Rotten Salad

My maiden rant post dead ahead. I am angry. I am very, very angry. Last Sunday I went grocery shopping. I browsed the salad section and chanced upon packets of Baby Spinach. I love Baby Spinach! So I took a packet and inspected it.

Nope, no expiry date was indicated anywhere on the package. The contents looked fresh. So. I took it. I took a risk.

When I got home and opened the package, what I discovered almost made me turn green into the Incredible Hulk. I was so mad. Look.

When I poured the contents into a basin, I noted that most of the leaves were already bruised and rotting. They were slimy too. I started to sort them, hoping to salvage the good ones. 

It was an exercise in futility. About 70% of the contents were bad. I was really pissed. PISSED.

Lets look at the packaging.

Product of Malaysia. Consume within 3 days after opening. But where is the expiry or best before date?

That date was nowhere to be found. All that they have is the batch number. Not even the packing date. So how the heck can your customer tell if this packet is fresh? And how the heck can the supermarket staff tell which batch to toss and which batch to sell? Not very clever this.

All that accreditation HACCP, MeSTI or whatever ding dong bells mean nothing if you can't get the basics right. In fact you don't even deserve the Halal certification. Halal is not just about pork or alcohol. Halal encompasses all matters of daily life including cleanliness and fitness for consumption.

What a waste of hard earned money. I feel even worse because my partner paid for this. If I wasted my own money, I won't feel half as bad. 

Sure you can tell me to go back to the supermarket to complain and get a refund. Look, I don't have time to waste. 

How about complain to the company that supplies this crap? Here in Malaysia, customer service leaves much to be desired. This will happen when you complain :

1. You get no reply. Total silence. Or;

2. You get a standard reply that they will look into your complaint and get back to you. One of two things can happen when you get to this stage :

(i) No follow up reply. Or;

(ii) Another standard reply that appears to address the problem but it actually doesn't.

Yeah, I know what you are thinking. PH is barking up the wrong tree. Yes, I do appreciate that part of the problem also lies with the supermarket. Fine, the product was delivered fresh in tip to condition. But the handling of the product could have been compromised (not immediately sent to the cold room, rough handling etc).

Or the person-in-charge did not do a check on the shelves to make sure that products that have exceeded shelf life is removed and replaced with fresh stock.

You know what I hate about the supermarket here? When they open for business at 10:00am, that is the time when the staff starts scrambling to replenish/remove perishables at the shelves. 

They would be pushing all those big carts around and the whole horde of customers would be jostling and maneuvering their trolleys around those things.

That is why you end up picking up vegetables that are no longer fresh if you shop too early. Why can't they do all this before they open for business?

This supplier needs to send their people over to the supermarket to do some quality control check. Or else they are going to lose their market share when customers avoid their products. But do they even know this problem exists? I doubt it.

We Malaysian consumers are a passive lot and we tend to adopt the "just accept" mentality. Nope. Not me. I will never buy this product or any product distributed by this company ever again.

Into the rubbish bin it went!