Should cat food be segregated from other food?

[amitten]

I just got back from the grocery. I purchased a bunch of bananas, two frozen dinners, a candy bar and one can of Friskies cat food.

The grocery bagger said, "You want the cat food in another bag, right?" To which I replied, "Um...no."

Is this the new thing now? Animal food must be separated from people food in the bag? :wtf:

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

1. Anything that I wouldn't let even touch my food through it's own

bag/can, I would never feed to my cats.

That being said, I worked in a health food store and on the rare day I had to hop on the register, people are often neurotic assholes about what gets bagged with what. I'm not talking about common sense stuff (I always bagged like I would want my food bagged) but people that would request a plastic bag to wrap around their container of yogurt and a plastic bag to wrap around their apples which were already in a plastic bag and then a plastic bag to put all that into. Or buying like a single bag of chips and requesting it be double bagged.

Customers can be major freaks. The cashier might have been crazy too though.

[Placebo]

3. Reading that just made me thank god...

I've never worked retail. :D

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

6. I was a manager.

I did the buying, checked in orders, supervised the night staff on non-order days, helped customers around the store (which was much easier normally), but if we were short and had a rush, I'd have to jump on the register. Yeah, there's a reason why there's a high cashier turnover rate. A lot of the customers there were really cool but the ones that weren't were totally weird. It was also bizarre that being it was a health food store we either had people that would want to stuff four bags worth of groceries into a little canvas bag or require six bags for their four items.

[amitten]

4. That is very weird and sad.

The bagger tonight seemed like this was the new expected protocol, though. It reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where suddenly everyone eats candy bars with a fork instead of their fingers.

Guess I didn't get the memo. :shrug:

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

7. LOL! I love that Seinfeld episode.

Honestly, there's a lot of weird shit that one witnesses in a health food store. The worst were the rye people. I think they all had ergotism or something.

[Broken_Hero]

10. I smell a story, untold....

Rye and ergotism...I would like to hear the story about this. My father in law is a complete hypochondriac nut case, and I do love hearing other stories about nut cases....:)

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

21. Rye and ergotism...

So we had a small, but bizarre and nasty, segment of customers that would regulary purchase rye grain in bulk. I'm talking these people went through a 25lb. bag of rye grain every couple of weeks. I have no idea why they needed this much rye grain and they were a very eclectic group, ranging from elderly Asian women to a Hasidic rabbi.

Regardless, these people would be very, very mean about their rye grain. They were fairly normal in regards to their demands for other food products, but if they didn't get their rye grain, their behavior would best be described as a good argument against conceal carry laws in NJ. It was bad enough that they would freak out that they had to place a special order for a 25lb bag of rye. They never seemed to realize that since it would take a few days to get the order in, they should have probably placed it before their precious rye ran out, and they never wanted to buy one of the 1lb bags we always had in stock to tide them over.

However, the worst was always when I would get that delivery in from Gardenspot Distributors on Monday afternoon, only to find out that they were out of stock on bulk bags of rye. The verbal abuse and aggressive posturing I would have to endure should not be from any sane adult who must go another a week before they can get their 25lbs of rye. And this is where the ergotism comes in...

According to Wikipedia...

Ergotism is the effect of long-term ergot poisoning, classically due to the ingestion of the alkaloids produced by the Claviceps purpurea fungus which infects rye and other cereals...
<snip>
As well as seizures there can be hallucinations and mental effects including mania or psychosis.
<snip>
Research by Linnda Caporael (1976) suggests that many of the people whose accusations resulted in the 1692 Salem witch trials in Massachusetts were genuinely suffering hallucinations and other symptoms of convulsive ergotism. Similar eruptions of ergotism also occurred in Essex and Fairfield counties in Connecticut that damp and cool season, though in Connecticut no one went to the gallows. Notable epidemics of ergotism, at first seen as a punishment from God, occurred up into the 19th century...

So judging from their behavior, we used to call them the Ergotism Customers.

[Broken_Hero]

25. ha, thanks for the story

its amazing what things get under peoples skins...this is a new one for me...:) :hi:

[Der Blaue Engel]

26. Maybe they needed it for their stills?

:shrug:

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

27. Perhaps upper-middle class to upper-class NJ is secretly funded by

a bizarre moonshine ring.

:shrug:

[Der Blaue Engel]

28. Run by elderly Asian women and rabbis

:D

:beer:

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

29. Nah, they're really just the front for the whole operation.

It's really run by the mafia dude down the road, who lives across from the miniature horse farm. I'm surprised the Sopranos haven't done an episode on this yet. I should write to HBO about that.

[ComerPerro]

18. He probably bagged cat food with people food one time

and a customer flipped out on him.

[zonkers]

12. No doubt, people unload all sorts of weird mental crap at the market.

nt

[Mutley]

20. Exactly.

I won't feed my dog anything I wouldn't eat myself.

And yes, I've tried a piece of her food. It tasted awful, but it didn't kill me. :D

[politicat]

2. Some people are weird about things like that, though I'm not.

In my mind, the fewer bags the better (because those bags cost me, the consumer, at least indirectly, and directly in the fact that they're bloody EVERYWHERE and never really go away.) I get hell at the grocery store because I don't want bags, or because I bag my own groceries and stuff the bags full (I hate the self-check lines because they replace people with my free labor, giving the store a bonus, but I don't get the discount -- but I like being able to bag for myself, and stuff the damn thing full) or because I bring my own bags or boxes or coolers and tell the bagger to only use my bags.

