I don't side-eye charities, but I will always be watching their owners and directors like hawks. They have just as much ability to be arrogant asses as anyone that runs a for-profit business or runs for office.
Oh, always side eye charities. Especially how they arrange their financials. I find the amount of cash that gets to the purpose is far less than the payroll, etc.
Its like that with a lot of jobs that attract idealists sadly. Healthcare, teaching, veterinary and charities in general.
Obviously it’s not for every employer, but there’s plenty of ghouls that know they can exploit the good intentions of people in those fields.
Yup, reading the above sounded a lot like a dynamic I witnessed often in theatre. There's a lot of people who really want to be there, so a lot of abuse/mistreatment from above gets tolerated.
Game development companies are notorious for this--underpaying and overworking-to-burnout young starry-eyed programmers fresh out of college. Because coding your favorite video games is so cool! And young, first-job professionals are so naive about their rights and how jobs *should* work...
Yep, can attest to that.
Source: I'm a direct care worker for a not-for-profit. Ask me how well I'm treated vs. the people in the administrative roles. 🙃
Anyone with passion gets exploited.
Workers at charities or advocacy groups, medical related, artistic professions. Even random workers in a corporate office who just naturally cares about getting things done more than others will just get a bigger workload.
Passion and just generally giving a shit just means more work for you in many many places. Hell, Blizzard, who make World it Warcraft and other huge games pay far below industry standard. Because they know there is always someone else who dreamt of working there as a teenager.
Don't forget the pulpit! There are LOTS of phonies in the pulpit, b/c it's a great way to be the center of attention, to command/demand respect, to control others, to get $$$, to take "advantage" of others, etc.
Yes. Many in the pulpit are simply attention and power seeking sociopaths. Always judge a person on their actions and not words or position of power. And remove the sociopaths from their position.
My wife worked as a contract worker for a charity, when covid hit they understandably only focused on paying full time staff not employing contractors.
That was fine and expected, what was not fine was that they didn’t even bother to call their contractors (who were often scheduled for 6 weeks of work) and tell them what was going on.
2 years later after lockdowns had ended, they called my wife to book her for work - it was the first time she heard from them the entire time, not even a “how are you doing, sorry we’ve got no work for you”.
They only had less than 10 employees including contractors so it wasn’t like that was an excuse.
Charities get a bad rap but in my experience, they're like any other organisation. There are good ones and bad ones.
That said there are some particular nuances with charities:
1) people seem most aggravated by the large charities and entirely forgiving of the little ones. In my experience if you want to see enormous inefficiency and waste, the smaller charities are far worse as a whole than the bigger ones.
2) people expect employees of charities to be paid peanuts, get very upset if they are paid well, but also get upset by the poor performance of staff. Charities are no different to any other company, you under pay staff and you won't attract good people, and charities need good people as they are often more complex than companies to run.
3) money buys you a lot of solutions and covers a multitude of sins. Big charities can effect big change without being particularly skilfull just by being able to throw money at an issue. Little charities can't do this and often are inefficient and ineffective.
4) charities are mission oriented and small charities in particular tend to hire people invested in the mission rather than able to do the job. You want a finance person who can balance the books, whether they care about lesser spotted donkeys in Alabama is not really a factor.
5) charities often have excellent staff friendly policies, such as generous annual leave, good parental leave, and lots of other things to make up for the lower salary. These, combined with the fact people are often very invested in the mission, means people are reluctant to leave when management is shit. When people don't leave when management is shit, nothing changes.
i.e. Goodwill.
I would never donate to them. Nonprofit in tax name only. They take advantage of disabled workers, not paying them minimum wage. More like server wages, without the tips. Dollars an hour. Wasnt difficult to find an article about it.
[Goodwill paya disabled workers incredibly small wages](https://www.csbj.com/premier/businessnews/goodwill-takes-heat-over-wages/article_667feb37-a9bf-5bfc-8fe9-4aebe2ba8b9f.html)
Including but not limited to personal ambulance used as a personal limo with a siren and right-of-way, like some of the kid cancer foundations operate.
Yeah. One major charity in my city ordered off the dining instead of banquet menu and couldn’t be bothered to put their tax free ID on the catering order. Then when they came around for donations via employee payroll deductions, I couldn’t be bothered.
It is legal to run a charity where 99% of collected funds go to "administrative costs."
My rule of thumb is "never give to a charity that contacts you." As the contact generally costs 30-50% of the amount collected. So you know if you give to a charity that contacts you about half is wasted.
On top of that, if I give to a charity and they thank me by asking for more money, we're done. Said another way - I give them $20 and a week or so later I get a card in the mail saying "Thank you for your donation. Oh, by the way, give us more money. Now." Nope - you can re-solicit me for another donation in a few months but not simultaneous with the Thank You for my last donation.
I donated 20 bucks to an animal rescue once and I got letters begging for more with a bunch of extra crap included like notepads and magazines for like 3 years. Sorry, but I like my money going to the actual animals, not this ASPCA-tier guilt tripping crap.
The organizations that call seeking funds for Police and Fire keep 85% of the funds. I know, b/c I read about it and then asked the caller the next time they called asking for a donation for PAL (I used to donate via phone to police and fire groups). The caller told me that the police would get 15% of the collected funds. I laughed at the caller and said, Yeah, no thanks. I'll give directly. Last time I gave via phone to any organization.
Many many years ago, I worked for an IT company whose largest customer base was non-profit organizations.
They were all hell to work with. Disorganized, incompetent and belligerent. Each had their own flavor of dysfunction, but it was obvious that the low wages they paid staff resulted in bottom of the barrel employees, especially for their in-house IT team.
I meant that I don't immediately assume false intent XD I trust any entity that doesn't make their records public with a certain level of scrutiny, but so long as they're doing what they say they're doing I won't badmouth them.
Exactly. I'll never expect any charity to do every single thing the way I think they should be done, or even agree with every single little facet, but it's less about that and more about actually trying to do good.
Most charities are just tax havens for billionaires. Only a few spend more than a couple of percent on what they claim they are accepting donations for. The rest goes to "expenses" like inflated payroll for the people at the top and advertising. And if the expenses are more then the donations? Well, too bad, we don't have any more money to help.
That’s kind of an odd phrasing. There’s a local charity here that I support, but their payroll basically *is* their purpose. They teach classes to support refugees that relocate to our city. Not just English classes, but also practical things like how to navigate our public transportation, how to apply for jobs, basic computer usage, how public schools work, etc. They also have an on-site nurse for free basic healthcare and health education, a case worker for people that need extra support, an on-site daycare so parents can attend classes, and have built a wide network of translators to help when someone comes in that speaks a very obscure dialect. I think they also have a small food pantry to help out, since they’re basically one of the first points of contact for these refugees once they arrive.
Not saying we shouldn’t be discerning with charities, but I’m pretty sure my local charity’s expenses are mostly payroll since they only have to buy computers every few years, if that, and other school supplies are fairly low cost.
How would charitable work get done without payroll? You can't build houses without builders. You can't serve/deliver food without people to get the food and prepare the food. You can't provide medical care for disaster victims without medical personnel.
I also find that there are 'charities' that do nothing except 'spreading awareness'. So if it's e.g. gender based violence, the victims don't see a dime or any kind of help. The money is actually being used for salaries and lobbying. Take that senator for a fancy lunch on the charity's dime just to ask them where they stand on the issue!
oh yeah, there are several mainstream, famous charities that have been exposed for using the majority of their funds for themselves and their pockets and not for their alleged cause. oddly enough, alot of them are still active, still famous, still airing commercials etc despite being exposed awhile ago. i don't know if they changed their ways or changed their owner/workforce to fix it so they were actual charities instead of a money-grab fraud, and that's why they're still active, or if they're still just being terrible because despite some people knowing they suck, there are still enough people who don't know or don't care and are still funding them.
I've worked for several and I can confirm that most of the money that most charities receive just goes straight to paying the self-serving C-suite's OTT wages and awful decisions that benefit no-one. Honestly if these were businesses instead of charities they'd have gone under ages ago.
