crimes against grocery

[Pickles]

Okeeee...have no idea what that means, either. *hangs head in shame*

[cakes]

Robert Heinlein is one of the most recognized and prolific science fiction authors. Grok is a concept from his novel Stranger in a Strange Land. Grok cannot be defined, you have to read the book.

If you are one of the many that turn their noses up at sci/fi, I suggest reading Heinlein. I swear that my mother, to this day, has never read any sci/fi and she reads almost anything. She is proud of it?

Cakes

[Andrew Fenton]

Robert Heinlein is one of the most recognized and prolific science fiction authors. Grok is a concept from his novel Stranger in a Strange Land.  Grok cannot be defined, you have to read the book.

But in the real world, people use "grok" to mean "understand" or "get".

Edited July 18, 2004 by Andrew Fenton (log)

[andiesenji]

I remember reading Stranger In A Strange Land when it was first published. I have probably read it (and Glory Road my other favorite Heinlein) several times since then.

Did you know that Heinlein sold the films rights many years ago? I have often wondered why it was never made into a movie.

Do you Grok it? and Who is John Gault? (Atlas Shrugged) were two popular questions among the kids that hung out with my kids in the late 60s, early 70s.

Back OT, we had a little flurry of excitement in a local market yesterday. Someone thought a person had tampered with some of the cereal, because of holes punched in some of the boxes.

Mystery solved when someone noticed that a pallet standing on edge, against which a pallet full of cases of cereal had been pushed, had several protruding nails, long enough to punch through the cardboard box and the cereal boxes inside. They found the box with the holes.

The same store also had a problem earlier in the week with a batch of produce bags. The seals at the bottom were not good and if one dropped something heavy enough, i.e. apple, pear, onion, potato, bunch of grape, in the top, it would fall out the bottom. It got a little hazaradous for a while, there were many pieces of fruit and veg on the floor.

Believe it or not, it took half a day for them to understand that the customer complaints actually had a basis in fact.

My neighbor had to take several unused bags up to the manager and demonstrate the problem because she couldn't get the produce manager to pay any attention to her complaint. Apparently he thought people were throwing the stuff on the floor on purpose.........

Maybe they need a new produce manager..........

Edited July 18, 2004 by andiesenji (log)

[Mabelline]

That reminds me of an occurance at a Winn-Dixie. I asked for doublebagged paper for a whole pile of glass jarred stuff and apparently the bagger thought I did not need that. She bagged about half a dozen different glass jars in plastic, at which the bag broke, the monkey got choked, and they all went to heaven in a little row boat. Sorry. The bag slid open and in slow motion, nearly, and 4 jars burst, while 2 just rolled toward the door. My Checker, a Menopause type of don't mess with me sort, landed a very decent bitchslap to this girl, sighed at me, and got on the intercom for cleanup and the manager.It was an interesting morning.

[gingerly]

Back OT, we had a little flurry of excitement in a local market yesterday.  Someone thought a person had tampered with some of the cereal, because of holes punched in some of the boxes.

cereal skimmer at work?!the other day the husband declared that there was only one package of biscuits instead of two, in a brand new box of his favoured high fibre cereal.my suspicions immediately rounded on the coffee pilferer(upthread) 'them that pinched it done im out of is brekker!'flashes red before my eyes .then he takes the steam out by insisting that the box was properly sealed.soo a bit of sleuthing later i concluded that the single package weighed significantly more than the average and must have confused the packaging robot.!things were smoothly resolved with the obliging customer services.all's well!

[fifi]

at which the bag broke, the monkey got choked, and they all went to heaven in a little row boat. Sorry.

My eGulley laugh for the day.

Yesterday, at my H.E.B., I was winding my way through the produce section. (They make it pretty labyrinthine on purpose.) As I got to the end where the onions and potatoes are, there are no plastic bags on the spindle thingies. I had to make my way back around to the beginning to find some. I pointed this out to a "produce person", who looked back at me blankly. Oh well. I didn't really need those mushrooms anyway.

[Pickles]

Right! I hate when there are no bags put where I need them. I am not into bundling oranges in my flipped-up skirt and waddling to the check-out.

[Mabelline]

:laugh:Bet they'd refill the bags, then!

