I am angry as hell right now. And that is something you just don't even want to be in the same time zone with. Ask any of my friends. They all, unfortunately, have first hand knowledge of that tsunami. I can become a pack of rabid hyenas in half a heart beat. When that happens you better hope that I'm at your back and not in front of you making eye contact because I am more than likely trying to tear your rib cage open. I have been known to take down (and hospitalize) people 4 times my size. Yeah, I'm an ornery old fart that takes no prisoners. Never underestimate the power of little skinny people. We can spin on a dime and we certainly don't fight fair. OK, enough said on that...
An article has just appeared on the web that has pissed me off to the very marrow of my old brittle bones. If you have not heard about this yet let me get you up to speed. In 2012 a large peanut processing company got tangled up in a salmonella outbreak. They shut down and started hemorrhaging money and went into bankruptcy. They eventually opened back up but 5 months later folded completely. In addition to their own private label brand they also produced for some of the largest food retailers in the country. One of them was Costco. Costco refused to accept an order of 1 million jars of peanut butter. It sat in a warehouse with nowhere to go.
What did Costco do? Dug their heals into the sand and became shitheads. They were approached by food banks, shelters and prisons to take this off of their hands. Did they say yes? NO!!! What did they do? They said it had to be destroyed. Yes, they decided to spend $60,000 to have it all put in a landfill in New Mexico. WHAT??? It took more than 200 semi trucks to haul 27,000 tons of peanut butter to a freaking landfill. This is wrong on so many levels that it hurts.
1. It was edible. Apparently, no one at Costco HQ has ever been hungry.
2. You just put 1 fucking million recyclable plastic jars in a landfill. Don't even get me started...
3. Had this been donated to charity it would have given them a $2.6 million tax write off and not a $60,000
expenditure. What were you thinking?
4. And this is the important one. What they did was a mind bogglingly horrid, unforgivable waste of food!!!
In my 6 decades I have unfortunately found myself cold, wet, homeless, in the dark and hungry in a doorway on more than one occasion. I gotta tell you, hungry is the worst part of that scenario. I learned a long time ago that you never EVER waste food. Whether it is for you or someone else, you just don't waste food. I have worked for several food banks and shelters in my time and the most rewarding thing I can possibly imagine is to give an individual that is hungry a meal or to hand a family several bags of groceries to help them get by. If you come to my house you will indeed be invited to sit down at the dining room table and I will lay out a spread. Food is sustenance. But it is also compassion and caring. Especially when you share it.
Costco did not share. Fuck 'em!!!
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