r/mildlyinfuriating • u/knockoffgerardway • 9h ago
Infuriatig This company designs cans that cannot be stacked end to end, which makes shelving them is a complete pain in the ass.
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u/diescheide 9h ago
I hate cans like this. Why even manufacture them? There's got to be a better way.
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u/LazyEmu5073 8h ago
Why even manufacture them?In a larger store, it assures the manufacturer that they will get 4 "facings" of the same product on the shelf, as the staff will just stack them in the cardboard tray they come in. Like this...
Individually stacked cans are too liable to be knocked on the floor by mistake, and have to be sold at a lower price.
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u/diescheide 7h ago
It was a rhetorical question. I understand what a SRD/PDQ/tray/case is. I know what facings are. You can't fit these trays in all facings, sure. You also can't neatly stack these cans in a facing since they don't lock together. It makes a mess. It also creates overstock.
Oh, you have to discount them if they're dented?! If they fall from height. Or you know, arrive damaged like they do every truck. I can pull dozens of cans fresh off the truck. The DC and shipping process isn't gentle, either. I deal with this 5 days a week. You didn't teach me a damn thing I didn't already know.
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u/allmylovetolongago 7h ago
Why are you being weirdly aggressive to this person lol. How on earth are they meant to know that you have experience with this sort of thing? Chill out.
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u/diescheide 7h ago
Walmart is half of my account activity. Wouldn't be hard to figure out. Again, it's pretty obvious it's a rhetorical question. "There's got to be a better way" is an infomercial/wheredidthesodago meme that's existed forever.
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u/allmylovetolongago 6h ago
Literally nobody in the world cares enough about you to check out your posting history. Go touch grass you weirdo.
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u/PainterWooden8667 8h ago
your picture shows cans neatly stacked on top of each other, despite being in their little box
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u/geech999 7h ago
Right, because only when they are still in the box are they stable to stack. Which means they have to stack them 4 wide instead of only 2 or 3.
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u/PainterWooden8667 7h ago
how would removing the cardboard on the bottom affect the stacking on top?
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u/AssociateWhole 6h ago
Idk how to say this, the top of the can and the bottom have essentially the same lip on them. A similar practice, think of things like little Pringles cans, i see these in gas stations and they’re in these cardboard boxes because the bottom of a can doesn’t have a place for it’s ridges to fall onto/into, so they get set out on a wider/shorter/deeper display so you look at multiple cans of these chips rather than just a couple. A 2x4 display is more noticeable to the eye than the 2x2 display, the cans in the post follow a similar practice. The bottom lip is equal to the top lip rather than one being marginally smaller or even inverted, the cans have no place to sit neatly on top of one another, no place for the bottom ridges to fall into/onto the can below it, the bottom lip is the same size as the top lip, without the cardboard they’d all be slightly askew or not neatly one on top of another, unless there was a pyramid style display. Without the cardboard the shelf display would less organized at first glance making some people subconsciously look away instead of possibly drawing that same part of the brain to stay looking at it for longer, potentially leading to a purchase
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u/coolratVII 6h ago
this!!! I'm a grocery store stocker and these cans are the worst, what really pisses me off is when it's a brand that makes some products in normal cans but randomly puts other stuff in these evil cans
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u/ASAP1492 9h ago
Every 28oz can of tomatoes I’ve ever seen has been like this.
Mildly infuriating for sure, but not Mutti’s fault
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u/knockoffgerardway 9h ago
Thats true, but it’s not just their 28oz that are like that, their 14oz and 5oz cans have the same problem, which is unique to them and dellalo lol
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u/ASAP1492 9h ago
lol fair enough I didn’t know that. I only use their big cans when I’m making a big batch of gravy. But they’re definitely the best and would be worth it at any size.
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u/doubleohzerooo0 9h ago
Yeah, it's not like they have some expert on the payroll who's supposed to look at shit like and go, 'you know what, what if...'
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u/Steiney1 8h ago edited 8h ago
American can manufacturers all use a standard indent on both lids so that they can interlock Goes back to pre-ww2 times when they stacked cans in pyramids or entire end caps for effect and priced each can. European cans are all generally flat lidded. Their reasons are their own.
I used to work at a Hunt-Wesson plant where we canned LaChoy bi-packs, hydroponic grown bean sprouts. And Healthy Choice soups. They were all cooked at that time in large, vertical retort steam cookers where the cans were loaded from the top in stacks inside baskets hauld by overhead cranes. Since then ( late 90s) we have developed horizontal, continuous retort lines that are much less labor intensive
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u/vinegarxhoney 3h ago
"Their reasons are their own" is so unreasonably funny to me
I remember going to a movie theater in Europe as a young teenager, getting popcorn as a treat, as you do. Never occurred to me that butter and salt were not just the gold standard, so imagine my surprise and rage at taking a bite of SWEET popcorn.
