Used to work retail so I feel this. Crazy thing is that sometimes it only takes one or two customers (and their gremlin children) to cause this kind of chaos. I'd go into fitting rooms and shit would be thrown all over the floors. Every now and then there would be extra surprises...like food or drink containers, or used diapers, or urine in the wastebasket. Fun times.
I'm still in grocery retail and this is incredibly accurate. Corporate set expectations to be "Grand Opening Ready" throughout the entire day. Customers dig and dig through the produce department like there's going to be a bag of salad that is magically better in the back of the case. If expiration dates went down to the second, they'd look for the furthest from expiry.
It's super frustrating because we get 7 trucks a week for produce, so we have a very healthy turnover on our stuff.
This job has changed me (especially going through COVID in the South). People are animals.
I find the kind of behavior you're describing as a sort of non-necessary survival mode behavior. They want to not just get the product they need, they want to get the best darn carton of strawberries in the entire batch. We're not talking looking over a few cartons, we're talking those people that will go through EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. That side of the spectrum. I feel like people who do this might be predisposed to hoarding tendencies or other obsessive disorders. Don't get me wrong, fk those people, but I really want to believe there's a reason behind the madness.
Well also, stores routinely push the items that expire the soonest to the front. I usually check the expiration dates on a few items and they can be quite different. Some items go bad and the store might still sell them up to the expiration date.
If they always kept the best quality in front, no one would dig. When they literally are trying to sell lower quality food, fuck em.
This is the most unfair part and it expands to many areas of life. You can have a whole bunch of decent and normal people and just a handful of douchebags make it bad for everyone.
I wonder if higher fines, maybe relative to the person's income, would help or just lead to different problems...
Anecdotal, but it seemed like 80% of the time it was the poorer folks doing this shit. Have a sister with 4 kids, super close to welfare level and her and her kids do this shit (mostly her kids do this and she just lets them). Shes just tired and inattentive all the time. What I've noticed gets her attention is when a store clerk or other customer calls them out and shames them.
So public shaming may help the problem, but in today's world some of these people may turn rabid Mama bear on you. Some stores make you count items on hangers going in and then going out. That actually might work. But I'd rather see societal behavior change instead.
Side note: My sister has worked years of retail before so no idea how tf she does this.