Heidi works for a rather large grocery food chain. I know there are unsanitary goings-on in any place that handles food but when you work right there (or are related to someone who is), sometimes the grossness can get to you. I haven't bought any fresh salad from this store after stories Heidi told me. Who wants salad when you know flies have been roaming around on it depositing whatever it is they leave whenever they land? UGH.
Lately, there's been an increasing mouse problem that has something to do with the way food is disposed. The cans the food should go into are maggoty and filthy and really need to be sanitized or just plain replaced. Management keeps sending the baggers--lowest of the low on the totem pole and mostly teenage kids--out to clean these things. Heidi tells me the baggers stand around talking until enough time has gone by that they could claim they did clean the containers and then they go back in. Who can blame them? What 16 year old wants to clean out a crusty maggoty garbage container?
Anyway, for whatever reason, mice have been coming into the store and the managers' solution has been to set traps.
Last night, Heidi found a baby mouse in one of the traps. She thought it was dead and was disposing it (and the other dead mice) when it moved and she realized it was barely alive. It would not be for long and so she killed it. When she came home, she broke down and wept long and hard. Even though she knew she was ending its suffering she was very upset about what she did.
Some might say, it was just a mouse, just a pesky nasty critter and of no significance. Still, when you love animals as Heidi does, it must have been a traumatic thing to do.
She wants to find another job. I don't blame her.