Things Grocery Employees Wish You’d Never Find Out

5. If you give the cashier anything to put back that’s frozen, it is 100% going in the trash.

In a very rare circumstance, someone is available to run it back to the freezers so it doesn’t melt, but otherwise it just goes into our claims bin behind customer service. It sits there until someone empties the bin in a few hours and it goes to the back of the store where someone else marks it as unsellable and throws it away.

If you give us fresh produce, popsicles, frozen pizzas, ice cream, anything that we can’t just set back on the shelf for whatever reason, it WILL be wasted.

6. I used to work in a produce section of a grocery store back in the day. So much of the food gets thrown out as soon as it’s no longer aesthetically in its prime.

Freshness vs. appearance can be tough. Rotten food is usually ugly, but ugly food isn’t necessarily rotten. I’ll pass on the strawberries that have mold in the bottom, but a wonky looking sweet potato can still make some good fries.