Grocery Store Manager Loses Job For Recovering Stolen Purse [Don't Be A Hero]

Grocery Store Manager Loses Job For Recovering Stolen Purse [Don't Be A Hero]

via Consumerist by Laura Northrup on 7/28/09

It's all well and good to be a hero. Just, if you're an employee of a Randalls grocery store, do it on your own time. That's what an employee at their Round Rock, Texas store learned when he was fired for recovering a customer's stolen purse.

The reason for his termination? A store policy against chasing suspects out of the store.

After hearing a woman scream about her stolen purse, [Troy] Schafer said he made a split-second decision to chase the suspect out of the store, through the parking lot and into a nearby field where police arrived to arrest the teenager and recover the purse.

"I felt I did the right thing," said Schafer. "You protect people that need help."

Schafer said Randalls suspended him July 22 without pay, and on July 24, the store manager let him go - citing a company policy against chasing a suspect into the parking lot.

Employees are supposed to note details and cooperate with police in order to track down criminals. Which is an understandable policy for the safety of employees, but probably not all that helpful in getting stolen purses back. Which is not likely if the victim actually wants her purse back—it's likely to remove all of the credit cards and cash and then just throw the purse in the garbage.

Man recovers stolen purse, loses job [KXAN]

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(Photo: Rob Lee)

Store Brand Mixed Vegetables: Not Quite As Mixed As You Would Think [Food]

Store Brand Mixed Vegetables: Not Quite As Mixed As You Would Think [Food]

via Consumerist by Laura Northrup on 7/16/09

Have you ever taken a serving of mixed vegetables and sorted it by vegetable? Louis, annoyed at inaccurate depictions of food on labels, decided to sort, count, and weigh the vegetables in his can of Always Save brand canned vegetables. The results? Uh, not so mixed.

Here's his tally:

6 peas, 3 grams
2 lima beans, 1.5 grams
13 corn, 3 grams
1 celery, .25 grams
6 green beans, 2.5 grams
109 carrots, 146 grams
99 potatoes, 149 grams

Not quite the distribution shown on the label, is it? Maybe the green vegetables have been hit with a grocery invisibility ray. Not to knock potatoes and carrots, which are nutritious and extremely tasty, but that's not quite the mix one would expect from the label.