Expired Freezer, Immigrant Hustle: A Grocery Store Story

They hired me, and they knew I didn't speak English, but I didn't have to really speak English because I wasn't really interacting with customers.

All I was doing is just make sure the shelves are full, the truck's getting unloaded, make sure everything goes in the freezer, and all that good stuff.

So it was 40 hours a week.

I was not allowed to work overtime.

So I get there and my first week there, they had this freezer and it probably was about maybe a little bit larger than this room, I would say, that you have here.

And half of it was just boxes and boxes and boxes of frozen food.

So I asked Irene, I'm like, hey, what's up with all this stuff? Because I'm looking at the dates, all of this has expired, and it's taken up so much room.

Can we just, what do we do with this? Like, do we throw it away? I'm just asking.

I'm like, I'm not a store manager, but all I'm doing is just common sense.

Like, this...

This stuff in there has been expired six months to a year.

We just need to get rid of it so we have a nice freezer so it's easy to maneuver.

Because I told her, I said, the truck comes in with the stuff they order, and it's the same stuff that's expired, and then we'll put that on top of the other, and it just, to me, didn't make any sense.

Logistically inefficient.

Yeah, and again, it didn't make sense to me, and maybe it wasn't even my place, but I felt like it was my place to bring it up.

So she's got with a store manager, and she basically said, hey, listen, can you clean this up? And I'm like, well, yeah, I can clean this up, of course, but how do you want me to clean this up? Do you want me to throw this away? Because this is a frozen food.

This food is fine.

Even though it says six months to a year expired, I hate to throw away food.