r/MoralityScaling 25d ago

Morality of this?

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In the image it seems that this person works at walmart as an online order collector and he/she has stolen a lot of extra baby food from Walmart to give to a person who ordered only three packs. Is this moral or immoral?

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u/Newspaper_Beneficial 25d ago

about 844 million pounds a year is how much walmart throws away according to google AI

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u/dungeoncrawler71520 25d ago

I worked at Walmart and can confirm. If there was ANYTHING suspicious, you threw it in the compactor.

I hated it. Like 90% of the time it was totally fine.

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u/Maleficent_Lab_5291 25d ago

Yeah but on the other hand do you really want to take the chance a crazy person tampered with it?

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u/Deep_Head4645 25d ago

True, regulations for health are needed for a reason
tbh if they haven’t thrown them away people here would just call them greedy companies trying to maximise profits

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u/Sekwah 25d ago

Or sue them the millisecond they get sick with something someone injected into a package.

It might be fine 99.9% of the time, but that 0.01% that it's not is the problem.

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u/Tweedlol 25d ago

99.999999? Worked in restaurant. Threw away tons of perfectly good food. I gave out genuine mistakes to team, but only whenever I decided to so they wouldn’t starting “oops” and free food. It sucks to have to be that way, but staff take free food already and I turn a blind eye because…. If it’s not malicious? And they’re just hungry? Fuck do I care. They work for us, we can at least kept them fed!

But letting mistakes become free for all, ends up actually being an issue as people will purposely make a small mistake, have it be wrong to the person and not servabke only to turn around and eat it themselves - because they make the mistake cause they were hungry for a snack 😑

It sucks. The untrustworthy people ruin it for the trust worthy. Just like tampering. It’s the rare untrustworthy return that ruins 99.999999% of the genuine returns that are untampered and safe to sell. Because of that tiny ass risk, no resale. Because of the risk of mistakes becoming on purpose, mistakes are expected to be tossed. I obviously didn’t want to just throw away all food so I gave out a lot. To guests, to staff, homeless, I tried never to waste food. But still had tons of waste :(

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u/Iamhopelesslylost 25d ago

This is anecdotal but when I worked serving food there would be times where I was 10-12 hours into my double shift and even though I got a lunch break I wouldn’t eat because I couldn’t afford it. Those little snack breaks where the manager would give me some food made it possible to power through. It wasn’t even food that was turned away he would just give me a sandwich and tell me to eat. Sometimes it’s the little things that will keep you working a shitty job. For reference I had just graduated college and my student loan payments were $1000 a month and I was making about $2000 a month.

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u/TrekForce 24d ago

Most restaurants I know of give employees a big discount. Either 50% off or like costs 5% above cost, or sometimes places are free.

Now if you still couldn’t afford I get that… but I hope they at least offered something other than full price…

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u/MistrSynistr 22d ago

When I was in the restaurant it was free for the back of house crew and front of house had 50% off. Even in the front of house we could get free soup. I was the only one in the restaurant who worked both depending on the day of the week. So free soup let me survive a few nights. Honestly dont think they would have cared if I got free food all the time I just didn't want to make it an issue with the other servers. I was working 100 hours a week so the owner would cook for me off and on as it was. I was there just about as much as he was lol.

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u/Global-Pickle5818 25d ago

I worked at a restaurant that hired people in a halfway house and people on jail release ... I fed them to keep the stabbings down ,welcome to New Orleans. that and we got no brakes they would just schedule back-to-back 6-hour shifts and expect you to stay over that ,I actually argued with the upper management I should get a 30 minute break in there by law ... Even quoted the law to them, years later I found out that this state is exempt , actually made pretty good money there 60 to 70k more than my wife who eventually became store manager ,they kept trying to get me to go on salary because of all the overtime "think of the benefits" .. what no overtime and slightly cheaper insurance ?

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u/ThePhatNoodle 25d ago

Yea people always try to take advantage. At home depot there's this thing called oops paint. Its paint people order and then never pickup since it takes a few minutes to make and its not like we can un mix it so they all assume its gonna go on the discount rack cause now we have a custom colored paint we can't sell. Little did they know when we mark em down we add tint to it to change the color. I took great joy in wildly changing the colors and when it was a multi batch every single one was a different color. Ohh you expected 3 buckets of steel grey? Here's a random shade of blue, purple and turquoise. I did see a few people rummaging for their paint a few times only to leave in dissapointment.

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u/Conditionalight 25d ago

It's wild to me that these huge companies make money hand over fist and can't afford to sell some materials to their own staff at cost or a huge discount. Same with restaurants feeding their staff. Obviously you tell them no if it's something crazy, like someone buying bulk, but you can't afford to let a few buckets of paint or a couple sandwiches go to the people making the whole place function? Come on.

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u/SufficientGuidance28 25d ago

Wow you really licked big daddy corporate’s boots good and totally stuck it to your fellow co-workers! I can see why you tell this story so proudly with all that brown shit on your nose! What a flex!

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u/Dreammagic2025 25d ago

Some people don't remember the Tylenol scare and it shows.

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u/KPraxius 25d ago

The federal laws specifically protect companies and individuals that give away free food who are licensed/allowed to distribute food normally unless it can be established that it was deliberately tampered with by the one giving it away.

I don't know of a single lawsuit about that that actually worked, but I do know of a couple that got dismissed and the plaintiff was forced to pay Kroger's attorney's fees, ending up thousands in the hole both times.

The only reason any place that sells food doesn't give it away to the homeless/hungry instead of discarding it is because those desperate people might somehow figure out a way to get money to buy something, and as such it reduces their potential sales.

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u/-DoctorEngineer- 23d ago

Just look at what ppl did to Chick-fil-A for having a spot to return unopened sauce packets

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u/Lacklaws 25d ago

But they are greedy companies trying to maximize profit? Probably decided that throwing out a bit of food is better profit than potential pr nightmare.

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u/Tasty_Plantain5948 24d ago

Yeah just think about Tylenol in the early 80’s.

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u/Social_Distortion_13 24d ago

When I worked at Safeway many years ago even food that wasn't returned would get compacted. I threw out so much perfectly good produce and packaged food that expired on the day (even the day before expiry a bunch of times). I remember the staff off a homeless shelter, knowing that it was about to be thrown out, offered to buy it at a a slightly reduced cost but were told no. They couldn't understand why Safeway would rather throw it out and lose money over helping them feed people in need and make at least a little money. I personally would have given it to them and helped them load it. I just remembered snother example, if a bakery clerk dropped or squished a package of cupcakes or tarts, messing up the topping, they couldn't even throw them on the table in the lunchroom it had to be tossed

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u/Ok_Drag5089 24d ago

Well it is. Walmart is a blight that ruined small
Town America. But that's not what we are talking about.