A parable ...

[cosmicray]

Yesterday, I had an interesting experience with a local grocery store. I'm going to pass it along, but not identify the exact store brands. Let's say that all the stores involved are national brands, and (reasonably) well known. There are a total of 3 grocery stores in my nearby city, so all of them contribute to the story. We'll call them A, B and C,

I was in a store [B] shopping and looking for something my regular store [A] did not carry. Yes, they have it, and it's on sale for 70-cents a can this week. The price (across the street) at [C] is substantially higher. So I reached up to the top shelf and pulled down a can. But I noticed that there were two different label styles on different cans (same product, same manufacturer). The can I pulled down, printed on top "best by 2017". Pulled down the other label style can and it says "best by Dec 2013". There were multiples of both label styles. My first reaction was that one of the styles had been sitting on the store shelf for quite a long time (possibly since 2012).

Later in the day I'm across the street at [C] and mentioned this to one of the people stocking the shelves. They said be careful about what you assume here, as they sometimes get similar outdated product from their own warehouse.

If there is a moral to this story, it has to be always check product you are buying, as some of it may be well out of date, and the store stocking clerks do not always catch it.

[maggiethehousecat]

I do most of my shopping at a small natural/organic grocery store. One day I picked up a refrigerated bottle of fresh squeezed orange juice. I didn't check the use by date. Got home and started to pour some in a glass. I only got so far as to take the cap off and it fizzed at me like an orange soda that had been shaken. Checking the date I saw it had expired over a year earlier.

Since fresh squeezed organic orange juice is never cheap I hopped in the car and returned it. The store has a no questions ask return policy but I wanted to make sure it didn't get put back on the shelf for the next non-observant shopper. So when the clerk was just going to hand my money back I asked to see the manager. I showed him the date and he said the ink had just smeared. I said take off the cap, it's fizzy. He gave me that look senior citizens tend to get when people don't want to be bothered with them and walked away with the bottle.

Two weeks later that manager won a 60 million dollar lottery jackpot and never again showed up for work. A case of divine justice gone wrong.