Nancy Young wrote:
> "Pennyaline" > wrote
>> They also spotted people, like mothers who give their children treats
>> during shopping trips or shoppers who (can somebody explain this one?) eat
>> while they shop, throwing their garbage into the barrel before leaving the
>> store.
>
> People see a bin and they just throw anything in it. You should
> see the shopping bag recycling bin at the store. Grrr. I'm sure
> because of that the whole thing just hits the garbage.

Oh, I know. But food donation barrels are clearly marked, and it's
particularly sardonic when they are filled with food wrappers and food
waste.


> I don't care if people eat food in the store so long as they pay
> for it. I know what it's like when you have to eat something
> *right now* or it gets ugly.

I hate following along behind shoppers who are eating and/or looking for
something/something else to eat immediately as they browse the aisles.
It's really irritating when it's happening in stores with restaurants or
food courts, where shoppers are supposed to sit down, order up some nosh
and eat leisurely rather than wander about grazing on whatever wherever
(with cheese and olive displays for antipasti).

It isn't impulse buying, either. It's using the supermarket as an
automat. I imagine these people at the meat counter, ordering up the cut
they want, the weight they want, trimmed just they way they want it,
then telling the butcher "medium rare, please."

But more irritating and aggravating than all of them is the mother who
grabs a jumbo bag of cookies off the shelf and throws it into the little
car on the front of the shopping cart to appease her bored and wriggling
horde. What will happen next is inevitable, and I hope I'll be well away
from the store by the time it strikes.



> The woman who polished of a container of soup and put it
> back on the shelf empty, that I had a problem with. It almost
> wound up in her cart when she wasn't looking.

There are plastic cups and spoons from the little deli and meat counter
samples on every shelf and on the magazine display racks at the check
out stands. Empty chocolate and candy wrappers are everywhere -- same
with cookie bags and wrappers, sometimes pieces of or whole cookies are
there too. I once pulled an empty milk container from the dairy case.
I've watched people retrieve doughnuts and rolls from the self-serve
bakery displays and stand there eating them while they snagged more for
a bag or box. Oh yeah, I've encountered partially eaten doughnuts laying
marooned on distant shelves. Still, the situation isn't hopeless.
Remember that they do through some of it away... into the donation bins!