I think, as much as I remember how horrifying I found that popcorn, it would pale in comparison to finding out stackable cans are apparently also not a gold standard, my god.
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u/Steiney1 3h ago
Interesting, was it sugar added to the popcorn? or did they grow some sort of sweet corn variety? I'd imagine it's just because any European body who could reasonably set standards like that would have to be relatively recent (since 1993?) and at this point the 3 piece can has been made for hundreds of years already.
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u/vinegarxhoney 3h ago
My assumption is it was something like kettle corn, I remember that the color was normal and it wasn't sticky, so not caramelized or sauce or anything, but still sweet. It's been two decades and I still remember the horror lol
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u/NortonBurns 8h ago
Truly stackable cans are a recent innovation.
Not everyone can afford to re-tool to hugely expensive equipment needed to make them, so they'll continue to be like this until they reach their natural end of life.
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u/Matrix010 5h ago
Not just this can buddy, MANY cans are like this unfortunately.
As a grocery clerk I see this often, and it pisses me off.
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u/danfish_77 4h ago
I feel like very few cans stack these days, it's very frustrating. I swear this was the norm even for cheap brands a decade ago
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u/2401PenitentTangentx 9h ago
If your store allows it just stack them in the cardboard cases they come on then cut/rip the edges off.
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u/Dark_WulfGaming 5h ago
Ranch style beans brand cabs are also like this and I hated stocking those things too.... Not to mention they are disgusting
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u/Melodic-Advice9930 4h ago
This is how I feel stacking so many different cans down the canned goods aisle. Many of them aren’t stackable - yams and a particular size of campbells soups come to mind.
It pisses me off when I’m trying to set my schematics in those sections because it often means unstacking them to move them around and then having to try to get them all balanced just right again. The amount of times I have to jump back so a can doesn’t fall on my foot from a shelf at my head level is way too high.
I finished October’s today though so hopefully I shouldn’t have any more schematics until next year
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u/Kcufasu 5h ago
Never mind the stacking, which English speaking currency is selling canned frigging tomatoes for 4+ of their currency?!?
Tins of tomatoes should be like €0.40 max for a fancy brand
Hopefully it's Australia but that's still like 2 quid which is insane for tinned tomatoes
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u/knockoffgerardway 5h ago
I live in America
Please send help
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u/penisandorvagina 4h ago
Brother you're getting rorted these are less than a $1.80 here (which is about $1.10 USD) https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/795621/mutti-whole-peeled-tomatoes
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u/TackyBrad 2h ago
Interestingly, yours don't have the badge saying they were grown in Italy, just produced in Italy.
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u/blixabloxa 3h ago
To be fair, the cans in the OP picture are 800g instead of 400g. Still cheaper per 100g in Australia though.
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u/nazukeru 4h ago
You can buy many other brands for around $1-2 USD.. but this is that GOOD GOOD, so it costs extra lol.
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u/thighmaster69 4h ago
These are mutti whole peeled san marzano tomatoes. They are DOP and are only grown in one place in Italy with the sunshine/climate/soil for it and harvested once per year.
In Canada, where I live, $4 a can would be for it on sale, and it would absolutely be worth it over premade sauce that's often $3 a bottle.
Obviously it would be cheaper in Europe but considering it needs to cross oceans it's going to be a delicacy here. This is also why Europe is never going to be fully replace the US for trade for us.
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u/Suspiciouswhaler 1h ago
Yes the Italian tomatoes are crazy money but leamington tomatoes are only good for ketchup not Italian food :(
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u/Lovethiskindathing 4h ago
Tomatoes in a can for less than a dollar? That sounds amazing. Please tell me how much your fresh produce costs also!
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u/winefromthelilactree 4h ago
It’s an 800g can so nearly twice your standard tin. And I’ve definitely seen fancier tomatoes in regular tins for £1-2 in the UK so it doesn’t seem unlikely.
Sure it’s ridiculous and it sucks but it isn’t unlikely
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u/TheLordofthething 3h ago
These are higher end tomatoes, you can get other tins for 40p or something here. This seems to be a ShopRite wherever that is
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u/minisom38 9h ago
I don’t think they were like how can we make this can not stack when designing it 😂
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u/I_prefer_potatoes 3h ago
I remember those cans from stocking shelves like 4 years ago. there was a couple different brands and sizes we had. the overnight manager was required to stock that aisle so I only had to do it when she needed help and I was done
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u/mahartma 6h ago
Stop removing stuffs from the cardboard trays and squeezing them on your crappy, dirty shelves.
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u/knockoffgerardway 4h ago
Girl you think I wouldn’t be doing that if the space permitted it, If they had triple facings on these raggedy ass Reagan administration ass ralphs shelves these mfs would stay in their cardboard trays, but unfortunately adam smith said some shit 300 years ago and now there’s like 200 brands for every vegetable on this godforsaken planet
Ain’t no room
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u/CMTV-IPTV 9h ago
Great tomatoes though for anyone wondering.