Having volunteered at a church’s food distribution for over 25 years, I can say that some food banks are pretty special with how they do things. We purchase food from a large food bank for distribution once a month. If the food bank has a lot of produce or something they haven’t been able to move, sometimes they’ll throw a pallet or two extra on the trailer when we pick it up, so that they can get rid of it. When we get the trailer, sometimes it’s just a surprise what we end up with.

In general, we have some people that come that have extended families or neighbors that they give some of the surplus to. Then there’s the church that were hosted at. There’s some things that they’re able to keep for the next day to offer to the parishioners. Beyond that, there’s the occasional phone call to other churches to see if anybody could use it. In the end, the pastor knows a pig farmer where if we have a surplus of a surplus, some stuff will go to.

Was your mom always goofing things up and was her friend’s name Ethel?

I didn’t wait for them to accuse me of stealing. My final straw was when they removed 80% of the check outs in favor of self check outs.

It’s so stupid that they waste it like that. I can only assume that somebody didn’t want to be bothered with donating it to a food bank. Seriously though, the amount of time it would take to uncap and pour all that out as opposed to making a couple phone calls. SMH

If anything it’s more of a quality control thing.

It’s the difference between “I bought frozen peas that expire in 6 months and they’re all freezer burned - I want a refund!” And “the frozen peas I forgot about that expired 2 years ago are freezer burned - I want a refund!” One of them is more likely to get their money back than the other.

Also the quality of certain canned foods deteriorates after a time. Some things get mushy or the color changes weirdly that make it unappetizing, so dates can be a good reference. That said, I’ve been utilizing food banks for the last 25+ years. Expiration dates don’t scare me, but they do inform.

Right up until the point that someone complains that grams are metric and not American, calling for a boycott. It makes my head hurt.

Here in the Midwest we even have some combined Long John Silver and Taco Bell restaurants. You can go through the drive-thru and order off of both menus. They’ve been slowly disappearing but for a while they were all over the place.

Chicken planks, fries, hush puppies, and an obscene amount of tartar sauce to dip everything into. And the crunchy little batter bits? Absolute gold.

God I could go for some right now.

This one took me a moment. At first glance I thought this was posted under work reform lol. I got really curious.

I vote for him to stay in his own unmaintained home rather than making the other residents deal with him.

He passed in 2000 at the age of 52. 😐

I loved watching him when I was growing up, but as adulthood and kids took over my life, he slipped away. Thanks for the memory!