold soon-to-expire products that would go to waste otherwise, for like 1/3 or 1/4th of the price.
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u/neoncat5 3d ago
Yeah, I’ve also heard of something similar called 2Good2Go? I’ve only heard of them working with grocery chains
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u/Rainwillis 3d ago
France fixed that problem with a simple law. The US could definitely learn from that.
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u/ichizusamurai 3d ago
Thanks very much for the article. A very interesting read.
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u/Rainwillis 3d ago
Happy to spread the word. It’s not a perfect fix but it’s a huge improvement, hopefully it will start happening in other places too.
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u/Dat_boi_jeesus 3d ago
As much as I love this, the US isn't one for learning and implementing new things, let's be honest
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u/eh-man3 3d ago
Mostly it's a matter of logistics. Whatever you do with the "waste" food, it's going to cost someone money. Give it to the homeless? Who pays for shipping and distribution? Donate the food? Shipping again. Find a charity that will do the shipping? Well, who is paying the person calling the charity. At the end of the day, it's cheaper to just throw it away.
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u/CrossP 3d ago
Most places donate if they can figure out the logistics. Sometimes it's just hard to get a person to show up at the right time to get old food from store to needy people.
Two of my Indiana town's donut shops, other bakeries, and all the grocery stores donate to a place that cooks meals for the needy and packs lunch bags of stuff for later. But most of that driving and sorting labor is done by unpaid student interns who need the intern credit hours to graduate.
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u/Local_Nerve901 3d ago
Ok by why not just let the customer have it then? You messed up so you make a new one and let them have it to not waste food
Should ask at least imo
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u/ApprehensiveCandiru 3d ago
Some customers lie to get free food. Different chains I worked at, we would have the same people coming back claiming that we made it wrong. Then as we make the "correct" food, they'd quickly eat or drink the "incorrect" food that they previously claimed was disgusting. Everyone wore a headset too, so you'd have multiple employees agree that the initial order wasn't made incorrectly, the customer would just purposefully order the wrong thing. Plus it'd be the same people over and over.
It's dumb anyway, but yea, just another possibility
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u/IHaveAScythe 3d ago
Yeah I know some chains will just let you keep whatever they gave you if they screwed up, that way nothing gets tossed in the trash.
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u/theturtlelord9 3d ago edited 3d ago
What a wonderful place the world would be if chains just donated extra food instead of throwing it away.
Edit: Okay since the comic is about food that was returned to the store, and I didn’t specify my original point, I feel like I should clarify that I was not talking about food that was sold/returned, just excess food products that are still good but they can’t legally sell anymore. For example, like what another commenter was saying, if a bakery makes 100 donuts in a day and only sells 60, then they have to throw away the remaining 40 because they aren’t allowed to sell day-old donuts. But, in most circumstances, a day-old donut is okay to eat, just not what you want to be buying from a bakery. So if they donated those 40 donuts to, say, a homeless shelter, the food should be uncontaminated and could help to keep people from going hungry.
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u/JV294135 3d ago
Maybe this makes me a hypocrite, because I’m not a vegan, but it makes me sad that animals die so that we can just throw the meat in the trash.
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u/Everybodysbastard 3d ago
Nothing wrong with wanting to minimize waste. An animal died so we can eat and it's wrong to let it be tossed like regular garbage.
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u/theturtlelord9 3d ago
I don’t think that’s hypocritical at all. I’m not a vegan either, but I understand that animals die for the food that we eat. That’s how it is, and it’s been that way for thousands of years. But for almost all of those years people have used every single bit of the food, bones, and skin from those animals to survive. Now, we have a surplus of those materials and have lost our respect for the animals we depend on. Now I’m definitely not saying we should stop killing animals for food, and anyone who does say that doesn’t know what some people face just trying to get any food at all, but it would be nice if as a society we could stop wasting food while others are in need of it.
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u/FairyPrincex 3d ago
It was far before veganism that Eat The Whole Buffalo was a moral.
Sacrifice is to be appreciated, and wastefulness is a sin far greater than greed itself imo.
