Supermarkets in trouble tonight?

[JagoPlasma]

will you be watching?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6676345.stm

tbh its not unexpected, i've seen it in many of my jobs from factory work to bar work. but it is enlightening.

i hope they do an investigation into why you cant get good sized jacket potatoes and apples from supermarkets either! had to go to the co-op yesterday after months of not being able to find a JP bigger than my fist!
(and yes i know why it is, if you pluck it out of the ground a month earlier, you can still sell it and get more growing a month earlier! )

[stealther]

As usual they will just say it’s an isolated case and it’s not representative and its one bad individual blah blah blah. When actually it is happening everywhere and the management know full well they just cover themselves by having formal training documents signed by employers and then verbally encouraging staff to break these procedures later.

I worked for Safeway and 2 different Sainsbury’s whilst a student and it happened in these stores as well.

[Knyght_byte]

dunno what all the fuss is about, people chuck away good food all the time....my grandad used to keep cheese for months.....he'd just cut away the green or dried part before he used it

tbh, you can usually tell if a piece of meat is in good nick or not......if you cant, well, buy it in packets that havnt been altered with a marker pen....

[Pat_C]

Originally Posted by Knyght_byte

dunno what all the fuss is about, people chuck away good food all the time....my grandad used to keep cheese for months.....he'd just cut away the green or dried part before he used it

But he presumably didn't then try and sell it to others as perfectly good cheese.

Unless he worked in a supermarket of course

[Ian J]

Hopefully some of the people that watched this program last night may recall that the BBC have recently been caught out with their trousers down so we have one proven dishonest organisation complaining about another

[dakara]

It is not only the Supermarkets that do this. Many smaller stores/corner shops do the same thing, particularly to old people, who don't really understand what is going on.
California has very strict laws in this respect, and the selling, or offering for sale, of out of date food can cost a store very dear.
We need similar customer protection laws in Britain.

[Miyazaki]

That's capitalism for you folks.

I don't know what else you would expect from a multi-billion £ industry.

They do anything to nudge up sales by 0.00001%. How do you think tesco got where it is today?

They have been putting farmers out of business for years, their power is such that they basically demand a price from a grower and if they decline, they go abroad to where it is cheaper.

The quality of even fresh meat at supermarkets is poor compared to a local farmers market or butchers, I can't fathom why anyone would buy meat from a supermarket.

How many of these programmes will it take before people start waking up?

[JagoPlasma]

the thing that worries me is people who go in expecting to buy their good, then expect them to be fresh and last for a few days at home. well if they are out of date at sale they are not going to last anywhere.

the fact they may be selling food where bacteria is already growing, then faking safety checks so people cant complain later is really disturbing.

how would you like it if you were food poisoned and later couldnt complain because they had rock solid tests that said there food was 100% looked after.

some of us are enlightened to these things by working in that kind of industry at one point or another

i worked at aerospace a few years ago, and have just got back from a holiday abroad, i strongly hope they didnt fake their test results when building their planes just to save time/money/being bored

fortunately most food places i've worked for have had a much better attitude towards food safety

oh and even if the bbc have been caught with their pants down, the evidence was clear against these stores so it doesnt make it any less important

[Ian J]

Originally Posted by JagoPlasma

oh and even if the bbc have been caught with their pants down, the evidence was clear against these stores so it doesnt make it any less important

The current BBC isn't like it used to be in the "old days" as they have dumbed down to tabloid level and rather than present a story as it is they now manipulate the editing to suit their agenda.

The agenda in this case was to produce a story damning the supermarkets and having devoted a lot of resource in terms of manpower they fully intended to screen a program that did what they set out to do.

Starting right at the beginning the female journalist returned from her interview with Sainsbury saying that she thought that she had interviewed well then went on to add that she wasn't overstruck with Sainsbury's interviewing technique as they didn't ask her anything about her background or experience.

Was it co-incidence that the two journalists managed to land themselves jobs where their supervisors were both rule benders or did they have to discard prior efforts as they couldn't find what they were looking for.

I'm not saying that the supermarkets don't sometimes cut corners but I wouldn't trust the BBC to provide a balanced viewpoint either.

[Alan_W]

I think it is absolutely disgraceful the way these huge corporations take some old piece of news, cut its edges off and then repackage it as new news, and expect us all to pay for it.

All the stations seem to do these days is send some fresh faced bint out of journalism school round to a place of work with a hidden camera and express mock shock horror at what goes on in the world.

Why not an expose on the state of British journalism today, and its strange sense of balanced reporting and lazy targetting.

[Bilbob]

Originally Posted by Ian J

Was it co-incidence that the two journalists managed to land themselves jobs where their supervisors were both rule benders or did they have to discard prior efforts as they couldn't find what they were looking for.

/devils advocate
You also cannot be sure that the places they worked for were not pretty representative of the companies concerned, in that most do this sort of practice to a greater or lesser degree.
I do agree with what you are saying, it is possible, but your comments could be seen as being as one sided as you accuse the BBC of being don't cha think?

I'm pretty sure that if the journo's HAD needed to interview at multiple sites to find the 'prize' then surely they would be remembered, and Tesco/Sainsburys would use this point to illustrate their defense of 'isolation'?

My own opinion on it, is that certainly, the way it was presented is that this is NOT isolated incidents. Each person was very clear about how the job should be done, and at the very least, the store manager should be aware of what was happening, and should have corrected it. If one store has to cheat to such a degree to be 'competitive' within the store chain, do you really believe that this would be a one off? If they were cheating and were well ahead, then surely someone would want to know how they were achieving such success?

[EricHitchmo]

I work for Waitrose. Let's just say that the bad practices shown on this programme don't happen at my store. Also, Waitrose works in co-operation with our suppliers. Essentially shop at Waitrose for quality. Nuff said.

More reasons to shop at Waitrose

[Pat_C]

Originally Posted by EricHitchmo

More reasons to shop at Waitrose

I actually prefer Waitrose, but they close two or three hours earlier than the others around my way, ruling them out for me during the week.

I don't know why you bunch of skivers can't do a full day's work like the other supermarkets

[Mep]

Originally Posted by EricHitchmo

I work for Waitrose. Let's just say that the bad practices shown on this programme don't happen at my store. Also, Waitrose works in co-operation with our suppliers. Essentially shop at Waitrose for quality. Nuff said.

More reasons to shop at Waitrose

I hate shopping, but actually Waitrose is quite pleasant....and you get a much better class of shopper there (like me)

[JagoPlasma]

i have to admit, waitrose is a more classy place, but bit too expensive and can never find what i want in their store.

having the unfortunate pleasure of working in mcdonalds in my early career, i can tell you that hitting targets is not kept to just the poorer stores.

I worked in the most popular one in our region and we still had to cut corners.

This included leaving food in the warmers until it was sold instead of chucking it if it hadnt been used within 30 mins.
not changing unused dressings every hour even if not used up
not opening a new bag of pickles/onions etc 3hr before closing as to not waste the rest of the bag, if you run out just leave it out.
People not washing their hands all day when they should wash them every 30 mins
People washing the floor then going straight back to serving food without washing their hands and not wearing protective equipment.
oh and the worst is people picking their nose/sneezing into their hands and touching their face and not washing their hands afterwards, then making more burgers


its all a sham and people unfortunately arent aware. pay peanuts get monkeys