I volunteer at a food bank, and the company that sends us our food decides what we get. Last Tuesday they sent so much produce we could not fit it all into fridges. We were trying to give away cases of the food on Wednesday, but people were turning it down because they had no place to store a case of tomatoes, or cauliflower. This was what we had left after last Wednesday’s morning give away. Not pictured the 5000lbs of watermelons, the 2500lbs of onions (those will last a lot longer).
The company that supplies us wants to move from sending shipments every other week, to once a month. This would cause even more no produce loss.
It is so frustrating to have all this food for it to go bad. Even if we got the same volume of produce, but there was variation in what it is we could give it away easier.
Edit: I posted this in a comment.
Because of bureaucracy we have to request this. If it is found out we are giving away the food to unapproved recipients we can lose all of our funding. If we give to unapproved recipients and they in turn give us prepared food to give out, that is okay.
Word got out that we were loading up my pickup with food and taking it to the homeless camps. I did get a number of them to start coming to the bank to get food. But it was easier when I could take stuff to them.
We are not allowed to simply give it out to anyone. This is not like a church pantry where all of the food is donated by the community and’s parishioners. There is government funding, as well as private businesses, which I am guessing get their money back from the government for funding this. If we could simply give it to anyone we would not be in this situation.
I have gotten used to using the state abbreviation for New Mexico because a lot of people in the states see the “Mexico” and assume it is not a state. But they see NM and know that is a state. I forget that outside of the US people generally know our states better. Hell even our president does not realize we are a state.
That’s really funny and really sad at the same time.
Most Canadians know all US states, and I’m fairly certain I can match 95% of state postal abbreviations to their corresponding state (save for the ones starting with M, good luck lol). I’d like to see Americans try to put the huge landmass that is Manitoba (MB) on a map 😄
I don’t think I’ve ever been confused between what’s Mexico and what’s USA, and I feel like uneducated racist people may just be going off of the name, like Nevada / Arizona being spanish names and New Mexico referencing Mexico.