Supermarket Confidential DEAD CLAMS
I worked for a number of years managing a major supermarket— eventually working my way up to running a 50,000 square foot super store. I was extremely successful often creating record breaking sales with some out of the box thinking including hiring bands to play on the roof on Saturday afternoons. I ran the markets with one simple strategy; Run the market as if I owned it.
Supermarkets can be a tremendous asset to a community providing a variety of products to a populace, but like anything, it can also be an extremely dangerous place and there’s a reason I won’t shop at certain markets.
DEAD CLAMS
My regular schedule was normally to stay until 9pm on Friday nights and 6pm on Saturday nights— this particular Saturday I was still in the store around 7:30pm because a shipment of clams was due to the Seafood Department for a sale we were running starting Sunday morning. This was one of the more important items in the sale— the buyers had gotten a great price on the Clams so it was important to have them in stock. I called around to some of the other Managers to see if they’d gotten their deliveries yet- most of the Managers had gone home for the night so I spoke to a lot of assistant managers and determined the delivery was coming and decided to wait until it arrived.
The truck pulled up to the Produce Department loading dock which was nearest to the Seafood Department, I opened the dock door and was instantly hit by a wall of warm air and a bad fish smell — neither of which is a good sign for a Seafood delivery.
I asked the driver why he had turned off the truck’s AC Unit and he told me the AC Unit wasn’t working. So he had made all these deliveries in an unrefrigerated truck. Problem #1.
I stepped into the truck and walked over the the clams- they were in piles in boxes as is usual but their tongues were hanging out. Not unusual, they are living creatures and traveling in a truck that was easily upper 70s temp wise would exhaust anyone— clams often stretch out their tongues— you tap them on the head and they withdraw their tongues into their shells, unless they don’t.
In which case these clams have left our mortal coil, like Marley’s Ghost, they were dead. I tapped a second shell, nothing. A third, nothing. As the driver pushed the pallet jack onto the truck to unload the order I told him to wait. I wasn’t going to accept this delivery of dead clams. Dead clams are not safe to eat. In fact, if someone is extremely young or extremely old it can be fatal to inject them.
The driver looked at me and said I had to accept them, and that every other store had no problem with them.
I laughed and told him I wasn’t taking them, but I’d call headquarters out of state to let them know I was refusing them. Since it was past hours the buyer had gone home but I let the girl who answered his phone know there was a problem, I also mentioned that they might want to reach out to the stores who had accepted them to double check the pulses of these little sea gems.
I took the driver’s invoice and wrote “REFUSED- NO REFRIGERATION DELIVERY - CLAMS ARE DEAD and signed my name. The store intercom system announced I had a call — it was the buyer who told me I had to accept the delivery because the clams were in the ad the next day. I explained I fully understood the problem and that as painful as it would be to have a sign that says “sorry- no clams” it would be less painful than 1400 lawsuits from people who got sick.
The buyer insisted the Clams were not dead, and it was normal for the tongues to hang out, he told me to just tap the clam on the top and the tongues would retract.
I ended up summoned to Headquarters the following week after continuing to refuse this delivery, and rather than get a medal for spotting a potentially deadly situation, I got a written warning that I need to learn how to follow direct orders.
For the record, 11 of the 12 stores that did accept the Clams pulled them the next day when the Managers saw they were dead. One store got six people sick, and who knows how many got sick and didn’t realize it was food poisoning?
Be careful where you shop.