[Pickles]

I get a lotta funny looks when I need more than two cantalopes.....

[dumplin]

Pickles, the sight of you schlepping to the checkout with a skirt full of oranges and two cantalopes is too much.

Yesterday, DH and I were at Trader Joes. We decided to get pizza dough and mozzarella to make a pizza this week. DH was putting the plastic container of mozzarella in liquid in the cart. I was over looking at another shelf, and I heard water. It kept going and going. I turned around and there was water all over the cart and the floor. The bottom of the mozzarelle container had broken out. There wasn't a TJ person around, so we went up front and told them what happened. They cleaned up the mess and asked DH if he was ok or covered in mozzarella liquid. He just got it on his hands. I was happy they were nice about it. Most stores act like you throw things in your cart at high rates of speed. Rrriigghtt....I want to have to get another container...

Oh yes, and we evil customers love throwing produce on the ground.

Maybelline...I would have loved to see a checker bitch slap a bagger. I'd have this dumb grin on my face for a week.

[Mabelline]

dumplin, it was indeed the start of an interesting day. A little while later, I was picking up some Long John Silver's for my crew, and the pickup in front of me in the drive-through had some kind of altercation where the girl at the window was pulling the hair of the woman in the driver's side of the pickup! That was about the time I figured I needed to NOT be in town that day!! The manager told me when I s-l-o-w-l-y went to the window that the driver of the pickup had bragged about some escapade with the other gal's husband.

[dumplin]

Maybelline...I'm betting the twilight zone theme was going off in your head.

I used to slam the drive thru door on the arm of a guy who would try to grab me when I would hand him his food. Dirty old man. My manager caught me at it one day...he just told me to let HIM take care of that particular customer from then on.

I think if I saw the person at the drive thru fighting with someone in a car, I'd leave. What we'll do for food.

[laurenmilan]

I have posted on this before but I'll repeat that I hate parents who get their kids cookies and brownies to keep their little mouths busy at the supermarket and then they don't PAY for the snacks. I also dislike adults taking fruit and eating it while shopping and doing likewise. There's no intention of paying for the food they are stealing. And that's what it is...stealing. I always hope they get a nice case of diarrhea.

I used to have thought like that when I lived and shopped in the New Brunswick, NJ area (central NJ residents, testify!). Good lord, I saw kids (both college kids and the actual juveniles) pulling that crap and a lot worse, nonstop. The grocery stores were so filthy and chaotic from the abuse and neglect that I'd often drive 20-30 minutes to get to a real store... got sick of being smacked with carts, walking around abandoned spills & glass, or listening to kids trying to kill each other....

Well now that I live in a somewhat quieter corner, my big pet peeve are the Egg Nazis. I've never once brought home a dozen eggs with a broken shell, aside from the time something landed on them in the trunk. What these folks are doing with the checking every flippin dozen eggs as if there's something inherently wrong with each one, is just taking it into the temperature "danger zone" repeatedly. Uh, that's a MUCH bigger risk to the eggs.

[Andrew Fenton]

The supermarket in the town where I went to college had a policy of "if it scans for more than the listed price, it's free". It was common knowledge among us college kids that almonds would scan for more, but for some reason, the supermarket folks never fixed the price.

So every time I went shopping, I picked up a package of free almonds. I ate a lot of almonds for a couple of years there...

[tommy]

is just taking it into the temperature "danger zone" repeatedly. Uh, that's a MUCH bigger risk to the eggs.

i recently read otherwise. i'll try to find where.

[CompassRose]

Well now that I live in a somewhat quieter corner, my big pet peeve are the Egg Nazis. I've never once brought home a dozen eggs with a broken shell, aside from the time something landed on them in the trunk. What these folks are doing with the checking every flippin dozen eggs as if there's something inherently wrong with each one, is just taking it into the temperature "danger zone" repeatedly. Uh, that's a MUCH bigger risk to the eggs.

You're lucky, then. Or I'm unlucky. Every single time I've not checked, I come home with a box in which at least two eggs are cracked on the bottom, and have had a slow leak which glues them to the box.

Which I discover when I try to pull the afflicted ovoid from its nest, the top breaks off and egg gets everywhere.

