If You Do This At Sam's Club, The Employees Might Just Hate You

At the risk of stating the obvious, social interaction with our fellow humans today is fraught with complications. Those challenges can trickle down to every aspect of our daily lives, including public places, many of which are staffed by hard-working and often underpaid employees. The rule about treating others as you'd like to be treated doesn't end when you walk into a bar or restaurant or supermarket. And yet, some still appear willing to annoy waitstaff by asking for a table 15 minutes before closing time or snap their fingers or make other rude signals you should never make at a bartender.

Case in point: A post on a Reddit thread (aptly titled, "why do yall do this? why can't yall put stuff back?") highlights a particular strain of customer behavior that involves taking a perishable item like meat or dairy for purchase and then changing one's mind about it. Rather than return it to its temperature-controlled environs, some customers leaving the item in a grocery aisle or elsewhere to spoil. 

Judging from the heated posts on the thread, this thoughtless decision seems to be one of the best ways to get Sam's Club workers to hate you. As one Redditor pungently put it, "By the time we find this s–t it's bad. I'm zoning right now" — zoning refers to the placement of goods to enhance customer sales — "and it's already f—–g bad. Waste of food."

As the Reddit thread shows, there are many violations of grocery store etiquette that drive Sam's Club employees mad (don't get them started on people who refuse to return their shopping cats to the corral). The practice of dumping perishable items anywhere you like is not relegated to Sam's Club customers, as the Walmart employee who found lobster tails on a beer display commented. But Sam's Club staffers seem keenly aware of the impositions that wasted food puts upon their already busy work day. Not to mention the fact that food waste translates into lost dollars for the company (or as one Redditor notes sourly, "There goes our bonus").

The Reddit thread also notes employees' frustration at the lack of consequences for customers who deliberately cause food waste. Several posters advocated revoking a customer's membership if they deliberately abandon perishable food, but also acknowledged that such actions appear to be rare. 

Though Sam's Club reserves the right to revoke membership "with or without cause at any time at its sole discretion," one poster shared that such actions appear to be limited to AP-09 events (shoplifting), refund abuse, and violent acts such as assault. It seems the best way to remain in good stead with Sam's Club workers, help prevent food waste, and simply be a good person is to either put back any perishable items you don't want or give them to the cashier.