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Friday, September 30, 2011

Break Room Leaves A Bad Taste In My Mouth

There is a vending machine in the Pencils break room, and I've never seen anyone use it... that should have been my first clue. The room itself is a dark, dingy and dirty hole-in-the-wall and that should have been my second clue. Well, I found myself entering a hypoglycemic funk and made the mistake of plugging my spare change into the machine for a package of those radioactive peanut butter crackers. One bite and I had to spit the stale, nasty tasting manufactured food-like product into the trash bin. I didn't think it was possible for that sort of crap to go bad, but it had. Now, as a matter of principle I wanted to get my sixty-five cents back. I noticed Matt, my manager, pacing towards the Copy Center and I immediately got his attention by shouting, "Matt, I think I just got poisoned in the break room!" I then told him I wanted my money refunded from the vending machine because of those shitty-ass, date-expired crackers. He looked at me and said, "Why the hell did you buy anything from that machine? Tom saw a rat crawl out of it 3 months ago and we never eat anything that comes out of it." Well, I guess I should of known better.

4 comments:

  1. I too work at Pencils and feel the need to warn customers when they buy the food (such as pretzels and nuts) off the shelf. It is often expired. Before I transferred stores I removed over two cart loads of the stuff off the shelf, my manager told me to put it back. I left it in the cart and walked away.

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  2. I work at a pencils as well and they removed our snack machine and soda machine 2 years ago... took them another year to get a new soda machine.

    As for expired pretzels and candy on the shelves, they just throw them in the break room for us to take... yummy

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  3. Flaws in your post:

    1- Staples doesn't own or run the vending machines in your break rooms. A third party company does and Staples allows them to place the machines in our building for associates.

    2- In case of bad food, poor quality/service or lost money, your management can't help you get it back. Leave a note or watch for the vending machine people to arrive and ask them for it.
    If you have repeatedly bad experiences, contact your DM to have the machine either removed or a new company brought in.

    3- For shelved food, your IA and OM should do a food check monthly to insure its expiration date is still good. Bad/Expired food is coded out at no cost to the store, so not sure why they just don't shrink it out and trash it. Not worth a lawsuit or OSHA closing the place down.

    Honestly, I don't know what kind of stores you all work in, but wow.. just horrible..

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  4. These are not flaws and they are not talking about Staples. It is eerie how much these stories resemble the Pencils I work at. Except we never got our vending machines back, Now we have to buy horribly over priced soft drinks from the cooler. I will not eat the pre-expired food from the shelves.

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