When I was 15, I got a job in food prep at a fast food restaurant in my small town. I worked part time to fund my teenage escapades; movies, vending machine lunches, hot pink jeans, the like.
Having a job at 15 is a great experience. I met many wonderful people that I wouldn’t have otherwise had to opportunity to meet, and I learned a little bit, if not much, of financial responsibility.
I would have rather had worked for a retail clothing store, but the town I lived in had few. The ones that did exist were tiny, and fully staffed with retirees or stay at home moms with plenty of work experience in that sort of thing.
This is the way it was for many people, particularly students, in my town. The job options were limited, so
we ended up bussing for half an hour into the city adjacent, or we’d work at fast food places that spattered throughout the municipality. Even the city that was close by was small at that time, and the options were, and still are, extremely limited.
At work, I met a co-worker who lived in one of the poorer sections of a particular suburb in the town. She had three kids and was a single mom. One day, while I was enjoying my lunch break outside on the makeshift patio of this fast food restaurant, she came out for her break as well. She was visibly upset, and when I asked her what was wrong, she had a bit of a breakdown.
She told me that she had just gone through a divorce and she had three children; a ten year old, an eight year old, and a four year old. Her ex-husband was nowhere to be found and didn’t pay child support despite her efforts to get it from him. Her kids were left with her mother, who was also extremely poor, while she worked her fast food job in overtime.
She lamented to me that her $8/hour salary wasn’t enough to pay the bills and feed her children. Her only other option was to go into the adjacent city to make $1/hour more, but because she couldn’t afford the expenses of a car, she didn’t have transportation. The $1/hour more she would make in the city would mean she would have to take the bus and put her kids in daycare or hire a babysitter for the duration of her added commute, since her mother and her had a system where she picked up her kids 15 minutes before her mother left for her own job.
Her options were severely limited, despite her having tried to get a job at some of the higher paying places in our small town. It just wasn’t possible.
She told me that she was living paycheque to paycheque, or worse. She had only eaten an apple all day that day, because she couldn’t afford groceries to feed her kids and herself, so naturally the food went to her kids.
She wanted to go to the food bank, but worked during the day and couldn’t make it before it closed. It was in the next city over.
That night, when we were closing the fast food restaurant up, there was a lot of leftover food which had been hanging out in the holding bins because we weren’t able to sell it. Things like chicken thighs, french fries, and leftover burgers. We were required every night to do an inventory of what was left over, and throw it all out after the inventory was done.
There were notices in the kitchen saying that we were not to take food out of the kitchen at any time without paying for it; even the food left over at the end of the night was to either be paid for at a 20% discount by employees, or thrown out. We were under camera surveillance to ensure compliance with this crazy policy.
It killed me to throw out that extra food when a fellow employee was practically starving and unable to feed her children. She couldn’t afford the food at a 20% discount, especially since fast food is already marked up an alarming amount.
So there was the choice: throw out the food, or go against company policy and risk my job (and my coworkers’ jobs) to send her home with the leftover food.
The choice was ridiculous. The food was not salvageable as the restaurant was closed. Nobody could have, or would have, purchased it. It was supposed to be going in the dumpster.
So, this is sort of like the Robin Hood story – do you “steal” from the rich, to give to the poor, or do you wastefully throw away perfectly good food because nobody can buy it?
What is your conclusion? What would you have done?
Wow that is very sad. I’m not a fan of companies who would rather throw it away then help others, especially if they can. I used to work at a retail store where we would donate EVERYTHING that didn’t sell. I would make weekly trips to drop off clothes at youth centers.
A friend of a friend was once in a similar situation but she opted to go on welfare. Her welfare officer told her that she would need to find employment that paid $20/h or better with a substantial benefits package to even consider going off welfare.
That woman should have considered asking for help since minimum wage isn’t enough for anybody to live on in Canada let alone a single parent of 3 children.
There has to be a better way to deal with restaurant food waste. On the one hand, there is safety concerns in donating it, on the other hand, we go a little crazy with rules and regulations and end up tossing hundreds of pounds of food. I hope this lady got something to eat that night.
Great story, even if sad. What a total joke that policy was. Though it was of course a few years ago, I feel bad that this lady you describe had such troubles in general, and that an obvious source of help was not there to do that – even to the point of surveillance cameras. Have to show kindness and help those in need.
At 15 these things can be hard to deal with. I had some trouble when I helped out a person who had come into the clothing store I was working at and was buying something for a child she had adopted who had been abused and left in a closet for weeks at a time, and was malnourished. The child needed a new belt, because her clothes couldn’t fit and they couldn’t buy too many new things for her. I saw the girl with my own eyes, so it was hard not to help her. She was so sweet, and looked so hurt. I gave my own belt that I was wearing, and had bought. My boss yelled at me and told me we can’t do that later on in the staff room. My consience told me otherwise. And I did what I felt was right. I would have given that lady the food.
I’m sorry but I would TOTALLY give it to her and risk my job. I would probably empty out the trash, put in a new garbage bag, and then toss in the food that should be sent home with her. That is just ridiculous. Who wastes food like that???? STUPID COMPANY!
I would have either given it to her or bought it for her. I really like From Shopping to Saving’s idea of changing the garbage bags, throwing the food into a clean bag and taking it to the “dumpster”.
I got in trouble once for driving a temp employee I had assigned to a client to the event. It was the weekend, it was a 20 min drive or an hour bus ride, and he was a tiny 60+ year old black man going to the whitest of white neighborhoods. He was totally confused as to how to get there (I got lost driving there), and I just wanted to make sure he got there and knew where the bus stop was so he could get home (he had to walk back to the bus stop at 11pm in pitch black suburbia). I was told never to do that again. I wish people would think with their hearts instead of their pocketbooks.
That’s so sad! I don’t know what I would have done. If it happened now, I probably would have said: “Hey, you should take some of this food.” packed it up in all the new boxes and forced it on her, in front of the cameras, going on about how I wish it were better quality. But I’m more confident now than I was when I was 15, and less afraid of consequences. It’s taken years of slogging away and following the rules for me to be able to break them.
What did you do?
Touching story! Hands down – I would have given her the food. Like a lot of these other comments, I don’t think I thought about the consequences of ANYTHING at age 15. My first job was at a restaurant at age 16 and they had a similar rule. I somehow worked out a “deal” with my manager where if I bought a meal, that meant I got to eat pretty much anything extra that night. Oh to be 16 again ….