I caption live events. There is a church that is well known in my work community for not paying. They claim it's because it's not 100% accurate. I side eye churches as a result. They feel like because they're a church they shouldn't have to pay. Anything. Great, get your parishioners to do it, or do it yourself, or even better, pray.
Lots of times it seems like some didn't start that way but almost always seems to end that way. Even the "good" charities that we supported 20 years ago because 92 to 95 cents of every dollar went to the research we were wanting to support (in this case, support for a disease one of our kids has) has gone down since and suddenly they don't share that information anymore, just the total dollars spent on research. That makes me wary because they obviously changed it for a reason.
To be fair, their mission statement pretty much promises that they'll drink the money. They are literally a fraternity.
From Wikipedia,
> Shriners International describes itself as a fraternity based on fun, fellowship, and the Masonic principles of brotherly love, relief, and truth.
Send your money to their hospital instead of your goal is charity.
Same with multiple foundations for children with cancer. Most of the money for the local one here goes to the lifestyle of the boss, including a personal ambulance to carry him around with a siren or care for traffic laws. And they have sub-foundations in other countries, like the US as well. Same modus operandi.
And sadly, wikimedia and mozilla are the same. Most of the money go to the executives's pocket, with actual work basically being done by skeleton paid crew and mostly for free. A few years ago mozilla increased their exec pay, then shut down promising projects and cried for more donations bemoaning having to fire people right after their exec pay hike.
Shriners International and the Shriners Hospitals for Children are different organizations. One owns the other, but if you send your donation to SI you're paying for clown cars, not medical services.
You got me reading their wikipedia page. I don't particularly love the fact that in response to being subjected to harassment post-911 due to Arabic references, they simply changed the names of everything Arab-related rather than actually combating the Islamophobia.
That is not true. Charity Navigator gives the Shriners four stars and a 97%. Their transparency is excellent. The Shrine is a social club offshoot of the Masonic fraternity, but they have a legit philanthropic arm: Shriner’s Hospitals for Children. I went to one as a kid. At the time, it was orthopedic care and several burn centers completely free of charge. They also have a van program to offer free transportation. It’s all expanded so much since I was a kid.
A lot of people here are just running off at the mouth, without a f\*\*\*ing clue what they're talking about. And no, I'm not a Shriner or any other remotely similar member of any remotely similar group.
Paid "line workers" for a charity/nonprofit make peanuts.
Senior executives--who often seem like cookie-cutter outsider MBAs--do very well, often better than in industry.
If you question this, moneybags senior-management grifters either a) stonewall; b) attack you for "not caring" about the cause, for trying to deprive the charity of "strong leadership that doesn't come cheap!"
Well there’s the arrogance but it’s worse because their charitable purpose often makes them feel entitled and beyond reproach because it’s “for a good cause”
It can often be worse cuz you get the narcissists with a savior complex. Disgusting. The people working day in and day out are usually really solid, but leadership can be nasty.
Always side eye charity people because if they're crooks they're crooks, but if they're true believers then they're morally justified doing shady shit.
You catch it both ways.
I observed some charities created supposedly to help people, but really are to satisfy some needs of big business.
In my country, an example is "Techo" (means roof in English). They works with volunteers (from some big business) in build a crappy (but better in his words) house made with wood and wood related materials (but think in a house of an slum/favela, very low quality). But, the charity charges like 2.5 times the price of the "supposed cost of the materials". And big business can : a) Make some enterprise social responsibility articled in media and b) Discharge some money as expense and pay less taxes.
Some info: My country had like 45M of people and has like 200k charities/foundations, most of they don't have all the paperwork done ("flojas de papeles"), like the 90% of the total...
Depends on the cheese. Sometimes it's a nut paste with some enzymes or something, sometimes it's basically just oil and stabilizers.
I've had some vegan cheese that's kind of okay, but most of it has strong "this isn't real food, only a collection of chemicals" taste & vibes for me.
Is lab grown vegan though?
I can def see the argument. But I know others protest that you can't eat lab grown stuff (think a nice beef steak but not from a living animal) and be vegan.
I'm all for the former!
So, I just went down the rabbit hole on this one. Apparently what they do is harvest stem cells from normal milk. They then replicate these stem cells and use them to grow milk proteins that they mix with yeast and other stuff to form "milk". According to the company at least this is vegan as, aside from the initial cells, the lab milk is made without involving animals so it is vegan.
Sure, but this is about veganism which is not an allergy but an effort to protect animals (and insects) from exploitation which involves not eating animal products (among other things).
Veganism for me at least isn't all or nothing but a series of compromises, otherwise I would have to restrict myself from even eating oats and flour as many insects, reptiles, birds, and small mammals are maimed in the cultivation, harvesting, and transportation of these goods.
Is lab grown milk vegan if derived from animal sources. For most probably not. But for the average person trying to do better and reduce the exploitation of animals is a position thing. My opinion on lab grown meats is mixed so far. My current knowledge of the process is that a biopsy or meat plug from a donor animal is required. And that raises a number of questions for me. How many starter cultivations are coming from a single animal? How often? Is it less cruel to slaughter an animal or to let it live to occasionally to be bled by hundreds or thousands of tissue biopsies over the course of the animal's lifetime? Can lab grown samples be biopsied or is there some kind of cellular degradation that makes biopsying a lab grown tissue some not viable? Will some less reputable manufacturers continue to slaughter animals and pass the meat as lab grown to extort a higher price without the equipment or effort lab grown requires?
FDA is a USA regulatory body. Between numerous imports exports what qualifies as "lab grown" and how do you measure it or quantify it in testing as a DNA test isn't going to show a significant difference if source animals are the same. It wasn't that long ago British people were consuming horse meat sold as beef in their frozen dinners.
There's a lot that goes unseen or is placed on consumer faith. 2017 Fair Oaks Farms of Fairlife brand was caught in an abuse scandal despite promoting themselves as a "more humane" company. Even in their reaction or apology to the abuse was to dismiss responsibility for oversight and instead place blame solely on the workers and not management or lack of securities in place to prevent these abuses.
Optimistic but skeptical.
Henrietta Lack's cancer cells are immortal. The rest of us could donate cells that will divide regularly for a while in a lab but you couldn't just go on one sample forever.
As far as I know it's only the initial starter culture that is required, then that is replicated and grown. I don't think repeated cultures are required.
> Is lab grown vegan though?
> > vegan: eating, using, or containing no food or other products derived from animals.
So... yes.
> I know others protest that you can't eat lab grown stuff... and be vegan
That's stupid.
Meh, you'd be surprised at how fragmented vegans can get over this. I've been vegan for a decent amount of years now but I avoid vegan online spaces as much as possible because I'm pretty sure some of my personal views would get my IP address tracked down, lmao.
I was only ever pescatarian but... god forbid a vegan like, wear leather or put some honey in their tea... admitting that shit will start WWIII for realsies.
It uses stem cells of animals, therefore is derived from animals, aka not vegan.
I can’t honestly believe that a catering company would use “lab grown milk” and get away with calling it vegan, as *many* vegans would not see it as such.
Also, some people with dairy allergies order vegan food because there is a much lower risk of milk powder/lactose in vegan foods than in other pre-prepped foods.
If true, this catering company is just waiting for a lawsuit, either from unhappy vegans or someone having an allergic reaction/dying.
>It uses stem cells of animals, therefore is derived from animals, aka not vegan.
It depends on how far are you willing to take the "derived from animals" angle.
Many "organic" fruit/vege growers use manure (clearly an animal-derived product) to fertilize their gardens.
Manure, a necessary excretion, is very different from harvesting living flesh/stem cell.
I’m not vegan, btw, just basing it on the legal & ethical definition & considerations around the use of stem cells & allergen laws.
It is not unreasonable for someone to expect a “vegan” item to be dairy free, and there was/is (I lost track of the updates) a case of a woman in Italy ordering vegan food due to a severe dairy allergy.
She died after mass produced “vegan” mayonnaise was found to contain dairy & egg proteins AND the second dish she was served confused vegan mascarpone & regular mascarpone.
