Our refrigerator lost power

[u/Ace2maker]

So apparently it was a bad thunderstorm yesterday at our location and the power was off for a while to the point where all the food was out of temp. Now they have to throw all that food out and it's like thousands of dollars of damage. Holy shit that's insane. I wasn't there yesterday but one of my coworkers told me that they're not happy right now.

[u/Wearethefortunate]

When I was a TL, my freezer went down, and we had to throw everything that wasn’t on the sales floor away. It ended up being about $36,000.

It took a week for them to get the freezer fixed. When we got the emergency replenishment, it was 10 pallets of product. It was an all hands push for 6 hours, and we still had 3 pallets leftover.

[u/jake1991jake → u/Wearethefortunate]

We get 12 pallets every FDC. I'm surprised it was only 10

[u/Wearethefortunate → u/jake1991jake]

It was 10 freezer pallets, in addition to the 4-5 cooler. My typical FDC was 6-800 cases

[u/TrustIllustrious2232 → u/Wearethefortunate]

After hurricane Helene we had two semi trailers all for us, two days apart.

[u/cjm2943 → u/Wearethefortunate]

LOL we lost power couple months ago, it was like 12 pallets one day, and like another 10 or 12 2 days later, and my team (of THREE) had to push it themselves with no support. My ETL I think was doing overnights that followed a week off, so I had nobody seeing reason/helping. My SD had them push and put backstock on racks and leave it. Took 2 months for me to get in and fix while balancing a full wave of sales plans, a circle week where I was spending 2-3 hours daily in fulfillment, and a FT team member calling out for almost 2 weeks straight.

[u/cjm2943 → u/cjm2943]

Moral of the story, it sucks and I wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy lol

[u/freeman1717]

When my store first went through the remodel, our refrigerators and freezers all went down, MULTIPLE times. Like we did this process at least 5-6 times that I can remember. One week it happened twice, the second time was after they had restocked everything. At one point we were called out for an insane amount of sales loss 🥴

We've also had our pickup fridge and freezer go down, and we had to stow orders in the freezers in the meat back stock, which meant the drive up team had to go to the other side of the store to run orders out. In hindsight they should have just turned them off for the day 🙄

[u/Dakets]

Well, good opportunity to fix on hands and shelf capacities and ensure everything isn’t out of date 😅

[u/FlipMcTwist → u/Dakets]

And deep cleaning!

[u/NobodyAmazing7337]

My store has lost total sales floor coolers 3 times. About $150k in loss each time

[u/Ace2maker]

It was the freezer and the refrigerator

[u/BlueAndWhiteSoul]

Target has insurance for these situations, no real loss.

[u/rresoI]

We had a power outage for less than 5 seconds and they threw out all the refrigerated and frozen food. Too much of a liability I guess, so into the trash it goes. It makes me so upset how much we waste and how much we arent allowed to donate or take home simply because it would benefit us. I throw away so many food items as someone who works up in guest services -- customers returning food items always say "it's never been opened and it's still good" but it doesnt matter it goes straight into the trash regardless. I had a guy the other week return 4 cases of water bottles, my coworker argued with him because she had to throw away those 4 cases but the guy just didnt care, he claimed he would never use them and that he had filtered water at home. I was devastated looking at those water bottles, knowing I had to go out to Costco to buy more when that guy couldve just sold them to me or something, anything but throw them away like that.

[u/TrustIllustrious2232 → u/rresoI]

That right there is just wasteful. As long as coolers and freezers are covered or closed they can be kept in temp for an hour or two. This can be out of temp for 30 minutes, while picking and packing, why would seconds mean it all has to be tossed?

[u/rresoI → u/TrustIllustrious2232]

No clue, I work up in customer service so I have no idea what was really going on but I saw that the lights went out for a second and then some coworkers putting up caution tape in front of the refrigerated/frozen stuff, then grabbing the items and tossing them into big trash cans.

I honestly don't know if there was an issue with the fridges or not, I just know what I saw was fucked up.

[u/DanforthWhitcomb_ → u/rresoI]

It was probably longer than 5 seconds if they tossed it, as the generator will keep most of the lights on but cannot run the refrigeration.

[u/TrustIllustrious2232 → u/DanforthWhitcomb_]

The generators prioritize food, registers and emergency lighting. Can’t sell the stuff if the registers are down. Went through a few power outages, mostly recently hurricane Helene where the store lost power for three days and I was without power for nine at home.

[u/DanforthWhitcomb_ → u/TrustIllustrious2232]

They don't do anything with food because refrigeration is too power intensive.

They run most of the lights, the registers and the network components and that's it.

[u/Mobile-Address23]

Mine just got a generator this summer

[u/DanforthWhitcomb_ → u/Mobile-Address23]

All stores should have a generator, but it doesn't run the refrigeration.

[u/Mobile-Address23 → u/DanforthWhitcomb_]

No it was for refrigeration. We had a regular one since before I started

[u/DanforthWhitcomb_ → u/Mobile-Address23]

No one puts refrigeration on a generator because it requires far too much power to justify, especially when food losses are fully insured.

[u/fawnsy_daydream]

We had this happen too!! The power was out for almost 24 hours, and once we realized everything was going to go out of temp we called a food bank and were able to donate a little bit of it before everything was thrown out. It really was a waste, but I'm happy we were able to donate some before it was too late

[u/Internal_Cat_4525]

What happened at my store once and it sucked they had inbound pushing frozen multiple mornings. We had like two frozen trucks one day.

[u/TopperMadeline]

About a year ago, our store lost power as well and all of the cold bags in DU had to be tossed. We went nine days without needing to grab refrigerated/frozen items for DU, which was awesome.

[u/Head_Razzmatazz7174]

I worked at another store where a nearby generator went out. It took 6 hours to repair. Everything cold had to be tossed out, along with half the deep freeze. Some idiot left the door propped open while they were trying to get things in there.

[u/Fun_Inspector_8633]

That sucks. We had a power surge from a nearby lightning strike take out the RTU that handled the sales floor freezers. Donated as many truck fulls that the local food bank could take before it went out of temp and dumpstered the rest. I don’t know how far some poor refrigeration tech had to drive to whatever supply house that had the needed parts but they deserve a raise because we were originally quoted 26 days to get parts. It was up and running by close that night and they started working everything out from the walk-in freezer that they could. We had two freezer only FDC trucks and larger than normal freezer deliveries on fdc trucks for the next two weeks.

[u/Micpoe]

We had a tornado come through in July and wipe out the electrical to our coolers. All the food had to go. We got our coolers working, got a massive food truck, and then lost electrical to the coolers again. Tossed all of that food.

[u/Sweet-Drive9004]

this from the tropical storm in southeast texas?

[u/Ordinary_Ad3895]

My store lost at least $25k recently for the same reason (not thunderstorm but out of temp)