Do You Check Expiration Dates?

It’s a good way to ensure a quality experience

My wife Mary has an obsession—she always checks the expiration and freshness dates on food products that we purchase. Mary also marks purchase dates on products such as ketchup, mustard, and salad dressings when she places these items in our refrigerator. I think she has an expiration date on me.

In any event, you’d be surprised, but maybe not, at the number of items in stores that have dates far past their expiration. Let me give you a couple of recent examples.

We were sitting down to lunch when I opened a bag of newly purchased potato chips (Jays Ruffle Chips, my favorite). Mary looked at the date and the chips had an expiration date of Sept. 19, 2015. What was so improbable was that I had just purchased the chips on Sept. 20 at a local supermarket! Now I don’t know if chips expire in freshness and taste, but a return to the store indicated that similar bags of chips had an expiration date of November or December, so my purchase was certainly out of sync. Naturally, I contacted the maker of the chips and the store and we received a coupon in the mail for a new bag from the manufacturer. We’re still waiting to hear from the store.

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Comments

Good To Hear From You

Hello Bill,

It is good to see an artilce from you! It has been a while and I have missed your articles.

I wanted to comment that I, like you have always believed that those claims that your call may be monitored for quality purposes was hogwash! However, this past year I was transferred to manage a quality management system for a number of call centers in my corporation and was surprised to find that they actually do monitor those calls! Not every one of them of course, but there is a sampling of calls that are monitored on a regular basis and the phone representatives are scored on a number of different categories to ensure, you got it, quality!

Now, if only we could have those grocery store stockers get scored on rotating the items! My first job when I was a teenager was at a fast food chain that sold roast beef sandwiches (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say the name of the company, but I'm a fellow Michigander so I'm sure you know who they are although I think they're a national brand). There was a daily task before I could go home called "rotating the beef". This was done to ensure that the we used the beef in the order in which is was received. Let me tell you, a cooler full of beef is not a fun task to rotate.

Anyway, great to see you back! I hope it wasn't me just missing the articles!

Diane Johnson