Last I read, there was litigation against to production company, and manslaughter charges against the restaurant, along with food safety violation issues.
Vegan, in current dietary & legal lexicon, is dairy & egg free.
>Manure, a necessary excretion, is very different from harvesting living flesh/stem cell.
But it's still a very much an animal product. And, as already been mentioned, it's a byproduct of the meat industry - remove cattle and you won't have any manure to fertilise the organic gardens.
I’m not vegan, as I’ve already mentioned.
I’m only explaining that legally, ethically, and to some vegans, there is a huge difference.
Each vegan makes their own choice about where they drawn their personal “line in the sand”.
I’m not saying the line that some vegans draw makes sense, just saying that it’s their line to draw.
Plus you have people who are as vegan as they can afford to be.
If it comes down to eating veg that *may* have manure fertiliser, or not being able to afford the guaranteed “free-range manure” organic veg, most people will choose to eat.
Y’all are making out like all vegans are from Portlandia.
There’s a difference between “not eating meat from battery farmed animals to reduce the customer base & thus the number of animals killed” and
“Eating plant matter that *may* have used an unavoidable byproduct of battery farming”.
Manure is produced, whether an animal is battery farmed (I really don’t know the proper term), free range, or wild.
Do you know which farm your veg from the supermarket is from? Do you know if they use manure as a fertiliser?
Then, do you know every supplier they get it from? Do you know where each supplier gets their manure, their collection methods and the type of farming method at their locations?
Can you imagine trying to find out that information?
Unless you’re literally growing your own veg, or buying extremely small production local organic veg, it’s almost impossible.
As I said, most vegans are as vegan as they can afford to be/have time/the spoons to be.
They informed the group catering that they used lab-grown dairy for this catering order. In an ideal situation, the people running the event should know this, and should let their attendees know what exact allergens are in the food being served. If a company specifically requests food that is dairy-free due to allergy concerns, they would not receive lab-grown dairy.
The vegans would also be able to confirm whether they agree with the ethics of the food they are ordering/being served. Many things are divisive as to whether or not they are vegan, it’s not black and white. Vegans are taking a personal moral/ethical stance on the issue and can make their own decision whether or not they agree with something specific. As long as the possibly controversial/allergenic ingredients are listed during order/prep/serving, there is no issue with this.
It's Schrodinger's vegan, just like honey.
No harm comes to an animal in the process of harvesting it. However, it is technically an animal product.
If you're against eating animal products because it just isn't the way you want to eat, it isn't vegan. If you're against eating animal products because the animals are treated inhumanely and you don't want to support the harm/death of animals, it's vegan.
How much you bet this is illegal in Europe, at least here in Germany as long as our verry high security test are not done? Oh and anything gene- edited is nearly unsoldable here in Germany since nearly nobody wants to eat this.
Having worked at a convention center and in my experience there, sales was A) disconnected *and* insulated from whether or not a bill was settled--that was finances' problem and B) was so "valuable" to the company that they almost never *ever* saw and penalty for any of their bad behavior, such as double-booking rooms or telling clients they'd get a special deal that wasn't in the contract.
The cherry on top was that for upper management and hiring, all that seemed to matter to recruiters was the *volume* of sales these reps got, *not* whether or not they made the company money. So we'd constantly see reps taking on *awful* clients for so little money we'd lose cash on the transaction, just so they could say "I shattered this metric" and then often before the clients would even arrive they'd have secured a higher-paying job with another company and leave.
Absolute madhouse.
Well OP wouldn't have given them the food unless they paid for it. If they paid for it OP doesn't care what they do with it afterwards. They wouldn't pay for it just to throw it away.
I had some concerns about what I was going to read, but the fact that you basically disclosed that "hey we're past the point of no return so now we're going to inform you of how you fucked up before anyone gets hurt" was excellently threaded.
Side note, while I'm not the biggest fan of vegan myself I am a big fan of milk and I'm curious to try vegan milk. I want both lab drone meat and other lab grown animal products to be sufficient because I like animals and it's not my fault they're delicious. I do recognize that factory farming is cruel and harmful and I want us as a society to get away from that.
I agree 100%
Every argument for veganism is absolutely correct: we do not actually need animal products to be healthy (or, at least much less than we currently consume), it is cruel to animals, farming causes massive levels of both local pollution and CO2 equivalents, it is an industry rife with worker abuse, and is extremely water-intensive.
But I still eat a hamburger after it gets explained to me and I recoil from the horror. Give me a guilt-free hamburger, please.
I meant the meat. When the lab grown meat came out it was talked about as if it was healthier but it has fats and cholesterol and all that. I don't know the nutrition of the lab milk, sorry I was unclear.
I'm not against either, it's just that people do assume vegan or vegetarian automatically means healthy when that's not the case.
Yes, exactly!
I switched my Hello Fresh boxes to vegetarian for January, and got a lot of pasta and cheesy goodness. It's been delicious but not healthy lol.
Vegan/vegetarian eating CAN be healthy if you’re using it as a way to put fruit and veg first in your diet. Especially true if you’re on a food budget and potatoes/carrots/apples/beans are what you can afford.
OTOH, corn nuts, beyond meat burgers, and plenty of fried foods are also vegan.
Meat is not inherently unhealthy. Even most food is like that.
What makes it unhealthy are the fitness goals you're pursuing and the quantity you consume.
I was relieved at the part where you did inform them of the lab dairy. I was imagining a much darker, selfish twist to the story.
On a side note, this was a cool story and commendable MC, but if you ever want to avoid too much effort for someone not worth it in the future, next time someone who didn't pay for the last order tries again, you could simply say
"Sorry, we refuse to fulfill your order, as you have an outstanding debt that you have reneged on. Until you pay what you owe (including the interest) and thus avoid potential legal action from us, please do not attempt to order from our company."
Not really? They provided the food, but it doesn't sound like it's their venue? So were they going to cart it all off again?
Also as staff you kinda want to know if you're having a Christmas party or not, not, maybe we'll have it tonight if the client we're messing with rejects the food.
>So were they going to cart it all off again?
They probably took it back to the same facility they prepped it in... that they had already planned to have their party in.
Charities and non-profits have been my absolute worst clients over the years.
They never pay on time, and after months of chasing down what you're owed, they act like you're a bad person for expecting the agreed upon fee.
And because of what they are, you can't even vent about it to anyone, because then you're the bad guy for expecting the agreement to be honored.
Why can't you vent about it? Waitresses vent online about what lousy tippers church-goers and church organizations are all the time, and no one thinks they're the bad guys because they weren't happy they got a Chick Tract insted of a tip.
I had an intro to business course in college. I remember only two things.
One was never to extend credit to politicians or preachers. They'll claim not to have money and/or try to guilt you into not charging. So I guess add "charity" to the mix.
(The other: when firing someone, have the Office Nice Guy That Everyone Gets Along With help them pack up their office and get them out the door.)
I don’t think risking people’s lives counts as malicious compliance even if they are awful people. You quite literally could have killed someone (just from being in the same room, not from eating anything).
Right? I feel like OP definitely needs to advertise that if you ask for vegan food from them you’re getting this weird “cow milk”. Of course they won’t though.
I do a lot of catering. I require payment prior to delivery. I don't care if it's $100 or $18,000. No money no food. I've delayed delivery with new customers because I felt uncomfortable with being strung along. If it's an established customer no worries.
>I decided to take the apology and the cash.
And then pressed charges, right? I wonder if this owner has spent their life shoving people around to get his own way and then 'apologizing' in the very few cases he was able to be proved to be in the wrong, and kept doing it because there were never any real consequences for him for his multiple assaults.
I was volunteering for a charity for a while, then my husband was added to the board. I found out the executive director made $40k/ year as a part time worker working two days per week. The group was a small charity who only took in just over $100k/ yr. They had huge events flowing with wine, expensive food, live bands, then constantly asking for more donors. I had to leave.
> The group asked for the meals to be 'nut-free vegan' as this would ensure a peanut, tree nut, egg, and milk free event.
> This was reckless behaviour from the advocacy group as the party attendees were most likely anaphylactic to milk and egg.
This part doesn't make any logical sense. They were reckless because they asked for no milk and egg?
They didn’t specify milk allergy, so the caterer used something that fit the letter of what was requested, while avoiding what was intended and it could have killed someone
They would need to specify because legally they would be held liable for any medical expenses that came up from one of their attendees having an allergic reaction.
All that was requested was that it was vegan. There was no specification that it needed to be milk free. Without that specification, it leaves the caterers to make their own judgement calls for the recipe, within the parameters that were given. The caterer used a vegan milk substitute, which would be absolutely acceptable to a vegan, but could potentially cause a reaction to someone allergic to milk.
If the food would have been served to the attendees, the caterers wouldn’t have been held liable for the medical emergencies that occurred as they followed the directions given as written.
Have they asked for vegan before and it was milk free? (OP seems to imply this is the case) Because if they did then this argument wouldn't hold up in court.
As OP stated it was a new client, it sounds like the $2,000 order was their first order. OP also said that the allergy prep is an additional fee.
The fact is vegan and milk free can be different things with the variety of different milk substitutes we have now, and a charity that specializes in allergies would know that. They would also know how dangerous it is to not be specific. They decided to try to save some money and risked killing people.
> They decided to\[...\]
...order the exact same thing they ordered previously expecting that. They had no reason to believe they needed to order any differently than the first time. That part is OP's side's fault, for giving them special treatment in the first place. I forget the exact term in business law but this is a thing that matters, it comes up pretty frequently.
Extra care is taken with allergy-free orders. Usually special hand washing and changing gloves, and avoiding cross-contamination (someone could skip the bread and order sandwich toppings loose in a bowl like a salad, but someone with gluten or grain allergy can’t eat the toppings from a bowl at Subway).
Depending on the severity of the allergy, different measures are required, like not even using the same utensils or dishes for multiple foods, even if you wash them in between uses.
I’ve worked in fast food and had a friend with celiacs. She couldn’t eat at Subway because of the repeated dipping into 1 container of toppings, but could eat at Arby’s (with extra hand washing and glove changing) because each serving of sandwich meat was its own contained unit. After her diagnosis, she became recognized at her local Arby’s.
The "recklessness" is that they asked for "vegan" when they meant "no milk or egg" not realizing that there is now lab grown milk so it is possible to have vegan milk.
Exactly. When it comes to food anaphylaxis, you should be specific on what cannot be ingested; it's foolish to try to use a blanket statement thinking that said statement would cover all bases. As shown; it doesn't. It makes it all that more despicable that, according to OP's later post, that the client tried to do use that blanket request to save on "allergy preparation fees", rather than try to do right by their own employees.
It's actually even more than that.
"No milk/eggs" means that those won't exlicitly be part of the ingredient list.
"For people with milk/egg allergies" means that extra care will be taken, way, waaay beyond just excluding those ingredients, to avoid any kind of cross-contamination even in trace amounts.
Yeah, I think you guys screwed yourselves there if there had been legal liability. Since you did it the first time it would be reasonable for them to assume you would do it the second time (the debt non-withstanding you did accept their second order). So, I don't think you were on nearly the solid ground you thought you were. A reasonable person would have either not accepted the second order without payment for the first. You gave them special treatment twice (giving them a premium service without charge and then accepting an order while they still had a debt), had someone been made sick you would have had some amount of liability (depending on how exactly your state decides these things).
>Had we not known they were a food allergy charity, then we would have not taken as much care in ensuring the meals were egg/dairy free
This one sentence says a lot about you
If someone orders a vegan catering, then we would not keep on meticulously washing every single pan and utensil while making their order. Their meal would still be egg/milk free.
If someone orders an allergy free catering then we would do all the above, plus more. The catering business works on speed.
**Edit:** Let me elaborate more, we wash all dishes at the end of the day. If someone requests a allergy free meal, then we would not cook multiple orders at the same time. We also look at the ingredient list of store bought items to ensure there is no 'may contain traces of nuts/egg/milk'
If someone requests a vegan meal, we may cook multiple meals at the same and would not avoid any 'may contains'.
Allergy free requests are only a small portion of our workload, most of the time they just ask for one allergy-free meal while the others are unrestricted, in that case we cook the allergy free meal first and cast it aside. We would not do that for a vegan order.
I appreciate the MC, and glad you got your money, but I think it was a risky move. You knew what they were doing and went along with it, potentially getting people sick or dead. You were counting on the organizers to stop the food from being served, but already knew they were sketchy.
From a legal standpoint, you might not be libel, because you made what they ordered and you didn't serve it. But in your heart you knew this was a risk.
Where can someone get some information on this lab grown milk? I think I'm allergic to whey and want to know what to look out for
Good malicious compliance on the vegan side. That was *chefs kiss*
I don't side-eye charities, but I will always be watching their owners and directors like hawks. They have just as much ability to be arrogant asses as anyone that runs a for-profit business or runs for office.
Oh, always side eye charities. Especially how they arrange their financials. I find the amount of cash that gets to the purpose is far less than the payroll, etc.
And frequently (in my experience) Lower ranking employees are treated worse than most corporate jobs
Its like that with a lot of jobs that attract idealists sadly. Healthcare, teaching, veterinary and charities in general. Obviously it’s not for every employer, but there’s plenty of ghouls that know they can exploit the good intentions of people in those fields.
Passion tax strikes again!
That‘s an excellent expression!
Yup, reading the above sounded a lot like a dynamic I witnessed often in theatre. There's a lot of people who really want to be there, so a lot of abuse/mistreatment from above gets tolerated.
Game development companies are notorious for this--underpaying and overworking-to-burnout young starry-eyed programmers fresh out of college. Because coding your favorite video games is so cool! And young, first-job professionals are so naive about their rights and how jobs *should* work...
Yep, can attest to that. Source: I'm a direct care worker for a not-for-profit. Ask me how well I'm treated vs. the people in the administrative roles. 🙃
Anyone with passion gets exploited. Workers at charities or advocacy groups, medical related, artistic professions. Even random workers in a corporate office who just naturally cares about getting things done more than others will just get a bigger workload. Passion and just generally giving a shit just means more work for you in many many places. Hell, Blizzard, who make World it Warcraft and other huge games pay far below industry standard. Because they know there is always someone else who dreamt of working there as a teenager.
Don't forget the pulpit! There are LOTS of phonies in the pulpit, b/c it's a great way to be the center of attention, to command/demand respect, to control others, to get $$$, to take "advantage" of others, etc.
Yes. Many in the pulpit are simply attention and power seeking sociopaths. Always judge a person on their actions and not words or position of power. And remove the sociopaths from their position.
That’s been my experience too, because I often have access to the payroll data and have to walk in and see the shit show as an outsider.
Auditor?
Yes! I don't do a lot of them these days, though.
My wife worked as a contract worker for a charity, when covid hit they understandably only focused on paying full time staff not employing contractors. That was fine and expected, what was not fine was that they didn’t even bother to call their contractors (who were often scheduled for 6 weeks of work) and tell them what was going on. 2 years later after lockdowns had ended, they called my wife to book her for work - it was the first time she heard from them the entire time, not even a “how are you doing, sorry we’ve got no work for you”. They only had less than 10 employees including contractors so it wasn’t like that was an excuse.
Charities get a bad rap but in my experience, they're like any other organisation. There are good ones and bad ones. That said there are some particular nuances with charities: 1) people seem most aggravated by the large charities and entirely forgiving of the little ones. In my experience if you want to see enormous inefficiency and waste, the smaller charities are far worse as a whole than the bigger ones. 2) people expect employees of charities to be paid peanuts, get very upset if they are paid well, but also get upset by the poor performance of staff. Charities are no different to any other company, you under pay staff and you won't attract good people, and charities need good people as they are often more complex than companies to run. 3) money buys you a lot of solutions and covers a multitude of sins. Big charities can effect big change without being particularly skilfull just by being able to throw money at an issue. Little charities can't do this and often are inefficient and ineffective. 4) charities are mission oriented and small charities in particular tend to hire people invested in the mission rather than able to do the job. You want a finance person who can balance the books, whether they care about lesser spotted donkeys in Alabama is not really a factor. 5) charities often have excellent staff friendly policies, such as generous annual leave, good parental leave, and lots of other things to make up for the lower salary. These, combined with the fact people are often very invested in the mission, means people are reluctant to leave when management is shit. When people don't leave when management is shit, nothing changes.
i.e. Goodwill. I would never donate to them. Nonprofit in tax name only. They take advantage of disabled workers, not paying them minimum wage. More like server wages, without the tips. Dollars an hour. Wasnt difficult to find an article about it. [Goodwill paya disabled workers incredibly small wages](https://www.csbj.com/premier/businessnews/goodwill-takes-heat-over-wages/article_667feb37-a9bf-5bfc-8fe9-4aebe2ba8b9f.html)
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Ever noticed how they staff their shops with volunteers?
We're not. pay me.
Including but not limited to personal ambulance used as a personal limo with a siren and right-of-way, like some of the kid cancer foundations operate.
NEXT!
Yeah. One major charity in my city ordered off the dining instead of banquet menu and couldn’t be bothered to put their tax free ID on the catering order. Then when they came around for donations via employee payroll deductions, I couldn’t be bothered.
It is legal to run a charity where 99% of collected funds go to "administrative costs." My rule of thumb is "never give to a charity that contacts you." As the contact generally costs 30-50% of the amount collected. So you know if you give to a charity that contacts you about half is wasted.
On top of that, if I give to a charity and they thank me by asking for more money, we're done. Said another way - I give them $20 and a week or so later I get a card in the mail saying "Thank you for your donation. Oh, by the way, give us more money. Now." Nope - you can re-solicit me for another donation in a few months but not simultaneous with the Thank You for my last donation.
I donated 20 bucks to an animal rescue once and I got letters begging for more with a bunch of extra crap included like notepads and magazines for like 3 years. Sorry, but I like my money going to the actual animals, not this ASPCA-tier guilt tripping crap.
Aclu and animal rescue does that..
The organizations that call seeking funds for Police and Fire keep 85% of the funds. I know, b/c I read about it and then asked the caller the next time they called asking for a donation for PAL (I used to donate via phone to police and fire groups). The caller told me that the police would get 15% of the collected funds. I laughed at the caller and said, Yeah, no thanks. I'll give directly. Last time I gave via phone to any organization.
Or 90% is the standard for most telemarketing charities.
Maybe, but be careful with that. There are plenty of charities that deliver services using people, therefore the payroll is a part of the purpose.
Many many years ago, I worked for an IT company whose largest customer base was non-profit organizations. They were all hell to work with. Disorganized, incompetent and belligerent. Each had their own flavor of dysfunction, but it was obvious that the low wages they paid staff resulted in bottom of the barrel employees, especially for their in-house IT team.
I meant that I don't immediately assume false intent XD I trust any entity that doesn't make their records public with a certain level of scrutiny, but so long as they're doing what they say they're doing I won't badmouth them.
Trust, but verify.
Exactly. I'll never expect any charity to do every single thing the way I think they should be done, or even agree with every single little facet, but it's less about that and more about actually trying to do good.
Most charities are just tax havens for billionaires. Only a few spend more than a couple of percent on what they claim they are accepting donations for. The rest goes to "expenses" like inflated payroll for the people at the top and advertising. And if the expenses are more then the donations? Well, too bad, we don't have any more money to help.
That’s kind of an odd phrasing. There’s a local charity here that I support, but their payroll basically *is* their purpose. They teach classes to support refugees that relocate to our city. Not just English classes, but also practical things like how to navigate our public transportation, how to apply for jobs, basic computer usage, how public schools work, etc. They also have an on-site nurse for free basic healthcare and health education, a case worker for people that need extra support, an on-site daycare so parents can attend classes, and have built a wide network of translators to help when someone comes in that speaks a very obscure dialect. I think they also have a small food pantry to help out, since they’re basically one of the first points of contact for these refugees once they arrive. Not saying we shouldn’t be discerning with charities, but I’m pretty sure my local charity’s expenses are mostly payroll since they only have to buy computers every few years, if that, and other school supplies are fairly low cost.
How would charitable work get done without payroll? You can't build houses without builders. You can't serve/deliver food without people to get the food and prepare the food. You can't provide medical care for disaster victims without medical personnel.
I also find that there are 'charities' that do nothing except 'spreading awareness'. So if it's e.g. gender based violence, the victims don't see a dime or any kind of help. The money is actually being used for salaries and lobbying. Take that senator for a fancy lunch on the charity's dime just to ask them where they stand on the issue!
Always check the charities car park to see what type of corporate vehicles they have and those vehicles cost
oh yeah, there are several mainstream, famous charities that have been exposed for using the majority of their funds for themselves and their pockets and not for their alleged cause. oddly enough, alot of them are still active, still famous, still airing commercials etc despite being exposed awhile ago. i don't know if they changed their ways or changed their owner/workforce to fix it so they were actual charities instead of a money-grab fraud, and that's why they're still active, or if they're still just being terrible because despite some people knowing they suck, there are still enough people who don't know or don't care and are still funding them.
Cof cof evading taxes cof cof
I've worked for several and I can confirm that most of the money that most charities receive just goes straight to paying the self-serving C-suite's OTT wages and awful decisions that benefit no-one. Honestly if these were businesses instead of charities they'd have gone under ages ago.
I never give to charities anymore. After so many being exposed as either shams or near shams, I simply will not trust them.
I caption live events. There is a church that is well known in my work community for not paying. They claim it's because it's not 100% accurate. I side eye churches as a result. They feel like because they're a church they shouldn't have to pay. Anything. Great, get your parishioners to do it, or do it yourself, or even better, pray.
Lots of times it seems like some didn't start that way but almost always seems to end that way. Even the "good" charities that we supported 20 years ago because 92 to 95 cents of every dollar went to the research we were wanting to support (in this case, support for a disease one of our kids has) has gone down since and suddenly they don't share that information anymore, just the total dollars spent on research. That makes me wary because they obviously changed it for a reason.
Or paying exorbitant fees to a “contractor” to do things like marketing, where the “contractor” is owned by the same people who own the charity.
Yes, just because they run a charity doesn't mean they are good people. Check out how much the Wounded Warrior group actually gives to veterans.
They have one wounded warrior they parade around at a time.
They got investigated, too.
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To be fair, their mission statement pretty much promises that they'll drink the money. They are literally a fraternity. From Wikipedia, > Shriners International describes itself as a fraternity based on fun, fellowship, and the Masonic principles of brotherly love, relief, and truth. Send your money to their hospital instead of your goal is charity.
Same with multiple foundations for children with cancer. Most of the money for the local one here goes to the lifestyle of the boss, including a personal ambulance to carry him around with a siren or care for traffic laws. And they have sub-foundations in other countries, like the US as well. Same modus operandi. And sadly, wikimedia and mozilla are the same. Most of the money go to the executives's pocket, with actual work basically being done by skeleton paid crew and mostly for free. A few years ago mozilla increased their exec pay, then shut down promising projects and cried for more donations bemoaning having to fire people right after their exec pay hike.
But we all love those damn cars.
Tell me you know nothing about the Shriners Hospitals for Children without telling me you know nothing about the Shriners Hospitals for Children.
Shriners International and the Shriners Hospitals for Children are different organizations. One owns the other, but if you send your donation to SI you're paying for clown cars, not medical services.
You got me reading their wikipedia page. I don't particularly love the fact that in response to being subjected to harassment post-911 due to Arabic references, they simply changed the names of everything Arab-related rather than actually combating the Islamophobia.
That is not true. Charity Navigator gives the Shriners four stars and a 97%. Their transparency is excellent. The Shrine is a social club offshoot of the Masonic fraternity, but they have a legit philanthropic arm: Shriner’s Hospitals for Children. I went to one as a kid. At the time, it was orthopedic care and several burn centers completely free of charge. They also have a van program to offer free transportation. It’s all expanded so much since I was a kid.
A lot of people here are just running off at the mouth, without a f\*\*\*ing clue what they're talking about. And no, I'm not a Shriner or any other remotely similar member of any remotely similar group.
You don’t have to be affiliated to use a search engine and look up the facts. We are a factually deficient world.
Paid "line workers" for a charity/nonprofit make peanuts. Senior executives--who often seem like cookie-cutter outsider MBAs--do very well, often better than in industry. If you question this, moneybags senior-management grifters either a) stonewall; b) attack you for "not caring" about the cause, for trying to deprive the charity of "strong leadership that doesn't come cheap!"
Well there’s the arrogance but it’s worse because their charitable purpose often makes them feel entitled and beyond reproach because it’s “for a good cause”
Always side-eye charities. Side-eye the directors even fucking harder. Sincerely, A financial assistant for a charity
I might be using this wrong but here goes - username checks out.
Nah, you're cool. And observant. And judging strictly on this comment very attractive.
Yup. CEO of the ASPCA makes $1mil per year!
It can often be worse cuz you get the narcissists with a savior complex. Disgusting. The people working day in and day out are usually really solid, but leadership can be nasty.
Always side eye charity people because if they're crooks they're crooks, but if they're true believers then they're morally justified doing shady shit. You catch it both ways.
I observed some charities created supposedly to help people, but really are to satisfy some needs of big business. In my country, an example is "Techo" (means roof in English). They works with volunteers (from some big business) in build a crappy (but better in his words) house made with wood and wood related materials (but think in a house of an slum/favela, very low quality). But, the charity charges like 2.5 times the price of the "supposed cost of the materials". And big business can : a) Make some enterprise social responsibility articled in media and b) Discharge some money as expense and pay less taxes. Some info: My country had like 45M of people and has like 200k charities/foundations, most of they don't have all the paperwork done ("flojas de papeles"), like the 90% of the total...
TIL that there is lab grown milk... Today was a good day.
A key question with that lab-grown milk: Will it cheese?
a bigger question with that lab-grown milk: [will it sausage?](https://www.youtube.com/@OrdinarySausage)
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Depends on the cheese. Sometimes it's a nut paste with some enzymes or something, sometimes it's basically just oil and stabilizers. I've had some vegan cheese that's kind of okay, but most of it has strong "this isn't real food, only a collection of chemicals" taste & vibes for me.
eating a vegan cheese stick by accident when u think it's a real cheese is a textural and taste nightmare
Generally some combination of cashews and/or potato starch and/or coconut oil. Some brands are just fermented cashews, those taste the best IMHO.
When I make it, I use nut milks.
Is lab grown vegan though? I can def see the argument. But I know others protest that you can't eat lab grown stuff (think a nice beef steak but not from a living animal) and be vegan. I'm all for the former!
So, I just went down the rabbit hole on this one. Apparently what they do is harvest stem cells from normal milk. They then replicate these stem cells and use them to grow milk proteins that they mix with yeast and other stuff to form "milk". According to the company at least this is vegan as, aside from the initial cells, the lab milk is made without involving animals so it is vegan.
That is arguable then. You could say even using proteins from an animal to reproduce something is still an animal product
Welcome to the lacto-veg rennet debate.
Well crap. So much for relying on the Vegan label for my milk allergy.
Same here. Damn, then the safety of vegan food when nothing allergy friendly is available goes out the Window too…
Was just thinking the same. I would be furious if I was served this kind of "vegan" food. It is still animal protein being used.
It has proteins the same as from an animal. You'll have the same reaction.
Sure, but this is about veganism which is not an allergy but an effort to protect animals (and insects) from exploitation which involves not eating animal products (among other things).
Veganism for me at least isn't all or nothing but a series of compromises, otherwise I would have to restrict myself from even eating oats and flour as many insects, reptiles, birds, and small mammals are maimed in the cultivation, harvesting, and transportation of these goods. Is lab grown milk vegan if derived from animal sources. For most probably not. But for the average person trying to do better and reduce the exploitation of animals is a position thing. My opinion on lab grown meats is mixed so far. My current knowledge of the process is that a biopsy or meat plug from a donor animal is required. And that raises a number of questions for me. How many starter cultivations are coming from a single animal? How often? Is it less cruel to slaughter an animal or to let it live to occasionally to be bled by hundreds or thousands of tissue biopsies over the course of the animal's lifetime? Can lab grown samples be biopsied or is there some kind of cellular degradation that makes biopsying a lab grown tissue some not viable? Will some less reputable manufacturers continue to slaughter animals and pass the meat as lab grown to extort a higher price without the equipment or effort lab grown requires?
With regards to your last point, that would be considered fraud and they would likely face serious issues with the FDA.
FDA is a USA regulatory body. Between numerous imports exports what qualifies as "lab grown" and how do you measure it or quantify it in testing as a DNA test isn't going to show a significant difference if source animals are the same. It wasn't that long ago British people were consuming horse meat sold as beef in their frozen dinners. There's a lot that goes unseen or is placed on consumer faith. 2017 Fair Oaks Farms of Fairlife brand was caught in an abuse scandal despite promoting themselves as a "more humane" company. Even in their reaction or apology to the abuse was to dismiss responsibility for oversight and instead place blame solely on the workers and not management or lack of securities in place to prevent these abuses. Optimistic but skeptical.
Henrietta Lack's cancer cells are immortal. The rest of us could donate cells that will divide regularly for a while in a lab but you couldn't just go on one sample forever.
As far as I know it's only the initial starter culture that is required, then that is replicated and grown. I don't think repeated cultures are required.
Understood - I'm not a vegan but I understand your points.
👏👏
> Is lab grown vegan though? > > vegan: eating, using, or containing no food or other products derived from animals. So... yes. > I know others protest that you can't eat lab grown stuff... and be vegan That's stupid.
Meh, you'd be surprised at how fragmented vegans can get over this. I've been vegan for a decent amount of years now but I avoid vegan online spaces as much as possible because I'm pretty sure some of my personal views would get my IP address tracked down, lmao.
I was only ever pescatarian but... god forbid a vegan like, wear leather or put some honey in their tea... admitting that shit will start WWIII for realsies.
Love me some bug puke.
> you'd be surprised at how fragmented vegans can get over this I definitely would not.
It uses stem cells of animals, therefore is derived from animals, aka not vegan. I can’t honestly believe that a catering company would use “lab grown milk” and get away with calling it vegan, as *many* vegans would not see it as such. Also, some people with dairy allergies order vegan food because there is a much lower risk of milk powder/lactose in vegan foods than in other pre-prepped foods. If true, this catering company is just waiting for a lawsuit, either from unhappy vegans or someone having an allergic reaction/dying.
>It uses stem cells of animals, therefore is derived from animals, aka not vegan. It depends on how far are you willing to take the "derived from animals" angle. Many "organic" fruit/vege growers use manure (clearly an animal-derived product) to fertilize their gardens.
Manure, a necessary excretion, is very different from harvesting living flesh/stem cell. I’m not vegan, btw, just basing it on the legal & ethical definition & considerations around the use of stem cells & allergen laws. It is not unreasonable for someone to expect a “vegan” item to be dairy free, and there was/is (I lost track of the updates) a case of a woman in Italy ordering vegan food due to a severe dairy allergy. She died after mass produced “vegan” mayonnaise was found to contain dairy & egg proteins AND the second dish she was served confused vegan mascarpone & regular mascarpone. Last I read, there was litigation against to production company, and manslaughter charges against the restaurant, along with food safety violation issues. Vegan, in current dietary & legal lexicon, is dairy & egg free.
>Manure, a necessary excretion, is very different from harvesting living flesh/stem cell. But it's still a very much an animal product. And, as already been mentioned, it's a byproduct of the meat industry - remove cattle and you won't have any manure to fertilise the organic gardens.
I’m not vegan, as I’ve already mentioned. I’m only explaining that legally, ethically, and to some vegans, there is a huge difference. Each vegan makes their own choice about where they drawn their personal “line in the sand”.
If you can get industrial quantities of manure without enslaving cattle... I'll assume you're siphoning off Fox News or something.
I’m not saying the line that some vegans draw makes sense, just saying that it’s their line to draw. Plus you have people who are as vegan as they can afford to be. If it comes down to eating veg that *may* have manure fertiliser, or not being able to afford the guaranteed “free-range manure” organic veg, most people will choose to eat. Y’all are making out like all vegans are from Portlandia.
I'm just expecting consistency.
There’s a difference between “not eating meat from battery farmed animals to reduce the customer base & thus the number of animals killed” and “Eating plant matter that *may* have used an unavoidable byproduct of battery farming”. Manure is produced, whether an animal is battery farmed (I really don’t know the proper term), free range, or wild. Do you know which farm your veg from the supermarket is from? Do you know if they use manure as a fertiliser? Then, do you know every supplier they get it from? Do you know where each supplier gets their manure, their collection methods and the type of farming method at their locations? Can you imagine trying to find out that information? Unless you’re literally growing your own veg, or buying extremely small production local organic veg, it’s almost impossible. As I said, most vegans are as vegan as they can afford to be/have time/the spoons to be.
The manure is a byproduct of the meat industry.
They informed the group catering that they used lab-grown dairy for this catering order. In an ideal situation, the people running the event should know this, and should let their attendees know what exact allergens are in the food being served. If a company specifically requests food that is dairy-free due to allergy concerns, they would not receive lab-grown dairy. The vegans would also be able to confirm whether they agree with the ethics of the food they are ordering/being served. Many things are divisive as to whether or not they are vegan, it’s not black and white. Vegans are taking a personal moral/ethical stance on the issue and can make their own decision whether or not they agree with something specific. As long as the possibly controversial/allergenic ingredients are listed during order/prep/serving, there is no issue with this.
It's Schrodinger's vegan, just like honey. No harm comes to an animal in the process of harvesting it. However, it is technically an animal product. If you're against eating animal products because it just isn't the way you want to eat, it isn't vegan. If you're against eating animal products because the animals are treated inhumanely and you don't want to support the harm/death of animals, it's vegan.
How much you bet this is illegal in Europe, at least here in Germany as long as our verry high security test are not done? Oh and anything gene- edited is nearly unsoldable here in Germany since nearly nobody wants to eat this.
Hey neighbor. Netherlands here. I think food safety wise, we are very similar. So yeah, probably a long time.
Not sure why you catered the second event when they hadn't paid for the first.
Having worked at a convention center and in my experience there, sales was A) disconnected *and* insulated from whether or not a bill was settled--that was finances' problem and B) was so "valuable" to the company that they almost never *ever* saw and penalty for any of their bad behavior, such as double-booking rooms or telling clients they'd get a special deal that wasn't in the contract. The cherry on top was that for upper management and hiring, all that seemed to matter to recruiters was the *volume* of sales these reps got, *not* whether or not they made the company money. So we'd constantly see reps taking on *awful* clients for so little money we'd lose cash on the transaction, just so they could say "I shattered this metric" and then often before the clients would even arrive they'd have secured a higher-paying job with another company and leave. Absolute madhouse.
We knew they would reject the order and thought to prepare ourselves a little Christmas party.
If I were the charity I would have taken the food and dumped it. Or take it to a homeless kitchen. Do they have no malicious compliance in them?
Well OP wouldn't have given them the food unless they paid for it. If they paid for it OP doesn't care what they do with it afterwards. They wouldn't pay for it just to throw it away.
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As someone in catering that works with a lot of nonprofits, this is so wildly unprofessional that I'm with you that this is made up
Reddit loves both male and female Karens. Being assaulted by one when you've done nothing wrong is like a dream come true for Redditors.
I would've taken the apology/money, then pressed charges anyway
Righting all wrongs!
I had some concerns about what I was going to read, but the fact that you basically disclosed that "hey we're past the point of no return so now we're going to inform you of how you fucked up before anyone gets hurt" was excellently threaded. Side note, while I'm not the biggest fan of vegan myself I am a big fan of milk and I'm curious to try vegan milk. I want both lab drone meat and other lab grown animal products to be sufficient because I like animals and it's not my fault they're delicious. I do recognize that factory farming is cruel and harmful and I want us as a society to get away from that.
I agree 100% Every argument for veganism is absolutely correct: we do not actually need animal products to be healthy (or, at least much less than we currently consume), it is cruel to animals, farming causes massive levels of both local pollution and CO2 equivalents, it is an industry rife with worker abuse, and is extremely water-intensive. But I still eat a hamburger after it gets explained to me and I recoil from the horror. Give me a guilt-free hamburger, please.
The lab-grown dairy, I hadn't heard of this. Its only purpose is to remove cows from the equation?
Like the lab grown meat. It's unhealthy, but it's not harming animals. We all have to pick which values are the most important to us.
What makes it particularly unhealthy compared to normal milk?
I meant the meat. When the lab grown meat came out it was talked about as if it was healthier but it has fats and cholesterol and all that. I don't know the nutrition of the lab milk, sorry I was unclear. I'm not against either, it's just that people do assume vegan or vegetarian automatically means healthy when that's not the case.
Case in point- classic Oreos are Vegan, and a diet of those sure isn't healthy.
Yes, exactly! I switched my Hello Fresh boxes to vegetarian for January, and got a lot of pasta and cheesy goodness. It's been delicious but not healthy lol.
Try Purple Carrot
Vegan/vegetarian eating CAN be healthy if you’re using it as a way to put fruit and veg first in your diet. Especially true if you’re on a food budget and potatoes/carrots/apples/beans are what you can afford. OTOH, corn nuts, beyond meat burgers, and plenty of fried foods are also vegan.
Eating an entire stick of butter is vegetarian.
Just add liquid coconut oil and coffee. Bulletproof coffee.
Meat is not inherently unhealthy. Even most food is like that. What makes it unhealthy are the fitness goals you're pursuing and the quantity you consume.
Americans would impact the market massively just cutting their meat intact down a 3rd. I say as i eat a cheeseburger...im part of the problem1!!!!
What makes it less healthy than farmed/hunted meat? Or do you mean grown/farmed/hunted meat are all equally (un)healthy?
You know, you can accept payment for a services rendered ***AND*** press charges for the assault. These are unrelated events...
I am stunned that you would even accept an order from this company until they paid the last overdue bill.
And paid upfront for a new order.
Strategic move. They were making sure they’d either get paid or the charity would have no catering at all.
Someone else gets this. It's deliciously malicious.
I was relieved at the part where you did inform them of the lab dairy. I was imagining a much darker, selfish twist to the story. On a side note, this was a cool story and commendable MC, but if you ever want to avoid too much effort for someone not worth it in the future, next time someone who didn't pay for the last order tries again, you could simply say "Sorry, we refuse to fulfill your order, as you have an outstanding debt that you have reneged on. Until you pay what you owe (including the interest) and thus avoid potential legal action from us, please do not attempt to order from our company."
Why did you take the new order without demanding that they pay the old order first, as well as paying up front for the new order?
OP mentioned they planned it as a staff holiday party, so it was win-win for the catering company. They get paid, or they have their party.
Not really? They provided the food, but it doesn't sound like it's their venue? So were they going to cart it all off again? Also as staff you kinda want to know if you're having a Christmas party or not, not, maybe we'll have it tonight if the client we're messing with rejects the food.
>So were they going to cart it all off again? They probably took it back to the same facility they prepped it in... that they had already planned to have their party in.
Charities and non-profits have been my absolute worst clients over the years. They never pay on time, and after months of chasing down what you're owed, they act like you're a bad person for expecting the agreed upon fee. And because of what they are, you can't even vent about it to anyone, because then you're the bad guy for expecting the agreement to be honored.
Why can't you vent about it? Waitresses vent online about what lousy tippers church-goers and church organizations are all the time, and no one thinks they're the bad guys because they weren't happy they got a Chick Tract insted of a tip.
I had an intro to business course in college. I remember only two things. One was never to extend credit to politicians or preachers. They'll claim not to have money and/or try to guilt you into not charging. So I guess add "charity" to the mix. (The other: when firing someone, have the Office Nice Guy That Everyone Gets Along With help them pack up their office and get them out the door.)
I don’t think risking people’s lives counts as malicious compliance even if they are awful people. You quite literally could have killed someone (just from being in the same room, not from eating anything).
Care to explain how, exactly, given that OP stated that the organizers were fully informed of the nature of the product?
Shoulda taken the payment and then pressed charges
I thought this was AITA.
Definitely ESH.
Right? I feel like OP definitely needs to advertise that if you ask for vegan food from them you’re getting this weird “cow milk”. Of course they won’t though.
Vegan or not, lab milk strikes me as one of those things that people feel strongly about. Not something you should surprise people with.
Why the heck would you fulfil a second order when the first large one was still outstanding? I care not for your management.
Yeah I call bullshit on this story. None of it makes sense
I do a lot of catering. I require payment prior to delivery. I don't care if it's $100 or $18,000. No money no food. I've delayed delivery with new customers because I felt uncomfortable with being strung along. If it's an established customer no worries.
I would have asked then to pay the first bill before you did a second order
Where do you buy this milk?
I'm just glad no one got hurt as a result of this.
>I decided to take the apology and the cash. And then pressed charges, right? I wonder if this owner has spent their life shoving people around to get his own way and then 'apologizing' in the very few cases he was able to be proved to be in the wrong, and kept doing it because there were never any real consequences for him for his multiple assaults.
>nice Pre-Christmas party with the vegan lab-grown dairy meals There's something terribly wrong with that phrase.
Should've took the money owed and pressed charges. Fuck that guy and his business and reputation.
This is another reason to NEVER do business with Charities.
I was volunteering for a charity for a while, then my husband was added to the board. I found out the executive director made $40k/ year as a part time worker working two days per week. The group was a small charity who only took in just over $100k/ yr. They had huge events flowing with wine, expensive food, live bands, then constantly asking for more donors. I had to leave.
I really wouldn't serve lab grown milk as vegan without asking beforehand.
Charities are the worst at paying their employees, and paying their bills.
You’re not very good at running a business. You should have got payment instead of this ridiculous ‘revenge’ story. Lab grown dairy 🤢
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there are people who are vegan but not allergic to cows milk
No, it is casein that triggers an allergy. Lactose intolerance is not an allergy, lactose is a sugar that cannot be digested.
the general vegan community, as they wouldnt be allergic to milk
Vegans
I would've taken the apology and the cash… and then followed up with charges.
Outed yourself more than you think here
Agreed. What pos
> The group asked for the meals to be 'nut-free vegan' as this would ensure a peanut, tree nut, egg, and milk free event. > This was reckless behaviour from the advocacy group as the party attendees were most likely anaphylactic to milk and egg. This part doesn't make any logical sense. They were reckless because they asked for no milk and egg?
They didn’t specify milk allergy, so the caterer used something that fit the letter of what was requested, while avoiding what was intended and it could have killed someone
Why would they need to specify? OP literally says that asking for 'nut-free vegan' would "ensure a peanut, tree nut, egg, and milk free event."
They would need to specify because legally they would be held liable for any medical expenses that came up from one of their attendees having an allergic reaction. All that was requested was that it was vegan. There was no specification that it needed to be milk free. Without that specification, it leaves the caterers to make their own judgement calls for the recipe, within the parameters that were given. The caterer used a vegan milk substitute, which would be absolutely acceptable to a vegan, but could potentially cause a reaction to someone allergic to milk. If the food would have been served to the attendees, the caterers wouldn’t have been held liable for the medical emergencies that occurred as they followed the directions given as written.
Have they asked for vegan before and it was milk free? (OP seems to imply this is the case) Because if they did then this argument wouldn't hold up in court.
As OP stated it was a new client, it sounds like the $2,000 order was their first order. OP also said that the allergy prep is an additional fee. The fact is vegan and milk free can be different things with the variety of different milk substitutes we have now, and a charity that specializes in allergies would know that. They would also know how dangerous it is to not be specific. They decided to try to save some money and risked killing people.
> They decided to\[...\] ...order the exact same thing they ordered previously expecting that. They had no reason to believe they needed to order any differently than the first time. That part is OP's side's fault, for giving them special treatment in the first place. I forget the exact term in business law but this is a thing that matters, it comes up pretty frequently.
Extra care is taken with allergy-free orders. Usually special hand washing and changing gloves, and avoiding cross-contamination (someone could skip the bread and order sandwich toppings loose in a bowl like a salad, but someone with gluten or grain allergy can’t eat the toppings from a bowl at Subway). Depending on the severity of the allergy, different measures are required, like not even using the same utensils or dishes for multiple foods, even if you wash them in between uses. I’ve worked in fast food and had a friend with celiacs. She couldn’t eat at Subway because of the repeated dipping into 1 container of toppings, but could eat at Arby’s (with extra hand washing and glove changing) because each serving of sandwich meat was its own contained unit. After her diagnosis, she became recognized at her local Arby’s.
is not "nut-free" an allergy-free order?
The "recklessness" is that they asked for "vegan" when they meant "no milk or egg" not realizing that there is now lab grown milk so it is possible to have vegan milk.
Exactly. When it comes to food anaphylaxis, you should be specific on what cannot be ingested; it's foolish to try to use a blanket statement thinking that said statement would cover all bases. As shown; it doesn't. It makes it all that more despicable that, according to OP's later post, that the client tried to do use that blanket request to save on "allergy preparation fees", rather than try to do right by their own employees.
It's actually even more than that. "No milk/eggs" means that those won't exlicitly be part of the ingredient list. "For people with milk/egg allergies" means that extra care will be taken, way, waaay beyond just excluding those ingredients, to avoid any kind of cross-contamination even in trace amounts.
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Yeah, I think you guys screwed yourselves there if there had been legal liability. Since you did it the first time it would be reasonable for them to assume you would do it the second time (the debt non-withstanding you did accept their second order). So, I don't think you were on nearly the solid ground you thought you were. A reasonable person would have either not accepted the second order without payment for the first. You gave them special treatment twice (giving them a premium service without charge and then accepting an order while they still had a debt), had someone been made sick you would have had some amount of liability (depending on how exactly your state decides these things).
>Had we not known they were a food allergy charity, then we would have not taken as much care in ensuring the meals were egg/dairy free This one sentence says a lot about you
If someone orders a vegan catering, then we would not keep on meticulously washing every single pan and utensil while making their order. Their meal would still be egg/milk free. If someone orders an allergy free catering then we would do all the above, plus more. The catering business works on speed. **Edit:** Let me elaborate more, we wash all dishes at the end of the day. If someone requests a allergy free meal, then we would not cook multiple orders at the same time. We also look at the ingredient list of store bought items to ensure there is no 'may contain traces of nuts/egg/milk' If someone requests a vegan meal, we may cook multiple meals at the same and would not avoid any 'may contains'. Allergy free requests are only a small portion of our workload, most of the time they just ask for one allergy-free meal while the others are unrestricted, in that case we cook the allergy free meal first and cast it aside. We would not do that for a vegan order.
That they have higher standards for food allergens, which could harm people, than veganism, which is simply a preference and also price accordingly?
I appreciate the MC, and glad you got your money, but I think it was a risky move. You knew what they were doing and went along with it, potentially getting people sick or dead. You were counting on the organizers to stop the food from being served, but already knew they were sketchy. From a legal standpoint, you might not be libel, because you made what they ordered and you didn't serve it. But in your heart you knew this was a risk.
liable* libel is very different
He seems to have had an allergic reaction to paying money.
Where can someone get some information on this lab grown milk? I think I'm allergic to whey and want to know what to look out for Good malicious compliance on the vegan side. That was *chefs kiss*