A big supermarket chain..
with the first letter of the name between S and U in the alphabet.. and a much younger Scythesmith working there as an underpaid and overworked supervisor. Not much changes in retail apart from me not working there any more! :)

Anyhoo, two little stories I remember.. ~~wavy lines of nostalgia~~

The first when I was a Saturday kid, on the checkouts. Having been brought up to be honest, and thinking it to be the best policy, when I found twenty quid on the floor one day I innocently handed it in.. Bearing in mind that was nearly two weeks wages for me at the time in the late Eighties. A week later I enquired if anyone had collected it, and if I would be getting it back for being honest, to be told it had 'gone into the staff fund' and that was that. I never did find any more cash after that but if I had you can bet I wouldn't have handed it in. I worked there for years after that incident and not once did we ever get anything from the 'staff fund'. Bollocks.

The second story is from a retail training day for said store, where supervisors polished up their management skills.
We were asked what we would do if, for example, there was a problem in the production of doughnuts in the bakery, and some metal shavings got into the mix and we knew about it before they went on sale.
Like most of my colleagues, I said that I would remove them from sale, check the bakery equipment over and make more doughnuts when it was safe to do so and contact another store for stock in the meantime.

Wrong answer.

Company policy at the time was to leave things as they were, put the knowingly contaminated food on sale and wait for complaints!

...Needless to say I'm always a bit curious to know how many food scares that involve recalls by the manufacturer were already expected by the company and they were also waiting for a complaint!

Cynical me?
(scythesmith is doing something boring on, Mon 11 Jul 2011, 12:24, 6 replies)

You probably did the right thing
When I was a 17 yo till money, we weren't allowed to have any money on us while working. I guess it was the same everywhere. We could also be searched at any time.

If you'd kept it and been found with it on you, you have probably have been accused if swiping it from the till and been sacked on the spot. Probably only worth the risk on your last day.
(lolwhites, Mon 11 Jul 2011, 15:16, closed)

absolutely :)
Yep, working on the tills you had to be prepared for searches but to be honest it was only usually done if a till was found to be short, and in those days they used to watch the short tills to see if there was a pattern in who had been on it previously before they pounced. Still, it's pretty shitty to tell a spotty and skint teenager that it had gone into a non existent fund.. Someone's back pocket, probably. :) cheers for my first reply btw! :)
(scythesmith is doing something boring on, Mon 11 Jul 2011, 17:10, closed)

If it makes you feel any better
Not all supermarkets are like this. I worked for one (a large chain actually) that would pull huge amounts of food from the shelf if there was even the slightest possibility of a problem. I've personally overseen multi-day investigations taken on because a single customer complained that a pot of yogurt tasted "a bit off". There were other things that I didn't like about the company, but I have to say that I'd never hesitate to eat anything they stocked or produced.
(herbivorous, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 4:59, closed)

I don't think you have to be shy about naming them
when you are being nice.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 9:29, closed)

Luckily they're not all the same..
and I'm sure things have changed now in today's more litigatious society! Glad to read that not all chains are such greedy buggers and there are more decent people in charge (mostly, I'm sure!) Thanks :)
(scythesmith is doing something boring on, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 12:07, closed)

I'm trying to remain all anonymous-like
Because I'm fairly certain folks that I know read this, and I'd like to have at least plausible deniability for some of my tales.
(herbivorous, Thu 14 Jul 2011, 19:55, closed)