Diesel

I think you are confusing telly types responsibilities with trading standards officials and store management's responsibilities. Much greater good may come of this since telly has encouraged the policing of this - it wouldnt have been much of a programme or case if they wrapped after the first dodgy prawn! Quite absurd really.

To be honest I always thought that a butcher shop owner would be a bit more tempted to stick something dodgy in his sausages/mince than a corporate supermarket - after all he would see the benefit in his balance sheet... Why DID that woman mince in an out of date steak - what was in it for her? Odd.

D

MJW

The only thing for it is we're all going to have to hunt, kill and prepare our own food. And forage for nuts and berries or something. It'll be like 'the Good Life' but with shotguns

Karl 227

Margo, is that you? BANG

Matteeboy

I've been trying to find out if anything actually happened.
Have Tesco or Sainsbury apologised or anything?

They just seemed to deny everything and ignore it all.

David Lock

Profit!

HQ put pressure on shop manager to keep sales figures up. In turn he puts the squeeze on meat department to keep sales figures high. Chucking meat out rather than selling it will be noticed in the figures.

Basically greedy b,astards. My local butcher wouldn't do it 'cos he cares.

falkster

But that is by exception is it not?? If all the inconsistencies are based on a rapid change in weather then we are more naive than they/you think we are!

falkster

You clearly dont understand the retail business do you? This is not how any large retailer works. Things like this happen when sub-standard junior managers try to make allowances for their own shortfalls. They dont want to overspend on waste so they 're-cycle'.

No store manager would, if aware, allow this to go on in their store. Retailers have independent teams (trading law teams) that carry out daily checks and have to complete a 'trading law envelope' which is retained for a length of time and local trading standards visit the store on regualr basis (without notice) and check procedures are inplace and are upto standard. They also have a full day once a year where they come to the store (arranged) and check all staff members legal training, pick (at random) certain weeks trading law envolope, they also do a full check of all hygiene standards, spot check staff members knowledge and from that you either get an action plan to work toward or action can be taken again you.

Any large company put the customer first but you cant back check every single process every single day.

David Lock

I'm certainly not up to speed on big store retail management - you are quite correct. But IIRC correctly the Tesco woman had been there for 7 years up to various tricks. The store manager said he was under pressure to keep sales figures up and someone said that they had notice of trading standards visits (although this seemed odd to me) so they had a big clean up before they came. Largely it was a matter of resources and there were simply not enough staff to cope. And staff cost money of course. I don't feel that senior managers are as altruistic as you say

falkster

Fair enough.

My last comment on the subject.

When you are under scrutiny its easy to blame anything and anyone rather than admit youre not good enough or that you've failed.

Every retailer has budgets (wages, waste, expenses, consumables, utilities etc). These are set as part of the 'Business plan' for the year. These are set using the run-rate of company/regions/stores and are set at a realistic level by people that are employed to do just that.

This business plan will give each store manager targets in each specific area and these targets must be hit. These targets are not difficult to hit (as long as the managers are doing what they need to do) and will allow the store to have the correct amount of staff to complete every task within the working day/week/month.

Sales is something you cant influence other than ensuring the stock is available and the staff members serve the customers as they should be. No regional manager will ever hold a store management team accountable for not hitting their sales as long as they are doing everything they can to achieve.

B9GLY

replying to some of the comments on large retail companys, i work in one and can say that things are not as cut and dry as people think, i know in my store that it is not simply a case of each dept hitting targets, its also the store! it is weekly targets that are deemed more important and if the store is failing on waste everyone will get ear ache to sort it, even if your dept is fine and underspent! There is alot of pressure coming from the powers above and corners are cut to solve this, not anywhere near as bad as whistleblower in my store but cut none the less.

all supermarkets pay poor wages for shopfloor staff and because of this they struggle to get decent workers, i would say only 25% of my collegues are good enough for the job!!! hence various issues as work does not get done properly and at an acceptable standard.

90% of store visits done are known about in advance and more collegues are brought in to sort out the store, hence all looks well.

most supermarkets are staffed by students at the weekend, most of which turn up drunk or severly hung over!

8yrs ago, my dept was taking approx 35k sales a week and we had 14 staff, now we are taking 70k+ per week and have the same amount of staff!!

all the big cheeses care about is making more and more money and they dont seem to mind is standards drop, they expect too much from people they are paying £6 per hour to!

hux309

I will say this, i have worked in a boning hall for over 12 years that supply tesco and others, i to a point control the dates on the products as i work on the scale that prints the necessary labels

They leave the factory present and correct and the reason for this? i get my **** royally chewed off if i don't plus i do take some pride as i know the end consumer eats this and i certainly wouldn't want the use by to be incorrect just to put peoples mind at rest

Don't forget it's the employer more than anything that is responsible for treating is staff like sh*t paying low wages understaffing etc all in the name of profit

I shop at m&s for the fresh stuff as i know from the taste of the food i am getting what i pay for meat wise i head for the local butchers, yolu can't beat a joint that's been hung on the bone proper beef is brown not red btw that's the preserving gasses in the packets doing that

falkster

To be honest mate I would be concerned about your company! I know, as you say, the total store gets a weekly target but the department managers/teams that achieve their targets wont have increased pressure if the total store doesnt achieve!!

I set the targets in my store (using my business plan) but if I see someone needs to spend more money one week due to levels of stock I will allow them to oversoend (aslong as its controlled). We then, as a team, will underspend that amount for the rest of that financial period.

Keeping in mind most supermarkets taking on average 1 million pounds per week will have a budget of 15-20 thousand pounds for waste (and you will see fruit and veg ten times worse on the market than we throw away) they have enough budget to control waste!!

You get enough life on a product to ensure the customer gets fresh and you dont waste it!! Common sense says if you have too much then you mark it down but dont leave it until the last minute!!!

Retail isnt rocket science!

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

I worked for ASDA for 6 years, 4 years as a night manager and the systems are ****, the only thing that is planned is the promo stock and even that never comes in correctly.

In the summer we would get 2 pallets of coke and 50 pallets of tuna.. WTF am I going to do with Tuna... ? It would be left to my judgement, I was the only manager there so what I decided was how it went...

Seriously, on many occasions I have had to put stock out that has defrosted as the store manager didnt want to know. A cage of frozen has a floor life of 20 minutes, it takes 40+ to do those ready meals along so... you do the maths and when the freezer back up holds two rows do you think the colleagues who are under time stress actually pull all the cages out each time they want a new one ??

You pay for what you get staff wise and the staff in supermarkets dont care !

RB5201

I am sure any of the big 4, ie tesco, sainsburys, asda or morrisions would love a 15-20k waste budget from a million turnover. These stores run at more like 9-11k. 1% waste is considered acceptable, 1.5 or 2% week in week out and serious questions would be asked of the store manager.