Our church has a food pantry program with distribution once a month. I volunteered to help out with it the last couple months. I noticed some problems right away. The lady who runs it ("Linda") buys the meat items a few days before, freezes them in her deep freezer, and then brings them to the church at 10AM along with the other food. Then they spend an hour sorting the food into 20 different boxes.
Distribution starts at 11AM and ends at 3PM, so this meat is sitting around thawing at room temperature for hours. It gets partially thawed like clumps of frozen parts in mostly thawed meat. Not good for meat. Especially because the meat items are always 2 packages of ground beef and a package of chicken. It's always the same meat items (well at least the past 2 months).
Also the food selection is kinda bizarre. It's always a thing of marinara sauce (Prego), no pasta (?), 4 cans of green beans, the thawing out meat items, and then a bunch of junk (soda, potato chips, candy bars (fun size)), 2 cans of soup, 2 liter of tea, maybe a small sack of peanuts.
One of the volunteers there is a retired podiatry physician. I mentioned to him in a friendly manner about the food safety concern. He said nothing. I asked again and in 75 year old grouchy man voice, he said he wasn't asking "Linda" (the director of the program) about it because she'd bite his head off.
Lol, so because she has a fierce personality, no one will speak up about it? I told my wife I'd talk to Linda, so I was going to have a friendly chat but that went south quickly. She let me get out like 5 words before telling me that I am ridiculous and "we haven't killed anyone yet!"
Um, ok. So I talked to the minister about it. He was very concerned about it from a liability standpoint and removed her from being in charge of it. He appointed someone else. Now it's logical. We buy the meat items the morning of distribution, and they immediately get taken to the church and put in the 2 large fridges we have in there. And when the recipient fetches their box, we grab a sack of meat items out of the fridge (bagged up) and put it on top of the dry food in the box. And no more junk food either. It's more substantial food and higher quantities of real food. We have 2 brand new commercial fridges sitting there always on -- it was silly to not utilize them. I think the biggest use they get is when someone rents out the hall for a graduation party or something. Or to store the cream for coffee service.
It's just sad that something positive like helping out the needy would become subjected to someone's bad choices/stubborness. And I am often "that guy" who speaks up. Believe me, I don't want to have to. Why didn't someone else speak up about this over the years? I am not afraid to confront idiots and morons.
Distribution starts at 11AM and ends at 3PM, so this meat is sitting around thawing at room temperature for hours. It gets partially thawed like clumps of frozen parts in mostly thawed meat. Not good for meat. Especially because the meat items are always 2 packages of ground beef and a package of chicken. It's always the same meat items (well at least the past 2 months).
Also the food selection is kinda bizarre. It's always a thing of marinara sauce (Prego), no pasta (?), 4 cans of green beans, the thawing out meat items, and then a bunch of junk (soda, potato chips, candy bars (fun size)), 2 cans of soup, 2 liter of tea, maybe a small sack of peanuts.
One of the volunteers there is a retired podiatry physician. I mentioned to him in a friendly manner about the food safety concern. He said nothing. I asked again and in 75 year old grouchy man voice, he said he wasn't asking "Linda" (the director of the program) about it because she'd bite his head off.
Lol, so because she has a fierce personality, no one will speak up about it? I told my wife I'd talk to Linda, so I was going to have a friendly chat but that went south quickly. She let me get out like 5 words before telling me that I am ridiculous and "we haven't killed anyone yet!"
Um, ok. So I talked to the minister about it. He was very concerned about it from a liability standpoint and removed her from being in charge of it. He appointed someone else. Now it's logical. We buy the meat items the morning of distribution, and they immediately get taken to the church and put in the 2 large fridges we have in there. And when the recipient fetches their box, we grab a sack of meat items out of the fridge (bagged up) and put it on top of the dry food in the box. And no more junk food either. It's more substantial food and higher quantities of real food. We have 2 brand new commercial fridges sitting there always on -- it was silly to not utilize them. I think the biggest use they get is when someone rents out the hall for a graduation party or something. Or to store the cream for coffee service.
It's just sad that something positive like helping out the needy would become subjected to someone's bad choices/stubborness. And I am often "that guy" who speaks up. Believe me, I don't want to have to. Why didn't someone else speak up about this over the years? I am not afraid to confront idiots and morons.
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