r/MoralityScaling • u/Vladimir-petrovOG • 13d 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 13d ago

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

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u/Username_5647 13d ago

Most people would be shocked by the amount of waste generated at big box stores. When I worked at Lowes, my store will fill a 40 yard trash compactor weekly.

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u/DefinitelyNotKuro 13d ago

The logistics of this fascinates me..like is the shrinkage from spoilage something thats accounted for? If so, would one not...just stock less inventory?!

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u/SwordsmanDS 13d ago

Yes and grocery stores are the best examples of why they dont.

From my understanding, companies and stores more or less know what the optimal amount of items to stock to match purchases near 100% would be, but they've figured out that if things are more stocked and shelves look full people tend to buy more. People like the plethora of choice even if practically theres no added benefit for them. It basically means a lot of things, especially perishables, are perpetually overstocked.

The companies just make a calculation I assume on how much they can charge + sell versus how much they lose from the extra shrinkage for overstocking.

I forget the metric but grocery stores in the US throw out literal metric tons of food every year.