They Might Want to Film the Next Nat Geo Show at My Supermarket

Please believe me when I say that I have seen more wildlife in the supermarkets that I have either worked in or shopped at than most people might see on a nightly Nat Geo broadcast. There are various reasons why wildlife is more noticeable in today’s supermarket. The readers of this blog should understand that I certainly do not purposely seek out stores to shop at where animals roam freely nor do or did I only work for companies that have bizarre sanitation practices although the Uzzi family stores come pretty close to strange cleaning practices. Perhaps the purpose of this post is that by sharing some of my wildlife experiences with the readers of this blog than together we can hold our local supermarket to a higher level of cleanliness and sanitary conditions that will further ensure the safety of the food that we buy in our stores.

For some reason my recollection of going to the supermarket as s a child was not filled with images of animals and assorted wildlife lurking under counters or shelves to startle and scare me. Nor while I was growing up, some will possibly say that based on this blog I still haven’t,  do I recall running for cover like the crowds did in Hitchcock’s classic film the Birds. Those winged avengers in that film strafed and pecked at the human heads scurrying beneath their glide paths while back then I was just reaching for a box of Frosted Flakes on the shelf and never looked up to see if a bird was circling above me. Surly supermarkets back in the day had the odd attack of fruit flies in the produce department or the lone mouse running under a shelf or case that must have gotten lost on it’s way to Disneyland. No today there is certainly more wildlife in the average supermarket than there used to be perhaps you just have not notice them.

Why is this the case? First of all most supermarkets are not as dutiful about regularly using an exterminator in their stores. It is simply a matter of expense control. No I am not out of mind in stating this is a more common industry practice of treating when there are signs of infestation as opposed to treating to prevent pests. While no store manager wants to be accused of running a dirty or infested store the fact is that chain consolidations and the more prolific role that accountants play in today’s food operation lead to a reduction in store personal who’s duties included cleaning.  The reduction in a store cleaning efforts is another reason as to why more wildlife roam the aisles in our stores. In addition it contributes to more bacteria and assorted germs lurking just beneath the surface so to speak.

In addition another reason as to the rise in the wildlife population in today’s supermarkets is that they contain more “fresh” and prepared foods than they did back in the day. Years ago other than produce or meat items most food came in either a box, tray or container. Convenience was king and the microwave ruled the house.  In the homes of the day the Food Channel was in it’s infancy and chopping one’s own garlic was not a common household practice. The Foodie had not yet begun it’s rise in the food shopping chain. Consumers were beginning to demand more fresh and prepared foods for their shopping carts and these products were made in the supermarket itself thereby making them a more attractive target for our winged and multiple cell pests. While some industry pundits and observers will scoff at these notions of mine the practices in use today in the supermarket industry, both labor expense control as well as the reduction in store operational expenses, lend credence to the arguments presented in this post. It is one of those ugly hidden truths that no one likes to talk about.

Poor Marvin the mouse for he did not even know what he was getting into when he sensed those juicy bread crumbs laying in the tray of that Bread Slicer in the stores bakery department prep area. Every evening when the bakery department workers had gone home Marvin and his friends could play amongst the bakery machines, ovens and product ingredients. They could eat to their hearts content and then snooze through the day coming out the next evening to eat again.

The particular store that Marvin and his buddies lived in offered their bakery department customers a bread slicing service. The bakery department sales racks were filled with whole loafs of Pumpernickel, Rye and other varieties of fresh baked bread. So a customer would just have to hand the bread that they want to buy to the bakery department associate and they would load it into the Bread Slicer and within a minute the customer would be handed a package of sliced bread. To the neo-Foodie this is a great service and for the older customer it is the way that they want to buy their bread.

Well this bread slicing machine has a metal slide out tray at the base of it where the crumbs from the slicing operation fall into. If the bakery department staff was not diligent about cleaning that tray out every day then the crumbs would accumulate in significant quantities, enough to entice Marvin and friends to come get some carbs.

Now if you ever have an opportunity to see one of these commercial bread slicing machines you will immediately notice the rack of sharp cross cut blades about 2 feet long that does the slicing of the bread. When the machine is running it looks like it could mutilate a human limb into 1/2″ sections without a fuss. Well the point that I would like to make is that in order for Marvin and his friends to get at the tasty morsels of bread crumbs they have to run the gauntlet of these sharp blades. It is a tight space to squeeze through even if you are a mouse and the machine is not running at the time.

