Whistleblower

I've just finished watching Whistleblower which was about the fresh food counters at Tesco and Sainsbury's.

Now I suppose I consider myself to be a bit of a whistleblower, but I've never had anything so terrible to report so it I'm not really much of one. I recognise a few of the situations featured in the programme, but hell fire that lot were pretty bad and a lot of it was the low down employees fault not management.

Temperatures of the fridges is one, we don't need to probe them as they have displays on them - plus we have no raw meat, but temperatures are recorded in what they call the 'Operations Checklist'. A temperature is taken from pizza, one for each deck of the oven and should be probed. In all honesty I don't often see this being done (mainly because I work afternoons/evenings) but I see the test pizzas in the fridge which must be kept and they are what I would call 'mangled'. You can tell whether or not a pizza is cooked - because if it isn't it looks crap - and again we have no raw meat products to get risky with. The ovens have temperature display on them and when it says 236C you tend to believe it, especially when you burn yourself.

We can't and won't sell out of date food. It is a rubbish idea to do that, especially at the minute because they are doing a review for the year which determines how much waste is acceptable for stores so wasting more is actually a blessing in disguise. Also - we are all fat dough boys and girls who love nothing more than to snack at least once an hour while working so we don't want OOD food either. Everything is labelled and has clearly marked dates, a PRMD label we call them. Product, Made, Ready, Discard which includes times, dates and initials. We don't change these labels to make food last longer. I know this for a fact. I'll bring one home soon and photograph it so you get an idea of what I'm on about but it isn't very exciting.

Now some of those cleaning and food handling methods were terrible - and I don't really think Tesco or Sainsbury's were to blame, it is lazy employees. It is their fault the water wasn't changed for hours on end (I think that is poor system anyway). It was their fault they decided to sell raw/cooked mince meat, if I was in their position I'd just chuck it away and f**k what the managers think because you followed procedures and they can't touch you for it.. If you don't think something is clean, then bloody clean it and make the customers wait - I do. If the floor looks a bit dirty, I'll mop it and the customers can form a queue. If I drop something on the floor I will chuck it away and no one ever queries this.

It doesn't take much work to keep our store clean, so it is infuriating to see such poor standards in the big supermarkets but I kept thinking all through the programme...if you think it is so bad, do something about it (ie - the correct way!) because that is the only way things will change and you can't be sacked for doing that. Oh well.

On a lighter note I forgot to mention that yesterday I was splashed with oil from the fryer. It is surprisingly less common than I thought it would be when I started and I'd say out of all the 100s of baskets fries I've dropped, I've only ever been splashed twice and escaped with no injuries. I wouldn't like work in a chip shop though...their fryers always look so much more uncontrollable, and we have the protection of ANSUL. which is fire suppresion system which costs a lot so I think it is good.