Starbucks Fires Employee on Food Stamps for Eating a Sandwich from the Garbage

[kentauros]

74. This is for all of you that have never worked in the food industry or retail:

Almost all employers are just like that. It's a liability and likely dictated to them by their insurance company as well as the local health department.

Food is considered safe to eat only if it remains outside of the danger zone, i.e., 40F - 140F. If it's going into the dumpster, you're no longer able to control that temperature range, and you'd be liable if someone got sick from you giving it directly to them. The local health department could also shut your establishment down. The fact that you can't control that range, either, once you've sold it to them, doesn't seem to make it a violation of health laws or liability insurance.

Retail may sell food as well, but that's usually pre-packaged and not subject to the danger zone of temperature. However, if any product is damaged to the point where it can't be resold, it must be destroyed, and then thrown out (or done at the dumpster.)

For example, back in the mid-90s I worked at a Williams-Sonoma retail store doing stocking work. Sometimes a customer would return a package of wine glasses because one of them was chipped. Per their insurance policy, we had to destroy not only the damaged glass, but all of the glasses. It made no sense to me back then. Destroy the chipped one and give us workers the undamaged (and unsellable) pieces. But I guess they then wouldn't be able to write off the taxes for the package if we only destroyed part of it.