Since this was an Uzzi family store it meant that the department head as well as the store manager were constantly being squeezed to reduce their payroll expenditures to almost nothing. When line employees are berated constantly about their payroll hours by an Uzzi type manager they tend to do less on the things that are not noticeable like cleaning and focus more on making sure that there is product on the shelf. In this store the amount of bread crumbs in that metal tray was more like a coating on all of the tray surfaces and there was a good build up of crumbs within the machine to get Marvin’s attention.

On one particular evening Marvin worked his way into the metal crumb catch tray however he never got out, at least alive. Marvin died and the metal crumb tray became his short term coffin for he laid in that tray for some period of time. With Marvin’s decomposing body in the crumb tray the slicer continued to be used for slicing customers bread purchases. Finally after weeks had passed an employee noticed a foul smell coming from the bakery department. It took a bit of exploring but Marvin’s body was located and disposed of. The tray was cleaned out – finally, and the slicer continues to be used to this day.

I am willing to say that no more attention is being paid to keeping that bread crumb tray cleaned out today then it was when Marvin lost his life.

If any story about animal life in the supermarket grosses me out the most it would be the time that a store’s meat case had a layer of maggots in the bottom of it. What I mean by the meat case is the refrigerated display case that customers pick the packages of meat out of to purchase. Yes this really did happen in a store and without proper cleaning procedures it will continue to happen. Please believe me that this is not the first time that this type of infestation has occurred in a supermarket.

The store that I am referring to was not an overtly dirty looking store. It was equipped with older refrigerated product cases that had a history of equipment breakdowns well above the industry average. The reason for these breakdowns were due to the overall age of the cases along with the lack of preventative maintenance practices and a poor effort on the stores departmental staff to actually keep them clean. Again like in the case of Marvin’s demise the meat department staff, being one of the highest hourly rate departments in the store, was pressured to keep their payroll costs down so cleaning became more of an after thought.

So packages of meat that were displayed in this particular case left traces of meat product, juices and blood in the lower grate/grill area of the case. With the older case not keeping a cold enough temperature to inhibit this type of bug growth coupled with poor cleaning and sanitation practices by the staff maggots began to thrive in the display case. The bottom of the case was lined with a sheet of vented honeycomb type plastic mesh, like the type found in most supermarkets, which allowed the maggots to nest under this liner. Since the liner was not regularly removed and cleaned under the product that was layered on top of it provided more sustenance for the maggots to thrive on.

Such disgusting sanitary practices from businesses that we buy our food from who sometimes fail to recognize the obligations they have to keep their premises sanitary in order to protect the public’s health should never be tolerated. When these business do not live up to their responsibilities people can get sick. If you as a consumer notice something unsanitary in your local store report it to store management. If nothing is done about it right away do two things. First contact your local health department and lodge a complaint. Second stop shopping at that store because they are endangering your health. Uzzi family type sanitation practices should never be tolerated.

AB

Copyright 2010 @ Supermarket Stories

Your Chicken Takes a Road Trip or Dumpster Diving is Not Just a Sport

The humble chicken is one of America’s basic dinner and lunch entrees along with being a popular source of protein. Some individuals that do not want to eat Beef or Pork for the most part do not seem to have a problem consuming chicken. So it seems to me that this food product is as good a place as any to begin our journey through some of the weirder practices in America’s family run grocery stores and supermarkets.

That chicken or chicken based product that you see in your local grocery store had already traveled many miles before it found itself on the shelf in your local supermarket. It’s life began in a breeding cage in some massive Chicken Gulag where it was required to stand for long periods of time hyped up on some insane chemical cocktail mix that the producers called feed. From the time it begins its life a chicken has been selected for a particular purpose in the Retail Food Chain such as that of a fryer, plump boneless breast, nuggets etc. Science and technology has helped the food industry to maximize the chickens contribution to their profit structure and our daily diet.

So once this Roger Clemens bred chicken was determined to be the right size for what it was designed for it was killed, stripped of its feathers, dignity, processed, packaged and put on a truck for parts unknown. For the purposes of our story its destination is a family owned grocery store somewhere in the United States.

For most people the packaged chicken will be picked up from a store shelf by the consumer, scanned, bagged and put into their mini van or SUV where it will finally reside in the refrigerator ready to be used for the family meal. In some of the grocery stores that you will read about on this blog this is only the beginning of the Chicken’s Road Trip.

Some years back I was working for a grocery store chain and it was lunch time so the suggestion was made that all of us go to the store’s deli department to get some lunch and continue working at our desks. Having worked in other family run grocery stores I was filled with a bit of trepidation because their basic sanitary practices sometimes leave a lot to be desired. Anyway I hid my fears of a Biological Attack on my body and followed along with everyone else to the store’s deli department.