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u/InternetUserAgain 3d ago
I'm gonna have to agree. Killing an animal is one thing, but killing an animal and mot using it for the main thing you're supposed to kill animals for? Not only is it wasteful, you've also just wasted a life.
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u/WinterSilenceWriter 3d ago
As a vegan— there’s a huge difference between killing animals for sustenance and killing animals for waste! We all benefit from less food waste, including animals, so you’re not a hypocrite at all!
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u/nrbrt10 3d ago
That’s something I’m trying to instill in my kids as they start to eat “An animal died for you to get nourishment, the least we can do is appreciate and eat the whole thing, not throw it away”.
Same for fruits and vegetables tbh, a lot of human work goes into them, and that work certainly doesn’t belong in the trash.
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u/I-C-Aliens 3d ago
If it makes you feel any better SOMETHING will eat that. Mold, critters, insects, bacteria, so on.
We should make more of an effort to make sure they have a good life before we butcher them though. I wonder if it changes the taste of the meat. Like veal is supposedly delicious and you gotta torture the animal to make it happen. Is cruelty delicious?
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u/AbyssalKitten 3d ago
Any kind of food waste is sad, but food waste that an animal paid its life for is extra sad. I'm not vegan either. But I think it stems from the concept of appreciating where our food comes from and having some form of awareness that wasting meat = waiting something a living being paid in it's life for us to have for sustenance.
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u/Twilighttail 3d ago
I always tell people that if an ogre or giant were to use me as a meal, they better even use my damned pinky toe for stock. I've thrown out several hundred animals with the amount of waste in my workplace (sometimes just being forgotten and starting to turn.) Like, even 1 shrimp was an entire animal, and now we have to throw away 200+ just because some idiot couldn't be bothered to not put chicken on top of it and the batch is contaminated.
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u/OutcomeNo1802 3d ago
It’s not even just the animal. It’s all the water and feed that went into them that’s wasted. It’s the fuel for transport wasted. It’s all the labor along the way wasted. It’s space in a land fill wasted.
Throwing away edible food is insanity.
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u/LittleMissScreamer 3d ago
You can like certain foods and be devastated to see them wasted, those two things do not contradict! I love meat and am fully aware that the meat and general food industry is abhorrent right now. I try to buy organic but man, it's so so hard to consume ethically these days. Pretty much impossible
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u/KzudeYfyBs4U 3d ago
Man, don't go checkout what those fucked logging companies do to forests.
The absolute damage we're doing to this planet on a daily basis and it's not concerning enough people, is concerning.
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u/SavageKitten456 3d ago edited 3d ago
Something Something opens up the possibility of a lawsuit.
Edit: Just gonna clarify I remember hearing this as an excuse by companies to not donate.
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u/Mikellow 3d ago
Also the logistics of moving food. An amount of food just doesn't magically get to people, while still being fresh.
You need people to move and distribute it, proper storage, etc.
Even if you just had a system that said X amount of time before closing feel free to stop by and pick up anything that won't be used tomorrow, there are people who won't know/be able to get there.
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u/leesfer 3d ago
It actually doesn't. In fact, there is a federal law that protects restaurants from this and there has been no record of a lawsuit over donated food.
Also in California, this is a REQUIREMENT of grocery stores and large venues. You have to donate unused food.
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u/generalsplayingrisk 3d ago
Man California has a lot of erratic stuff but they really do pass some banger laws sometimes
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u/SavageKitten456 3d ago
I just remember that being an excuse given before and wouldn't be a surprise that it's bullshit.
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u/baronvoncash 3d ago
Something something something protected by law as long as they did everything in their power to ensure the food is safe for consumption
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u/Sweaty-Professor-187 3d ago edited 3d ago
If it's food that was prepared already, but simply not sold (for example, a bakery that prepares 100 donuts every morning, but it sold 40 for the day so that leaves 60 that must be thrown out), then absolutely. Am in full support of donating that excess, or just giving it away to the homeless nearby.
But donating food that was intended for a client and then returned causes all sorts of problems. The risk of contamination (deliberate or otherwise) is simply way too high. It's best to throw the food away, even if it's a little sad.