I'm an Egg Nazi and proud of it. Besides, in Europe they store eggs at room temperature I believe. If an egg is properly sealed in its eggy shell, it's not going to go bad in the minute it takes me to check its neighbours.

[Pickles]

What these folks are doing with the checking every flippin dozen eggs as if there's something inherently wrong with each one, is just taking it into the temperature "danger zone" repeatedly. Uh, that's a MUCH bigger risk to the eggs.

I wouldn't buy a car without checking under the hood, and I surely wouldn't plonk a dozen eggs in my cart without checking them, either. And I just don't peer in...I wiggle 'em around to make sure they're not cracked and leaking. That takes about 10 seconds. Not enough time to do any "damage" to the eggs at all. And by the way, Land O' Lakes eggs are usually eggcellent because they're packaged in heavy plastic carton. I would feel relatively confident not checking these eggs, but I do so anyway. Most Europeans would laugh at us for refrigerating eggs in the first place! Edited to add...when my Mom was little, she and my Nana or Granny would walk alongside the perimeters of local "free range" chicken farm (they knew the owners..) and take the eggs that were lying (laying? ) along side the fences where the chickens had wandered. Who KNOWS how long they'd been there! Mom's still here. Nana and Granny died in their late 80's.

Edited July 19, 2004 by Pickles (log)

[mrsadm]

Quite a few years ago I was on eastern Long Island, eating dinner with friends of a friend. The hostess (if you could call her that) bragged about how the vegetables we were eating, were stolen from a local farm stand. Now, my grandparents were farmers and I've worked on a farm and I can tell you how much hard backbreaking work it is and how unpredictable each year's crops can be. I have felt terrible for that farmer ever since this incident.

[Susan G]

The only one of these I see as acceptable is looking at eggs, but I don't think anyone would argue that this is a bad thing..

do you TOUCH THEM!!! DO YOU TOUCH THEM!!?????!

I've seen eggs laid in a nest, and all the blood, feathers and feces that accompany *really fresh* eggs. Trust me, the ones in the cartons have been washed thoroughly.

When I'm paying #3/dozen, I'm NOT buying eggs unseen and unchecked.

[Pan]

I've seen eggs laid in a nest, and all the blood, feathers and feces that accompany *really fresh* eggs.

I remember the eggs my hen and my neighbor's hens laid in rural Malaysia to be pretty clean. Feathers? Sure, but so what. I don't remember any blood or any appreciable amount of feces on the eggs. These were free-range chickens - really free-range, as in they roamed around the whole neighborhood if they wanted to.

[Mayhaw Man]

I've been eating yard eggs all of my life. In fact, I have some on the counter now (we go through them fast enough to skip the fridge and I have a cool wire egg basket from France that I like to use) and although I wasn't the one who collected them (my neighbor did) I go over there and get them all of the time whe they are not around and except for a few feathers and perhaps some straw and stuff, they are generally pretty clean. I guess if you left them there long enough they might get kind of yuck, but not with the daily picking that these layers recieve.

[cakewench]

My 2 cents on the topic drift:

In Germany, the grocery stores sell unwashed eggs. By law, evidently (though this is just according to what a couple of people have told me; feel free to thumb through some German law code to correct me ), though I forget exactly what the reason was.

To this date, I've run in to my share of poop, but no blood. yet!

Here in Amsterdam, the eggs appear to be rather poop-free. In case anyone was wondering.

[sparrowgrass]

I've seen eggs laid in a nest, and all the blood, feathers and feces that accompany *really fresh* eggs. Trust me, the ones in the cartons have been washed thoroughly.

When I'm paying #3/dozen, I'm NOT buying eggs unseen and unchecked.

Whoa, I wish I could get $3 a dozen for my eggs!! I'd be rich, or at least I would cover my feed costs.

If I don't collect the eggs promptly, or if it is rainy and muddy, my eggs can be dirty and I have to wash them. I don't think I have ever seen any blood, however.

[cakes]

Unwashed eggs keep longer. I read something a long time ago about storing eggs in a barrel with glycerin (I think) and they will keep for years. It was a survival thing. One point they made was to NOT wash the eggs.

Cakes