Felix and Maya Romero

 

Scenario 1

Maya last went to the grocery store 10 days ago. She has planned to bake some bread as part of the meal she is preparing for dinner that evening. She begins removing items from her pantry to make dough, including flour, baking powder and salt. She looks for the yeast, only to find an empty box with no packets left. She wonders why she left an empty box in the pantry, and wonders if her daughter wasn't trying to make dough at some point. She won't be going to the store for a few days, so she will have to make something else to go with the meal. She also notices she is low on flour, although she thinks she has quite a bit left in the basement.Using her phone with Food Buddha, she scans the code taped to the wall labeled flour, which will remind her the next time she is at the store that she needs flour. 

Scenario 2

Maya is planning her meals for the next two weeks because she is going shopping in the morning. She wants to make several meals with chicken, and wonders how much chicken is left in the basement freezer. She walks downstairs and looks in freezer. She has to dig through many other items which have been thrown on top of the chicken to find it. When she does, she estimates there is about enough for one meal, but she wonders how long the chicken has been in the freezer and if there is a limit to how long freezer can safely be frozen. The bag has been torn where the expiration date is printed and she can't tell what it says. She makes a mental note to add chicken to her shopping list tomorrow.She opens up Food Buddha on the computer in the basement to check the last time she scanned chicken into the freezer and what it's expiration date is. She learns she can still use the frozen chicken for several more weeks. She adds chicken to her list for her next shopping list.

Scenario 3

Felix is taking Maya into Oklahoma City to see a concert on a Saturday night. They plan to stop by Costco while they are in town to pick up some things. On Saturday afternoon, Felix walks down to the basement to see if there is anything he thinks they need. He wants to see specifically if they have powdered Gatorade that he likes to take to work, and also check up their general emergency supplies. He hasn't been down to the basement in a few months, but it seems to him like there is a lot less canned food than what he remembered. He also notices that the canned food in the back has expiration dates that are really old, and some are pretty close to being overdue. He also wonders exactly how much food a family of 7 should have in their home. He decides to call a friend he thinks will know, but he just gets the voicemail. He leaves a message hoping he'll get a call back before they get to Costco.

 

Eric and Stephanie Nash

Scenario 1

Eric and Stephanie are at the grocery when Eric gets an idea to make chili on Sunday. He doesn't think they have any spices, onions, peppers, or other veggies he likes to put in chili. But he's not sure if they have any cans of tomato sauce, beans, and if there is any ground beef left in the freezer. They usually buy a lot of that stuff but can't remember if they made anything with the ground beef this week. He asks Stephanie, who doesn't think there is any tomato sauce or beans but thinks there might be some ground beef left. 

Eric opens Food Buddha on his phone and finds ground beef. He sees that the last time he bought it was 12 days ago and believes he would have used it all by then, and also that it is near it's expiration date anyway. He then checks on the tomato sauce and beans, and learns it has been several months since he scanned any of that into the pantry. He adds all these items to the shopping cart.

Scenario 2

It's Thursday morning and Stephanie is working on some photos she recently took. She gets a text message from her friend, and notices a message icon from Food Buddha. She checks it to see that the produce she bought a week ago she be used soon before it expires. She decides she'll make a salad for lunch using whatever she has left. She wants to put some tuna in her salad, and when she looks in the pantry she finds she has just a little left. She scans the tuna QR code taped to the inside of the door so she'll have a reminder for the next time she goes shopping.

 

Eric Quigg

While Eric was at the food coop volunteering last Wednesday, an urgent meeting was scheduled by the store manager requesting all the employees to attend. The agenda was to discuss the increasing theft rate in the shampoo; skin cream and body wash sections. In the past month they had noticed a large number of missing bottles of shampoos and skin creams. There were 6 cases where customers had come in looking for their favorite exotic shampoo and not found it on the shelf. 3 of these customers said this had happened to them before and just left the store. In parallel to this, the salad station had run out of olives and after they ordered a new batch from the suppliers, they found out that the other branch had a whole extra box of the same olives that they had not opened. The store manager wanted the employees to pay more attention to such matters in order to minimize losses and wastage of food items. One of the employees complained that their inventory system required a lot of attention and skill to keep track of the supplies and this was probably what might have distracted them from paying attention to the other issues.

 

Siddharth Iyer

Last week, Siddharth returned from his LA trip and found that his roommate was away on a weekend vacation. Hungry and tired after a delayed flight, he decided to grab the first thing he found in the fridge. Unfortunately for him, the fridge was a ghastly sight of rotten and smelly fruit and leftover Chinese food from a week ago. He was disgusted and angry with himself and the roommate. After eating some airline pretzels and cookies, he decided to spend the day cleaning the kitchen and fridge thoroughly. After an hour into the cleaning, he remembered he had to watch an important football game. After the game, he was sleepy and not in the mood to continue cleaning. He knew if he didn’t clean the mess and throw old things out, they were in for a week of such ghastly sights and smells.

 

Jackie de Ataide

In Jackie's apartment, there is one fridge where the grocery for 4 persons is stored. Most of the space is taken by fresh vegetables and dairy products. Most of the times it gets really difficult to track the expiry of the vegetables, especially those which end up at the very back of the fridge. This accounts for a lot of wastage. Managing the freezer is not a problem as they seldom buy frozen food or meat.  

As a GSI, Jackie has to teach three days a week.  She brings lunch to the department during the days she teaches, and freezes lunch in the department's fridge, which is shared by all of the GSIs and faculty in Arts School.  The department used to have a staff that was responsible for throwing away old food or food that does not have name/time stamp, so they had a "good old days" that fridge was well organized and everyone has enough space.  However, two months ago the department went going down staff number and no one is responsible for the fridge anymore.  Some old food is forgotten in the fridge forever but no one takes it out; there is no name stamp in the box, so Jackie cannot even friendly reminder its owner.  Jackie has to fright for spaces every time.