Confessions of a Grocery Store Meat Dept Worker...well, more like blowing the whistle

Have you ever heard the phrase, "There are two things you don't want to see made in this world...laws and sausage."  I can't vouch for the law making process, however, I sure as hell can for the sausage.

My name is David and I live in the beautiful City of Angels...Los Angeles and I used to work in the meat department of a local grocery store.  I thought you all might like to really know what goes on behind the scenes as well as your bulk sweet/sausage.  As the title says...really not my confessions but rather my version of whistle-blowing.

Description of My Job

My position within the meat department was that of meat wrapper.  I was the bottom of the pecking order and did all the grunt work for the meat cutters.  In addition to weighing and pricing prepackaged meats--e.g., frozen turkeys, tubs of chicken livers, packages of sausage, etc.--I wrapped and priced all the cuts of meat that were trayed up by the meat cutters.  Luckily we had an all-in-one machine that did all the wrapping, weighing and pricing which made the job a heck of a lot easier.  Below is a picture of that machine. 

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Dried Blood and Rotting Meat

The machine is the one with the big keypad on it in the right side of the picture.  To the left is a big roller conveyor that the trays of meat were stacked on as the meat cutters worked. These rollers would often be caked in does blood and would never be cleaned.  It never failed that i would always find blood and pieces of meat sick to the edges of them near the frame. 

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this is the main cutting area with two band saws.  You will notice that it looks very clean, but don't let that fool you...This was after i spent two hours scrubbing and sanitizing to clean the shit nobody else ever does. i probably went through two bottles of bleach just to get this clean.  The drains under the table were always clogged with rotting meat and fat. You can lift up the white cutting boards to take to the sink and clean, however the table frame under those boards had layers of dried and sticky blood. 

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Gotta Love Sewage

This is the sink.  The worst part of this was a broken sewer pipe underneath. When running a lot of water,  the slop sink outside the meat room would back up. most of the time an odor of raw sewage would emanate from the drain and fill the room.   In the photo above the faucet, you can see a box with a green and yellow button and hoses.  This box allows you to siphon cleaner and sanitizer from buckets containing concentrates of these while the water runs to fill up the sink. However, these were never hooked up.  They wr to cheap to buy the buckets of stuff.  What did we use? Yup, cheap dish detergent or the shelf. How are we supposed to kill germs with that shit? 

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This is the meat room cooler.  Here you see all the boxes of meat ready to be cut. This is a small store, so this was overkill. The asshole manager intentionally over-ordered when he got a good deal. Demand was not high...so you guessed it...the shit expired.  Did he throw it away? Hell no! He made them cut it, me price it, and still it to the customers. 

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This brings me to my favorite part. The meat grinder.  Oh boy....

First of all, the floor underneath was always coveted in dried blood and dried piles of old ground meat. Ground meat was made from the coarse ground stuff in 10 lbs chubs from the supplier,  but it was always stretched with meat trimmings and the old shot that didn't sell.  I've even seen the meat cutters drop stuff on the floor,  and then throw it in the mix.  Goddamn disgusting! They would make so-called meatloaf mix,  a mixture of beef and pork, which they labeled,  and priced as such when they didn't even put any pork in it.  It was all beef sold at a higher price.  Talk about defrauding your customers. Whenever I got the chance, I would tell the customers this. 

Miscellaneous Shit

In addition to bad cleaning practices,  mislabeled shit,  and putting bad stuff in the ground meat,  there was the manager forcing me to rub of expiration dates on packaged products andforcing me to stay later at night by making me do an impossible number of things. This was the shittiest job I ever had. 

I even called the health department on them twice, but nothing ever happened. I'm sure the inspector was paid off,  but that is just speculation. I hope this raises some awareness for you all.  It's no wonder that not more of us get sick like those people at Chipotle. 

#NewToSteem #steem #whistleblower #introduceyoursel