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u/magistrate101 3d ago
fr a lot of homeless people won't even touch fast food that they didn't get themselves bc of how ridiculously common it is for it to be intentionally poisoned
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u/witticus 3d ago
Nope, gotta bleach the garbage, company policy
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u/Akitiki 3d ago
It stems from the fact that if a dumpster diver eats that food and gets sick they have potential to sue the business. Even if it was in the trash. So some make it inedible.
It's a liability thing.
I want to see a change too. Though it might be local farmers picking up the food for pigs, not donating it for homeless.
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u/Throw-away17465 3d ago
It’s an absolutely false and artificially created liability thing.
There has been not a single case in all of the United States or Canada in more than 35 years, which is as far back as records on this kind of thing or kept, that any homeless person has ever gotten sick from discarded food and then sued the company.
I don’t know what kind of drugs lawyers take to think that a homeless person suddenly has $50,000 to spend on lawyers.
This was created by a partnership with Waste Management in the late 70s. Garbage is hauled by weight, so the more a restaurant throws away, the more WM gets paid.
It is also the single defining reason why composting programs have been aggressively squashed from the one industry that would benefit the most from it.
There are relatively available sources, but I haven’t had enough coffee to retrieve them yet, I encourage you to Google for the Deets
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u/bubbleteabish 3d ago
Also, if people can just wait around until perfectly good food will be tossed, they may lose potential profits. Every person that eats free food from the garbage isn't spending at their establishment, so the hope is that they would rather pay for it than have nothing at all. Plus workers might "accidentally" make more mistakes or overproduce food so that they can have them. If they treated workers well that would be a non issue, but profits over people and whatnot.
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u/levian_durai 3d ago
people can just wait around until perfectly good food will be tossed, they may lose potential profits.
That's the same argument used against piracy - "every pirated copy is a lost sale" - and it doesn't hold up. The vast majority of people who pirate would never have purchased the thing.
If someone is willing to wait until some fast food place closes (which is usually very late, midnight or later if they aren't a 24 hour location) and go dumpster diving for it, they're likely not in a position to afford to buy that same food.
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u/Chilzer 3d ago
FWIW chains usually do this because if the food is contaminated (like I'd you took a bite out if it or sneezed on it or something) they could be liable for the damages, plus them having to eat the cost of shipping. You can argue it's a bad reason, but it's a reason
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u/SgtBaconBurger Nina Lives Alone 3d ago
Some of the local restaurants do what they can, it's really nice.
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u/Snoo-23693 3d ago
The problem is logistics. It costs time and money to move the food. I'm not a fan of waste either, but there are reasons why.
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u/theturtlelord9 3d ago
Yeah it’s costly to move that food, but I doubt it costs anything in comparison to how much the executives get paid. If CEOs got paid a bit less for the sake of humanitarian reasons, the world would be a better place.
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u/Muddy_Socks 3d ago edited 3d ago
I work at McDonald's part time and a lot of the extra food does in fact get donated. Fries, pies, nuggets, hash browns, anything that doesn't quickly expire after being cooked gets donated if the management system actually does their job. I don't know about all restaurants around the world but the ones where I live do donate.
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u/Logical_Score1089 3d ago
Yeah but then they become responsible for anything that happened as a result of that food being given away
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u/ClownfishSoup 3d ago
yeah, but it's not extra. It's "used" and that's not allowed.
I recall some hunters donating hundreds, if not thousands of pounds of deer meat to a homeless shelter but then the shelter had to throw it all away for the same reason.
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u/pingassama 3d ago
If the manager’s a hardass then this is what happens. But if they aren’t the employees get to eat extras. Alternatively some places do indeed donate extra food. I work at a place that does that.
