Retail worker throws away massive piles of usable food then calls out company trash rules: ‘Donate this to the homeless’

A retail worker filmed a large rolling bin packed with sandwiches, prepared meals and salads being wheeled toward the trash during his shift, then turned the camera on a second area where even more sealed food was already sitting inside another container. The video, posted to TikTok by @comradecarlocos, moves across pile after pile of individually wrapped products, several still sealed, as the worker describes what he says is a routine part of the job.

“Instead of throwing all of this st into the trash, why not let us take this st home? Or actually donate this s**t to the homeless? Like an actual shelter or something like that,” he says early in the clip.

According to the worker, taking any of the food home is treated as a firing offense. “But no, if we attempt to take this st home, we get fired for it. Like, what the f**k is that? That s**t is crazy,” he says.

Five days left, but headed for the trash

He frames the disposal as ongoing rather than a single incident. “This s***t is like piles on piles of this st, and I didn’t already threw a bunch of it away, and then after motherf**king break, I got more to throw away,” he says, adding that some of the packaging still had close to five days left before its printed date. Strict rules around discarded food have cost workers their jobs before, including a Starbucks employee who was previously let go over how she handled expired product at her store.

Nothing in the video establishes why this batch of food was pulled in the first place. Retailers routinely discard items ahead of their printed dates for reasons unrelated to spoilage, including temperature control issues, damaged seals, recalls or internal shelf-life policies stricter than what’s printed on the label. The clip shows volume and packaging condition, not the reason the products were removed from sale.

The comments quickly filled with people who agreed with him. One commenter wrote, “Cause it’s about profit not feeding people. They’d sell nothing and take peoples money if they could.” Another argued for consequences directly, writing “There actually needs to be penalties on this cuz tf,” to which the person who posted the video replied, “25,000 people starve to death every day when half of all the food produced is being thrown away instead of used and eaten.” 

A third commenter took the criticism a step further, arguing that the problem goes beyond food. The frustration over companies throwing away items that could still be used has surfaced before, including when people found usable products in retailers’ dumpsters. “We need to do something about these corporations—they’re out of hand,” the commenter wrote.

As of now, there’s no indication the company involved has addressed the video or the policy it describes. The clip doesn’t name the store, and the worker doesn’t say whether he raised the donation idea with management directly before filming.