Stupid people

Post Reply New Topic

I for one cannot stand stupid people!

For instance, I found food contaminated with rat droppings in work and reported it to my boss. Instead of throwing the food out and calling pest control, like any sensible person would, she tells me to just put them on the shelf. I cannot in good conscience allow customers to buy something so disgusting, which could also make them ill. So I ask her if she's sure about this and she says, "I'll have to think about it". I of course was thinking "what the hell is there to think about".

So I came into work today and couldn't find any of the contaminated food amongst the waste (it's frozen until someone collects and incinerated it), which suggests she decided to sell the food anyway. I also found more contaminated food, which I reported to another boss and they actually called pest control. However, not before someone commented that the droppings were so small so how could they be dangerous.... Uhhh bacteria is small and it kills people!

Honestly, why do people insist on being stupid, and how do these halfwits manage to make it into positions of power!? It continues to baffle and astound me! It's things like this that continues to fuel my misanthropy.

I can't help thinking it must be heaven working for that all aspie company in Denmark, because everyone would follow the rules like they're supposed to and hopefully avoid being stupid.

Sorry but I just needed to rant.

I understand your plight, but the ones with braincells have to point things like that out, if it wasn't for you someone could have been sick.

I'd say this has less to do with being stupid and more to do with gross and willful negligence in the name of keeping food costs down.

IOW....I would say that to some extent...what your boss did here was within her rational self-interest. It would just be a rather sociopathic example of one's rational self-interest. Ultimately it's not even within her rational self-interest though.

She is risking a lawsuit and perhaps, criminal penalties, just to save a few dollars on food cost. In that sense...she is quite stupid.

I agree with this take. It wasn't stupid in the sense that she just didn't understand the significance of rat droppings. It looks like she understood that just fine and made a conscious decision to sell the food anyway and hope this negligent act wouldn't backfire.

So it wasn't stupid in that sense. It was done with full knowledge of what she was doing (it seems, from the anecdote).

But it was stupid in that sense that all willfull, money saving negligence is stupid because those acts often come back to bite you in the rear. British Petrol.

I agree with both ^. It all comes down to the bottom line--money.

Perhaps you could arrange for a surprise health inspection?

The actual food was truly contaminated or were just the packages soiled?

If the packaging was still intact, it would have been wasteful to just throw everything out.

Well she picked up a carton and shook the dropping off, and seemed to think this made it ok to sell to customers. At this point I thought she was just stupid, but then she told me to wash my hands, indicating she knew full well what she was doing.

Funny somene mentioned a sociopath... that's the first thing I thought of when I realised she knew what she was doing. Also, I think she's stupid for putting people's health at risk.

It was on egg cartons, which aren't really sealed and the rats could easily have urinated on them as well. Surely just handling where the droppings have been and unwittingly puting your hands near your mouth, eyes, etc could be harmful?

That's exactly how people like this get into positions of authority, OP. By showing their superiors a dedication to the bottom line that has no compunctions about ethical violations, criminal conspiracy or homicidal negligence. When you show the people at the top that you're willing to risk other people dying to make them a few more dollars, they reward you with promotions - provided you keep it on the down-low. If it ever comes out what you've both been conspiring to do, they'll let you hang and pretend not to know you.

That's the whole game: How much can we take from other people without being caught killing them? This is the single value around which our planetary society revolves, and its effects trickle down from the inscrutable backroom seats of ultimate power, all the way to the management of the local franchise outlet. Welcome to Earth.

Last edited by Willard on 18 Aug 2010, 3:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think rodents tend to leave a continuous trail of urine and feces behind them, so yes, I would say those individual eggs should have been washed off and re-packaged. However, the bigger problem there in that store is the matter of rodents even being there at all, and something really needs to be done about that since apples (for example) and many other produce items often sit out in the open without any packaging at all.

Do health inspectors come in there very often? If I worked where you do, I would likely be making some kind of anonymous call to them.

If there's no pest nor rage signaled in your area, you should be out of danger.

Besides, rats or mouses urines smell very strong, you would have noticed and the carton would have been all crinkled.

And besides besides, eggs themselves are totally sealed so no danger either for the customers health.

... But I agree with you: it's disgusting and that boss was greedy.


Edit: Who wash the eggs shells before breaking them?
So yes indeed: customers health is in danger with that person acting that way.

I'm not sure shipping the eggs back to the packaging plant to be washed and repackaged would be worth it..? Also, the sell by date was up that day, which is the reason I found them as they had to be sold at a reduced price.

As for the health inspectors... if pest control catches the rats shouldn't it be ok?

A small store could probably get away with washing them off and placing them in bags, but those eggs were actually probably just fine as they were unless the packages had been open and the eggs directly soiled. In any case, yes, and as you have mentioned, many things just get thrown away to actually save any further expense.



If pest control is working properly, there will be no rodent droppings anywhere. I used to work in a very large warehouse where at least a few products were edible, and the rat traps in that place were almost always completely empty because of the good overall job being done by pest control. But, that requires tight doors and clean floors and closets and corners and no stacks of empty boxes or crates inside ... etc., etc.

That's not only stupid, but cheap and ignorant. That happened at my work too though. I was working at an autoparts store to help pay for some of my college book expenses, and my workplace had feces all over the lunchroom and the boss never did anything about it. The rats actually had a nest behind the fridge, because the fridge emitted heat through the back.

I don't think it's exactly stupid for the manager to do that, though it's lousy behaviour.....I think it's more that you've discovered one of the disadvantages of the world of work - they won't let you apply your own conscience to the job. You aren't expected to have opinions about ethics and morality. Business is not run by ethics, business is the accumulation of capital in whatever way happens to work, and statements about ethics from business people are only made to keep the public quiet.

Report her, or make a big fuss about it and lose her all her business. Make sure everyone knows about this.

Or, wait for someone to get food poisoning then sue her. It'll happen at some point.