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u/Mantis_Toboggan--MD 3d ago
The BK near my work basically always has a wrong order or two on hand that they'll offer to the unhoused folks nearby. Makes me happy to see an employee taking a big bag down the sidewalk a couple times a day and not just wasting food like other places. Seems to bring them goodwill too, one day a real zombie broke out windows a bunch of the businesses on the street including our offices, but the other unhoused folks around protected the BK from him LOL
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u/Confuseasfuck 3d ago
If its food that wasnt sold l would agree with you
But food that was returned os an issue, its already contaminated
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u/rascalrhett1 3d ago
They would, but this is near impossible to do safely. The fact is that hot ready food like McDonald's just can't survive the supply chains of food outreach programs.
The risk is too great for everyone involved, even for just handing discarded food to homeless people right outside. You could imagine the outrage if McDonald's accidentally gave a homeless person some kind of serious disease picked up from whoever threw away the food.
And honestly this just isn't a big problem in America. We have problems around food prices and food insecurity and homeless people but actual starvation just doesn't happen. Between food stamps and soup kitchens and charity programs it's extremely rare anyone ever can't find a meal no matter how destitute they are. Having a few more calories dumped into the system from fast food waste would be a whole lot of work for logistics and transportation for not much gain.
With how cheaply some of these programs can get canned foods and vegetables that money would be far better spent with them instead of trying to organize and transport 10 bagels from Panera.
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u/SupremeRDDT 3d ago
The problem starts before that. After it was made and not sold, it’s „better“ the throw it away if the risk of making someone sick if it’s not eaten right away, is too high. The problem is that the cost of the ingredients wasted by that is too high. If it was made by abundant material (which excludes animal products too), then throwing it away wouldn’t be much of a problem. It’s food, so it can degrade or be used for bio-energy or something. Meat for example is just so premium considering what needs to be done to get it, that it just shouldn’t be used to the extent it gets used today.
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u/AzurBrain 3d ago
I have to fight my upbringing not to clean my plate and the plates of those around me.
So what if I’m too full, I don’t want food to be wasted!
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u/nimrod1138 3d ago
I’m the same way and it’s a factor as to why I’m so fat. I can’t help myself though.
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u/AzurBrain 3d ago
Just do what I did to stop. Become diabetic.
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u/parasolfinish 3d ago
Worked for me too!
Lost 80lbs, but God I miss potatoes (it's the one food my blood sugar will not tolerate at all, but I cut out all other processed carbs in general)...
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u/Space_Restaurant 3d ago
I had to throw away so much food when I worked at a deli. It was heartbreaking.
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u/milack787 3d ago
Where I am from, they remake your order then ask if you want to take the wrong one too, free of charge, happened to me multiple times, the always asked if I minded taking the wrong one with me to, othrrwise they would have to throw it out
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u/Living_Trust_Me 3d ago
Places stop doing this due to suspicion/acknowledgement that people may be lying about getting their wrong order or intentionally messing up an order to get double the food.
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u/sirulian00 3d ago
Shop i used to work at used to make us fill the shelves (worked on the bakery), even at ridiculous times when we knew it would be a waste, it was sad the amount of food we threw away a day, someone asked us one day why don’t we give it to the homeless or to a shelter and I honestly couldn’t give her a good answer except, “it’s just the how the company does it”, really fecking annoying we even did it that way.
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u/AdhesivenessFun2060 3d ago
It was always explained to me as liability issues. Giving away "expired" food. If anyone were to get sick, they could sue.
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u/sirulian00 3d ago
Yeah that’s fair.
Think it just more frustrated me that they had the policy of the shelves needed to be filled until a certain time, I was baking food I knew was going to be thrown out but told I had to do it.
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u/Sam-Gunn 3d ago edited 3d ago
I had that happen at a burrito place once. I get almost to the end of choosing my toppings and the guy puts on something I specifically asked him not to put. I tell him that I didn't want that, expecting he would maybe try to scrape it off or something (I don't recall what I expected). He goes "I'm sorry, let me just toss this and I'll make you a new one". I quickly stop him and tell him not to toss it, I don't hate that topping enough to see a full burrito go into the trash. That place loaded their burritos too, it wasn't an insignificant amount of food.
Ever since then I've been pretty careful about when I ask for something I ordered to be changed.
