Simply Soares

Wow! It's been a while since I posted.... sorry about that! Life has been crazy and there have been bumps in the road that I am still praying about before I post anything.

BUT... I just had this mind boggling experience that I felt inclined to share.

It's Sunday morning which means that the kids and I head to the market to get groceries for the week's meals. Groceries is an area where I know I can save BIG bucks by shopping creatively. We get Harvest Bag each week, which puts lots of veggies and bread in our home for free. We also get surplus milk from another supplier regularly so I seldom have to purchase milk. One of my other tricks is Sunday shopping at the local market. Now I really don't like this market's community and global policies so I seldom purchase things there regularly, but I do shop their final markdowns almost every week. They have a policy of going through and putting a red sticker on things that are nearing their shelf life and marking them down to cost. I find that I can get things that are usually outside of my budget but that we as a family enjoy and stay in our budget by shopping the red tags. I make it a game that Audrey and I play.... find the red tag, see if it's something we like or love, and then see if we can incorporate it into our weeks menu. We take a note pad and make the weeks menu as we shop. Then on Monday when I head into town I pick up the remaining filler things that we need at a market that I like their community contributions :) This way I support the stores that I like with the things that make them money, and I get other things that are heading for the dumpster at little to no cost to our family.

So.... we were at the local store today shopping red tags. We made our selections, had paid and were on our way out the door when my daughter (who is only 6 if you remember) spots the floral section. She asks me if we can buy flowers for her sister's grave, something that Audrey really likes doing. I barely had any money left for the rest of the groceries that I need to pick up tomorrow, so I told her "not today". The she spots the store employee in the floral section with a HUGE trash can of flowers next to her. The woman is standing there pulling flowers off of the shelf and throwing them in the trash can. Audrey asks, "Can we have some of the flowers that you are throwing away? I would like to take them to my sister at the cometary." Audrey was so polite and even explained what she wanted them for! Such a big girl. The store employee takes a bundle of the flowers out of the trash and hands them to Audrey and tells her "Sure, take these right over to the checker and tell her they are $5.00" Audrey was so confused! She says "but they are trash, you just took them out of the trash can. Why can't I have them?"

Ok, I gently removed Audrey from the situation and left the store... BUT I am still FUMING MAD! Are you freaking kidding me? She thought it was ok to hand my daughter something out of the trash can and then tell her to go pay for it? My 6 year old daughter? And EXCUSE me, but do the trash people PAY you to take your trash away? NO! You pay them to remove it..... what would it have hurt to hand a few sad flowers from the trash can to a sweet little girl and bless her day? I mean come on!

So what do you think? Am I out of line for not wanting to pay for what they were placing in the trash can? And is it ok for big companies like this to just throw everything away? Companies like this that throw EVERYTHING in the trash are one of the main reasons that there is so much waste in our society and that grocery prices are so high. It is unbelievable the sheer volume of food that is thrown away everyday in this county...