As we were all gazing at the display cases filled with assortments of meat, cheese, salads and already prepared foods my mind felt like it was being teased by the overall appearance and presentation of the food products neatly arranged before me. My stomach began to growl quietly and I felt this overwhelming urge to make a decision so that I could savor the taste of these visually appealing dishes. Suddenly the clerk behind the counter ask me what I would like and I quickly responded “Chicken Salad please”.

“No, do not get that” one of my fellow lunch mates sternly said to me. No I asked – why? He said “don’t you know where the Chicken Salad comes from?”. The storage cooler I naively answered. He started laughing and then began to tell me of how that Chicken Salad got into the display case.

First of all this store sells Rotisserie Chickens he said. I looked at him like why are you talking to me like I am an idiot almost every store does? Anyway he said that this store  had a policy to use chickens in the meat case that have gone out of date in the deli department to boost its profitability. I thought for a moment and figured well I was always told that if a product has a Sell by Date it just means that the customer should have bought it by that point not necessarily used it – they have a few days at home for that. Well I kept my thoughts to myself while my lunch mate continued with the origins of the chicken salad story.

Normally he said the deli brings in special chickens from distributors to make Rotisserie Chickens or Fried Chickens in this store. These distributor supplied chickens tend to be injected and pre-seasoned and will be the source for a future blog entry. However one of the owners son-in-laws of this small chain of stores was passing the trash door in the back of one of the stores some time back and saw someone from the meat department throwing away some chickens. The story goes that this son-in-law who had witnessed this brazen act of waste and just about jumped through the Trash Door to grab some of the chickens before they landed in the outside trash container. Ever smelled the chute of a trash disposal in a supermarket? Because of this son-in-laws possible background in waste disposal at some previous job he saw no reason why these dated chickens could not be rescued from the trash bin and actually used for something else in the store.

It was at that point in history that this grocery store decided that they could take the dated chickens from the meat department and use them in its deli department. Okay other than reaching into the trash chute or digging chickens out of a trash can what is the harm in using a chicken who’s sell by date is yesterday? Boy was I in for a shock.

Remember that I had asked for the Chicken Salad? Well what was wrong with that I thought. My lunch mate now continued the story of the Traveling Chicken. He said that the store will fry some of the chickens that are “rescued” and then sell them in the deli department. These pieces of Fried Chicken will usually be kept in the case for a day or so. Okay I thought so far it is not like the Fried Chicken will be rancid smelling besides I ordered the Chicken Salad. Then he said if the Fried Chicken is still there the next day it will be pulled from the display case and then that meat from those chickens will be cut up into chunks to use in the Chicken Salad. Okay now I was getting scared. Then he said that some portions of this “rescued” Chicken Salad might sit in the display case for purchase for another couple of days. Wow I thought that Chicken Salad might have been out of date for a week or so before I eat it. No I was saying to myself I do not want the Chicken Salad. Too late the clerk was already putting the Chicken Salad into a container for me to eat.

My lunch mate started to chuckle and said “do you know what happens to the Chicken Salad that is not sold?”. Sheepishly I replied no what happens to it? Well he said the old Chicken Salad is then put in a colander and all of the mayonnaise along with the seasoning is rinsed off and the chicken is then used for anything from a Chicken Ala-King entree to Chicken Soup.

Now I felt the insides of my stomach rumbling and my mouth felt like it does after one has vomited yet nothing comes out you know the dry heaves? Then I realized that what I had ordered was not such a bad selection after all because I did get the Chicken Soup!

AB

Blog Entry Foot Notes and Perspective Comments:

– Most grocery stores today procure their deli salads and prepared foods from either an outside distributor or they are made in a companies central commissary. However there is still a significant percent of stores that make their own salads, entrée and take out foods in-store.

– The ability to hold the temperature of a refrigerated display case or a storage box in supermarket is an important factor in keeping perishable food safe for the consumer.

– Case maintenance and electrical usage is a large expense in every supermarket operation today.

– One university study stated that Supermarkets in the United States account for 5% of the total amount of electricity used annually.

– All grocery stores are subject to random health department inspections from local government or state agencies along with investigations initiated by consumers.

– It is not in the interest of any retail food establishment to endanger their customers health by selling contaminated or spoiled food products.

– The number of reported food related illness or contamination incidents varies from location to location.

– Retail Supermarkets operate on one of the smallest net profit percentages of almost any industry in the United States.

– Next to the cost of goods sold in a typical supermarket or grocery store labor is the next largest expense of a retail food operation.

– The stories in this Blog entry are true.

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories