What might feel like a small act of convenience for shoppers can mean unnecessary waste for workers. A Dollar Tree employee on TikTok is begging shoppers to stop ditching perishable food items in random aisles of the store. More than just being messy, he explains how this seemingly innocent act forces staff to throw away perfectly good food. His simple plea? Hand it to an employee instead, and save the food (and the frustration).
Convenience or bad habit?
Listen, we’ve all been there. Whether it might be a last-minute decision to ditch the Ben and Jerry’s cookie dough pint, or simply that the budget doesn’t allow this one item. Or, like the Dollar Tree employee in the video stated, there simply isn’t enough time to put it back. Either way, leaving it on a random shelf in the candle aisle is just shifting the problem to someone else (without said person even knowing it).
In the clip that has now garnered over 10,000 views, Dustin (@dustinatthetree) starts off by saying, “Look, I get that sometimes you’re in a hurry and you just can’t… but could we stop leaving these in random aisles?”
As he says this, he shows viewers a box of Jimmy Dean croissants haphazardly left in a section with packaged goods. The problem? The box should be in the freezer, not where an employee will stumble across it in surprise.
Dustin continues, “If you’re in a hurry, that’s fine. But the least you could do is bring it to the cashier and be like, ‘Hey, I decided I didn’t wanna buy this, I’m in a hurry. I can’t put it back.’ Great! We can put it back for you, and I can sell it. But now, I gotta damage it out and throw it away.”
Viewers Weigh In
Other retail workers joined in and shared in the comments their own challenges with damaged food. One wrote, “Yeah, I deal with that all day long, people just have no common courtesy.” While another shared, “Customers in my area don’t care if they leave ice cream in an aisle and don’t tell anybody, and melts all over on other stuff.”
Another viewer said, “And then people complain when something online shows in stock but you can’t find it when you get there.”
Why is Working in Retail so Hard?
Retail workers often shoulder the unseen burdens of shopping habits, and the Dollar Tree TikTok highlights just how much those small decisions matter. When a shopper leaves frozen food in the wrong aisle, it’s more than just an inconvenience. It’s extra labor, wasted inventory, and lost money for the store. More importantly, it puts workers in the frustrating position of throwing away food they know could have been saved. As Dustin states, “Now I can’t sell it. Now it’s completely worthless.”
The Mary Sue has also covered other retail horror stories, like the one where Costco shoppers “held the employees hostage” as they went in right at closing time. Or the recent story where “Walmart put body cameras on employees for aggressive customers.” At the end of the day, retail workers have stories and tips for everything under the sun.
@dustinatthetree Can we normalize asking an employee to put something like this back? Instead of leaving it in an aisle? #really #fyp #fypシ #fypシ゚viral #dollartree ♬ original sound – dustinatthetree
The Mary Sue reached out to the creator and to Dollar Tree via email.
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