Some frustrations in charity work

I help out at a local food charity distribution charity. I wont name who to protect the guilty, associated party. The charity moves lots of food, including picking up day-old bread from grocery stores and similar for distribution. Some stores will throw away food that is a few days before the sell-by date just because they get new stock in -- that is the kind of stuff that is collected, and it can sometimes be very expensive things that the people we are distributing to are totally unused to being able to eat.

Sometimes there are emergency calls for donations -- if a freezer goes down at a store, a ton of ground beef or frozen chickens have to be picked up and immediately transferred to the donation distribution site before they thaw.

One time, at a rather high-end food store, during a pickup of day-old-bread, they they had a freezer go down, so they just started throwing all the prime rib, top round steak, etc right into the dumpster, still frozen and wrapped, right in front of the bread pickup people. They said "go near any of that and your contract with us is void." One of the charity workers was crying.

To this day I don't understand that event, or those similar. I had naively assumed people would be supportive, but things like this actually happen frequently.

Every so often workers at the stores will break yogurt containers inside the donated food on purpose to spoil it. I never understood why they would do that. I heard that out that one of the employees said they did it because they didn't appreciate that the charity was a faith based charity.

I do know that the job of ringing out the "spoils" and seperating the good from the bad is a horrible job that they can't stand doing - especially since they don't see the faces of those they feed.

Quantity and quality is luck of the draw. In one instance, there will be almost no food, in another, there will be so much food that not all of it can be distributed, even with every single needy person taking as much as they want or can carry. I hate waste, so I will call friends or acquaintances to come grab something, but almost no one comes -- cheese that would normally sell for $22 a pound or expensive breads -- can't even be given away. Somehow the value of this food becomes worthless simply because it is free.

If you're feeling discouraged after reading that, don't let it distract you from the main point, hungry people are getting fed. The above are only minor setbacks in a very effective effort to assist those in need.