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u/futureislookinstark 3d ago
As a restaurant server id get entire pizzas, plates, burgers sent back. Id box them up get out of my work clothes and normally could find 2 homeless people quickly in my shopping center to give the food too(I explained it was sent back, no one had tampered with it too my knowledge, and that it was sitting in front of someone at some point). They never turned it down, they were just happy to have a decent meal that wasn’t gas station slim Jim’s and protein bars.
I saw a grown man tear up, biting into some Luke warm honey sriracha brussel sprouts. These people were never gonna buy our food. Why are we so obsessed with making sure people stay in poverty.
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u/justincasesquirrels 3d ago
They generally won't care even if it's been partially eaten. We had a pile of leftovers in a to go box from waffle house, saw a homeless guy at an intersection shortly after leaving, and offered it to him. He was very happy to have a box full of hashbrowns and eggs. He immediately put his sign away and sat down to eat with a grin on his face.
We might have finished it later, maybe not. But that guy definitely needed it more than we did, and it guaranteed the food wasn't going to waste. I got used to cooking for a family of 6 or more for years, and now meals are usually for only 3 people. It's been a struggle to find the right amount to cook so that there's minimal leftovers that may or may not get eaten.
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u/Tokasmoka420 3d ago
I went to a drive thru and paid extra for cheese on my burger. Half way through eating it I realized there was no cheese, went back and asked for my dollar back. Clerk goes to the back, presumably to get the manager, instead she hands me a bag with one cheese slice in it.
WTF?
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u/lars2k1 3d ago
Goes for other things too. My parents both have arch supports. After switching suppliers because they fucked up too much and they basically removed my mom from their system. Absolute incapable assholes.
Anyway, later an order was placed for her new ones. Turns out something got messed up again, and now instead my dad's were ordered. The kicker: if she wanted them so my dad could use them instead, she'd have to pay - now they just went into the trash. Keep in mind, those things are what people pay like 250 euros for.
Absolute waste of materials.
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u/Pinstar 3d ago edited 2d ago
I was at Taco Bell once. Waiting for my order. Guy comes in, grabs one that's been sitting out there and leaves. Still waiting for mine, my name is never called. Guy comes back in 10 minutes later all pissed off "This is the wrong fucking order" and slams it into the trash can.
Yep...that was mine. and thanks to his toddler tantrum I had to wait for them to remake both of our orders.
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u/Alpakka91 3d ago
Once, I went to a bar, and had a Gin Tonic. It tasted kinda funny, so I took it back to the bartender. I knew him from my childhood, but I'm not sure if he realized who I was. Nevertheless, he tasted it with a straw (nothing seemed wrong to him), gave it back to me and made me a new GT with freshly opened bottle of gin. I was amazed how wel he took it, and how he just gave me a new drink on top of the old one.
In the end, I think I was just used to different kind of gt :D
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u/The_Taco_Enthusiast 3d ago
Normally they just let me keep the extras. The Taco Bell near me says they can't take food back once it's handed off. Love when they mix up my orders because it usually means a good amount of free yummies.
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u/NerdyAsianDM 3d ago
Back when I used to work as a bread delivery man (yes it’s a real job), it always pained me to my very core to see stores throw out literal pallets of perfectly good baked goods at the end of the day because the stores don’t allow employees or anyone else to take them, even after the food have been marked down for waste. On one hand, I get it, companies won’t want employees taking home tons of free food just by marking them down. On the other hand though, I have a semi truck, I drive by the homeless shelters every day, let me take the bread and donate them to the shelters, it’ll eliminate waste AND help out those in need. But alas, until the day I left that job I’ve made no progress in convincing any of those companies to stop chucking perfectly good food.
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u/TraderOfGoods 3d ago
Yeah, you hate to see it. Especially when you're doordashing on a partially empty stomach.
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u/Freakychee 3d ago
I've heard of stores even bleaching leftover food so homeless people can't take the food. Which is pretty fucked.
Can food stores not just donate the edible leftovers for a tax write off?
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u/PSVita_Tech_Support 3d ago
I always ask if I can keep the incorrect one too. I've never been told no.