But some people are weird. Remember, there are people for whom toilet seats are terrible, even though they're the cleanest thing in the bathroom. (Or were, until someone insisted on hovering and spraying around...)

[amitten]

5. I'm not very scared of toilet seats, myself.

I never "hover and spray". (But most public seats get some TP thrown down first.)

[politicat]

8. I'll wipe it off if it's obviously wet. That's it.

TP on the seat does nothing but kill some trees. Paper's porous, so if there is anything that is likely to infect the skin of the bum, it's not likely that a couple of thin sheets of absorbent paper is going to do the job. And if your bits are in contact with the actual seat, ... well, I don't really want to know why or how your actual bits came into contact with the seat.... (And did you know that 95% of the world's TP supply comes directly from trees, rather than recycled paper? Not because recycled paper doesn't make great TP - better, in most ways than trees in fact and much cheaper and with a much lower energy debt - but because people can't wrap their one track minds around the idea that it might be recycled from old phone books and office paper, and think that recycled TP means that it's been TP before. Like there are huge TP mines out at the sludge sites...)

[amitten]

9. I'm usin' the TP.

Sorry. Not for my bits...just for the backs of my legs.

Am I expected to drip-dry as well??? :P

[politicat]

19. Sorry, it's a peeve.

Not quite a pet one, just a stray that keeps coming around for a few strokes and food. An outdoor peeve.

Here's a funny story about my TP toilet seat obsessed mom. We're at her mall in Arizona, and we're getting ready for some event of hers, so we have to do the mall first thing in the morning, right after it opens because there is something she needs, I don't even remember what, now. Now, Mom's got the bladder of a pregnant poodle in a fire hydrant testing facility... she cannot pass a bathroom without a pee (and she's been this way all of her life, it's nothing new. When god handed out bladders, she thought he said ladders, and she only wanted a little one.) She also is congenitally unable to go to a public bathroom by herself. So when we're out in public and she needs a pee, I get to go listen in. (I got my dad's bladder - I can cross the Gobi without a pee.) I swear she's a closet exhibitionist on this matter, but anyway...

So we get her thing, and we're headed to the next shop, and she darts down for the loo. The cleaner is just coming out of the loo with the buckets and mops and such, and the mall hasn't been open ten minutes, so the odds that mom's going to be anywhere near a dirty toilet are slightly worse than her odds of winning the Powerball. And the toilets are dry as well - it's a good mall and they keep things tidy. I hear her put down the paper ring thing, then the toilet roll jingles, then there's another rustle of the paper ring thing. "Mom, is there a problem?"

No, she tells me, and starts talking about her thing that's coming up. Then she asks for toilet paper. Now this makes no sense - I saw paper in the roll when she opened the door. But I get her some from another stall and hand it over the door to her.

Turns out that she wanted to "sample" the papers; she'd seen that the roll in her lav had a different wrapper than the ones that mall normally uses (yes, she's that observant for really little things), so she did the ring seat protector, then a layer of the normal paper, then another ring (because that will definitely keep that very clean toilet seat from touching her bum) and now wanted to try the other paper.

This has been going on since I was tiny; she's just THAT WAY. So is it surprising that I'd take a urinal any day if they made them for girls?

[NMMNG]

11. Probably used to the weirdos

Some people can be very strange about how they want things bagged.

But then again I've had cashiers/baggers throw packages of meat right in with other groceries (and not even in those little "meat baggies"). x( When I go to put stuff away there's blood all over the other stuff in the bag.

One more reason I like being a vegetarian now.

[datasuspect]

13. bust the vacuum on a can of cat food

throw it in the back of the cupboard

forget about it for a few days.

the smell is redolent of putrefaction/dead animals and NOT spoiled food.

i wonder what the hell they put in cat food that would make stink like that.

[amitten]

14. Regardless, it's in a can and can't exactly contaminate other

food...

[Phillycat]

15. WTF?

Weird!

[LynneSin]

16. I toss it all into one bag, if possible

And don't really care what's mixed up with what.

On friday I bought some grocery including a dozen eggs. The lady wanted to toss the eggs into their own bag but I just said to toss it in with everything else. The cashier looked SHOCKED that I would do something like that but I told her "I've done in that way all my life and I'm still alive to tell you now"

The only thing I put into it's own bag is raw meat, but even still a few times I've neglected that and I'm still alive to post about it.

That's why I love self service check-outs

[skygazer]

17. That's a new one on me and I work in a grocery store

We don't bag food products with things like cleaning products and soaps, etc. because that makes sense - you don't want a potentially leaky Windex bottle getting into your produce or the gross lemon scent of the dishwasher detergent in your meat.

But a can of cat food? That makes no sense to me.

[amitten]

23. Right...all those things you listed are sensible.

Segregating a canned item of any sort from other items of any sort makes no sense at all.

It's. In. A. CAN.

[mitchum]

22. That is weird, sad, and very funny

[hedgehog]

24. People can be very strange about grocery stores.

Our paper runs a columnist out of Texas who apparently is running a cult for people phobic about germs. these people want to wipe down the cart before they'll use it. I thought there were only a few people who thought like this until all of our supermarkets started carrying wipes just for cleaning the cart handles. These people also go nuts if a little kid sits in the cart itself rather than the seat. I'm not talking about concern for a little kid standing n a cart ready to topple out and crack his head open. Somehow having a kid in the cart contaminates it. Since all the food is wrapped and re-wrapped, I don't get it.