"I was a supermarket worker until very recently, and what I saw go on behind the scenes would make your hair stand on end.
"Out-of-date food being put on the shelves, selling underweight items, bad food hygiene - you name it, we did it.
"I feel guilty about it, and want people to know the truth - but also to understand it was mostly driven by the pressure we were under as employees - which I'll get into.
"I worked in the produce section of one of the big name supermarkets - which basically means I worked in the fresh fruit and vegetables section, stacking shelves.
Have you seen bad customer practice in your industry you don't agree with? Message sam.barker@reachplc.com
Out-of-date food
"One thing that was really common was to sell out-of-date fruit and veg by taking the sell-by date off the items, rather than throwing it in a skip like we should have done.
"This wouldn't work for everything, like for bagged salad where the sell-by date is printed on the packet.
"But for fruit like melons, where the sell-by date is written on a stick-on label, we would quite often just pick the labels off fruit that was gone off and then put it out for customers to buy.
"Most of the time this fruit looked alright, and was probably still edible, but it made me feel bad as we were technically selling gone-off food to customers who didn't know any different.
Underweight items
"Another thing that was really common was to sell underweight packets of fruit, which I saw on every single shift.
"We were always eating handfuls of soft fruit like grapes, raspberries and blueberries out of punnets, or taking one or two apples out of a bag, then putting the half-full box or bag back out for customers to buy at full price.
Bad hygiene
"Also on almost every shift I saw bad food hygiene, on my section alone - with customers none the wiser.
"Fruit and veg gets stored in a massive walk-in chiller before it goes out on the shelves - basically a massive fridge.
"You can imagine the floor of this thing gets pretty disgusting and smells like an uncleaned bin.
"It was sticky, covered in rotten fruit juice and dust and dirt, and I never knew it to be cleaned in the two years I worked there.
"Every shift we'd end up knocking fruit and veg into this gunk, then put it straight back out, unwashed, for customers to buy. I can only imagine the germs on some of that stuff.
"I know this sounds bad, but what I would say is that a lot of this behaviour was caused because we were chronically short-staffed.
"We were grafting on every shift, and would often have sweat pouring off us.
"If you're working flat out at quite physically demanding work, with barely enough time to eat or have your breaks, you will grab the odd handful of fruit to keep you going.
"We weren't given the time to do anything other than that.
"Likewise, when the store keeps a record of 'wastage' - how much food your team chucks out - you will do your best to keep that to a minimum.
"Another thing I didn't agree with - we were told to stop rough sleepers taking food from the skips we had at the back of the store, even though it was just going to be thrown away.
"Management said they didn't want a homeless person getting sick then suing us - what, with all that money they don't have?
"It was also pretty ironic considering we were putting out-of-date food on the shelves every day, but there you go.
"Most of us ignored that rule and let these people take whatever they wanted, but if there was a manager around you'd have to shoo them off, and I felt terrible.
My advice to supermarket shoppers
"So, my advice to anyone shopping in a supermarket is: always wash your fruit and vegetables and sense check items like punnets of raspberries in case they look underweight.
"One funny bit of advice I'd give as well - always check your bananas, in case you get a nasty surprise.
"These are shipped in big plastic bags from overseas plantations, and often we'd find dead spiders in the bottom of the bags.
"Apparently these are used as a cheap form of pest control, and rumour has it they can be poisonous to humans as well as insects.
"Anyway, one shift I was putting bananas out for sale, and I noticed one brown banana in a bunch of green ones. I took a closer look, and this brown banana had a big split in it, all sealed up with cobwebs.
"Needless to say I freaked out, and chucked the bunch in the device we used to melt plastic packaging to make sure any hidden spiders were good and dead.
"And if you're going to shoplift , make sure you can run like Usain Bolt.
"If a shoplifter gets spotted while they're still in the store, a secret code goes out over the tannoy and any worker near the main entrance keeps an eye out.
"Anyone who caught a shoplifter got given a crate of beer by management, so I saw my colleagues chasing shoplifters right out of the store and down the road just to get some free booze."