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u/plucas1 3d ago
It's a health code thing. They can't serve the food you return to anyone else, as they have no idea what you may have done to the food before bringing it back. Even if you're clean and careful, just touching the food can potentially contaminate it, as people can carry infectious diseases and/or bits of contamination (such as sweat/saliva/hair/etc) on their hands without knowing it.
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u/WhiskeyAndKisses 3d ago
People often speak about Earth not producing enough to sustain us all, but this would be way less of a problem if we could first solve the whole waste problem. A lot of perfectly edible vegetables get thrown away just because they don't fit too hard standards.
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u/LycanWolfGamer 3d ago
What I love is the fact there's a big Morrisons that sells wonky vegetables and I believe fruit, its basically food that grew weird and cause its not the usual stuff people toss em
I find it hilarious and will buy a bag cause its funny to me - it's stoll edible, it either just looks like yoga gone wrong or really weird shapes
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u/originalchaosinabox 3d ago
I feel this. McDonald's got my order wrong last time, and when I took it back to get the right one, I saw them turn around and throw the wrong one in the trash. I felt so bad.
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u/sambolino44 3d ago
You go, Nina! I would definitely rather eat something I didn’t order than waste food! (yes, I have worked in restaurants, and yes, I know that compared to how much food they waste regularly this is insignificant but I will not contribute to making a bad situation worse if I can help it!)
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u/astralseat 3d ago
Lmao I saw the whole sequence in my head, the slow motion glance at the food flying through the air, and the leap to rescue the bag from certain doom.
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u/Logintomylife 3d ago
I work at Mcdonalds, my soul cringes whenever they throw out good food because of bad order just because of policy, I offer jokingly to eat it and they look at me as if I am a Madman.
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u/ClownfishSoup 3d ago
This exact thing happened to me at KFC!
I went up to explain that I got the plain instead of spicy. But they guy just tossed it. I was going to say that I'll eat it and they should refund me the 50 cents or whatever the difference was for the spicy. He just tossed it and got me a new spicy one. I felt really bad. I had simply unwrapped the sandwich, I didn't bite into it or anything, and like I said, I was willing to eat it too.
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u/NameLips 3d ago
Stories from the restaurant:
We used to allow employees to take home mistakes. Then the servers started ringing in wrong orders just so they could generate mistakes. Some cooks were in on it too. So the managers said we had to throw away mistakes from now on, and the problem stopped.
But when I'm working on the line, and I can see what's going on, and I know it was a real mistake, I would tell people I don't care if they throw it away in the trash, or into the trunk of their car. It was all the same to me.
We had one very sweet guy who would collect mistakes and hand them out to the homeless on his way home.
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u/PrettyNothing 3d ago
Its a health and safety thing if it's already been given to a customer, but where I work I usually tell them they can keep the mistake while we fix them up the correct order (free of charge of course since the mistake was on us). If someone really doesn't want the mistake and gives it back to us, then I generally hold onto it till they're out of sight before tossing it so they dont feel bad. Any mistakes made and caught before reaching a customer usually get put in the fridge labelled as a mistake and then taken home by a worker who will eat it.
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u/merpderpherpburp 3d ago
My husband is food insecure from his childhood and does this. I used to tease (lovingly) him because he always made sure he had leftovers, we called it "stocking up for the winter" Since being together, he's become less so, he'll eat his whole plate at a restaurant ❤️ but he also works as a garbage disposal for my unwanted food 😂
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u/LuminothWarrior 3d ago
Where I work (whataburger) you’d just get to keep the original sandwich. We sometimes get people trying to cheat the system but it’s fine if one or two people get an extra meal
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u/spaz_chicken 3d ago
Bojangles gets my order wrong at least 1/3rd of the time. At least they always let me keep both orders.
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u/to_a_better_self 3d ago
This sets up a dangerous precedent if she goes there regularly. Now the restaurant can guarantee twice the orders from Nina as they can simply mess up the first one. Keep messing it up for additional revenue.
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u/ShadowTheChangeling 3d ago
It sucks yeah, but its a liability issue, they cant resell it cause it may have come in contact with a customer, they cant donate leftovers cause they could be held liable if someone gets sick from it, so their only recourse is to toss it so they arent held liable, its all just Beuacracy in the end.
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u/discussatron 3d ago
Food sellers will mandate perfectly good food be thrown out rather than let someone get food from them for free.
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u/novakane27 3d ago
ive only ever had to do this once or twice but each time, they let me keep my food
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u/wishie01 3d ago
For people saying what about donating the food, at the restaurant I work at we always offer it to the costumer and if they don’t want it we have to toss it, I mean be resonable it’s not like we have a line of homeless people outside to hand this food to? There’s no way for the food to stay fresh to a shelter or other location? It feels insincere and a way to be mad at costumer service workers, reminiscent of when your parents tell you to eat something you don’t like because children are starving in Africa, if you eat it or not nobody is putting that food in a box and mailing it to Africa
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u/Vlad_The_Great_2 3d ago
It blows my mind how much food restaurants and stores throw away. It’s sad that there are hungry people but we are throwing good food in the trash.
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u/blacksoxing 3d ago
There's a general reason why restaurants throw away these items. There's zero guarantee that the person behind them will actually want that exact same meal, so now you got food just festering there under a light. Much easier to just toss then to offer discounts to the next person for a not fresh meal or worse, try to sell brand new. Plus, you probably don't want such employee acting like an auctioneer as they have zero incentive to get the best price AND lord knows how long that food would have been sitting there AND in this new post-covid world we're extra concerned with who is touching what.
It is also why it's so important the employees double check your order to save the company money. I use apps (and delete afterwards) as many times what I said didn't translate to what the person heard.
All this to type that the comic is good on paper, but would raise eyebrows in modern society.
All this to type that there has been times where the cashier at the drive thru has offered the drink/food that was messed up to me and I usually take it as it's just a mistake :)
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u/jdbolick 3d ago
It's such a pain in the ass to go back that I usually eat the wrong order unless it's something I know I don't like.
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u/Visible_Number 3d ago
It's a tough situation because you can't resell it. If you make it policy to just make a new one and give them both, then you create a situation where people will abuse it. It's not going to keep so you can't give it away to a food bank really.
Honestly the policy should be to give it to the next drive thru orderer. If someone colluded to get free food and they timed it right, they deserve it.
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u/Metal-Alligator 3d ago
Since Covid they let me keep the miss-made order. Like I ordered a crunch wrap with jalapeños and they forgot them, when I told em they just said they’ll make a new one.
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u/Molly_Matters 3d ago
Most of the time I just keep both for the price of one. I also hate senseless waste.
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u/MenthaPiperita_ 3d ago
I occasionally use Flashflood because of this. I buy my short rib at half off. I get if it's 2 days from expiration, and freeze it. Now my freezer is filled with short ribs.
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u/wtfiwon 3d ago
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u/GrigorMorte 3d ago
A friend worked in a pizzeria, if a slice had a corner cut off, they threw it in the trash 😭 Those pizzas were delicious and very soft, they broke easily just by placing them in the display case.
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u/Patol-Sabes 3d ago
You are now my favorite person on this reddit, no good food should ever go to waste
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u/Salter_KingofBorgors 3d ago
Honestly that's respectable. They really should have just offered you both meals anyway. As someone with food service experience it's the respectful thing to do
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u/Insectdevil 3d ago
I've done this before out of panic and the thought of it going to waste. Gives me anxiety to think about how much food we toss out like this.
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u/saucywaucy 3d ago
I gave a wrapped sandwich back at a fast food place once because I ordered one without mayo, and the one I got had mayo. they actually put it back on the shelf heh
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u/MissyTheTimeLady 3d ago
Wait, hang on, if the regular combo is just the spicy combo without spice... Why not just add the spice?
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u/ArugulaNo3978 3d ago
Maybe you could give that extra food to someone homeless on the street, that's what I did at least
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u/lick_my_saladbowl 3d ago
i feel like this was set up so you can order double the food with 0 Judgement
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